CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTORY, CONCERNING THE PEDIGREE OF THE CHUZZLEWIT FAMILY
As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can
possibly sympathize with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first
assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction
to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and
Eve; and was, in the very earliest times, closely connected with the
agricultural interest. If it should ever be urged by grudging and
malicious persons, that a Chuzzlewit, in any period of the family
history, displayed an overweening amount of family pride, surely the
weakness will be considered not only pardonable but laudable, when the
immense superiority of the house to the rest of mankind, in respect of
this its ancient origin, is taken into account.
It is remarkable that as there was, in the oldest family of which we
have any record, a murderer and a vagabond, so we never fail to meet,
in the records of all old families, with innumerable repetitions of
the same phase of character. Indeed, it may be laid down as a general
principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount
of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days those two amusements,
combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing
shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling pursuit and the healthful
recreation of the Quality of this land.
Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible comfort and happiness
to find, that in various periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits were
actively connected with divers slaughterous conspiracies and bloody
frays. It is further recorded of them, that being clad from head to
heel in steel of proof, they did on many occasions lead their
leather-jerkined soldiers to the death with invincible courage, and
afterwards return home gracefully to their relations and friends.
There can be no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with
William the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious ancestor
'came over' that monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent
period; inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have been ever greatly
distinguished by the possession of landed estate. And it is well known
that for the bestowal of that kind of property upon his favourites,
the liberality and gratitude of the Norman were as remarkable as those
virtues are usually found to be in great men when they give away what
belongs to other people.
Perhaps in this place the history may pause to congratulate itself upon
the enormous amount of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue, gentle birth,
and true nobility, that appears to have come into England with the
Norman Invasion: an amount which the genealogy of every ancient family
lends its aid to swell, and which would beyond all question have been
found to be just as great, and to the full as prolific in giving birth
to long lines of chivalrous descendants, boastful of their origin, even
though William the Conqueror had been William the Conquered; a change of
circumstances which, it is quite certain, would have made no manner of
difference in this respect.
There was unquestionably a Chuzzlewit in the Gunpowder Plot, if indeed
the arch-traitor, Fawkes himself, were not a scion of this remarkable
stock; as he might easily have been, supposing another Chuzzlewit
to have emigrated to Spain in the previous generation, and there
intermarried with a Spanish lady, by whom he had issue, one
olive-complexioned son. This probable conjecture is strengthened, if not
absolutely confirmed, by a fact which cannot fail to be interesting
to those who are curious in tracing the progress of hereditary tastes
through the lives of their unconscious inheritors. It is a notable
circumstance that in these later times, many Chuzzlewits, being
unsuccessful in other pursuits, have, without the smallest rational
hope of enriching themselves, or any conceivable reason, set up as
coal-merchants; and have, month after month, continued gloomily to watch
a small stock of coals, without in any one instance negotiating with a
purchaser. The remarkable similarity between this course of proceeding
and that adopted by their Great Ancestor beneath the vaults of the
Parliament House at Westminster, is too obvious and too full of
interest, to stand in need of comment.
It is also clearly proved by the oral traditions of the Family, that
there existed, at some one period of its history which is not distinctly
stated, a matron of such destructive principles, and so familiarized to
the use and composition of inflammatory and combustible engines, that
she was called 'The Match Maker;' by which nickname and byword she is
recognized in the Family legends to this day. Surely there can be
no reasonable doubt that this was the Spanish lady, the mother of
Chuzzlewit Fawkes.
But there is one other piece of evidence, bearing immediate reference
to their close connection with this memorable event in English History,
which must carry conviction, even to a mind (if such a mind there be)
remaining unconvinced by these presumptive proofs.
There was, within a few years, in the possession of a highly respectable
and in every way credible and unimpeachable member of the Chuzzlewit
Family (for his bitterest enemy never dared to hint at his being
otherwise than a wealthy man), a dark lantern of undoubted antiquity;
rendered still more interesting by being, in shape and pattern,
extremely like such as are in use at the present day. Now this
gentleman, since deceased, was at all times ready to make oath, and
did again and again set forth upon his solemn asseveration, that he had
frequently heard his grandmother say, when contemplating this venerable
relic, 'Aye, aye! This was carried by my fourth son on the fifth of
November, when he was a Guy Fawkes.' These remarkable words wrought
(as well they might) a strong impression on his mind, and he was in the
habit of repeating them very often. The just interpretation which
they bear, and the conclusion to which they lead, are triumphant and
irresistible. The old lady, naturally strong-minded, was nevertheless
frail and fading; she was notoriously subject to that confusion of
ideas, or, to say the least, of speech, to which age and garrulity
are liable. The slight, the very slight, confusion apparent in these
expressions is manifest, and is ludicrously easy of correction. 'Aye,
aye,' quoth she, and it will be observed that no emendation whatever is
necessary to be made in these two initiative remarks, 'Aye, aye!
This lantern was carried by my forefather'--not fourth son, which is
preposterous--'on the fifth of November. And HE was Guy Fawkes.' Here
we have a remark at once consistent, clear, natural, and in strict
accordance with the character of the speaker. Indeed the anecdote is
so plainly susceptible of this meaning and no other, that it would be
hardly worth recording in its original state, were it not a proof of
what may be (and very often is) affected not only in historical prose
but in imaginative poetry, by the exercise of a little ingenious labour
on the part of a commentator.
It has been said that there is no instance, in modern times, of a
Chuzzlewit having been found on terms of intimacy with the Great. But
here again the sneering detractors who weave such miserable figments
from their malicious brains, are stricken dumb by evidence. For letters
are yet in the possession of various branches of the family, from which
it distinctly appears, being stated in so many words, that one Diggory
Chuzzlewit was in the habit of perpetually dining with Duke Humphrey.
So constantly was he a guest at that nobleman's table, indeed; and so
unceasingly were His Grace's hospitality and companionship forced, as
it were, upon him; that we find him uneasy, and full of constraint and
reluctance; writing his friends to the effect that if they fail to do
so and so by bearer, he will have no choice but to dine again with Duke
Humphrey; and expressing himself in a very marked and extraordinary
manner as one surfeited of High Life and Gracious Company.
It has been rumoured, and it is needless to say the rumour originated in
the same base quarters, that a certain male Chuzzlewit, whose birth must
be admitted to be involved in some obscurity, was of very mean and low
descent. How stands the proof? When the son of that individual, to whom
the secret of his father's birth was supposed to have been communicated
by his father in his lifetime, lay upon his deathbed, this question was
put to him in a distinct, solemn, and formal way: 'Toby Chuzzlewit,
who was your grandfather?' To which he, with his last breath, no less
distinctly, solemnly, and formally replied: and his words were taken
down at the time, and signed by six witnesses, each with his name and
address in full: 'The Lord No Zoo.' It may be said--it HAS been said,
for human wickedness has no limits--that there is no Lord of that
name, and that among the titles which have become extinct, none at all
resembling this, in sound even, is to be discovered. But what is the
irresistible inference? Rejecting a theory broached by some well-meaning
but mistaken persons, that this Mr Toby Chuzzlewit's grandfather, to
judge from his name, must surely have been a Mandarin (which is wholly
insupportable, for there is no pretence of his grandmother ever having
been out of this country, or of any Mandarin having been in it within
some years of his father's birth; except those in the tea-shops, which
cannot for a moment be regarded as having any bearing on the question,
one way or other), rejecting this hypothesis, is it not manifest that
Mr Toby Chuzzlewit had either received the name imperfectly from his
father, or that he had forgotten it, or that he had mispronounced it?
and that even at the recent period in question, the Chuzzlewits were
connected by a bend sinister, or kind of heraldic over-the-left, with
some unknown noble and illustrious House?
From documentary evidence, yet preserved in the family, the fact is
clearly established that in the comparatively modern days of the Diggory
Chuzzlewit before mentioned, one of its members had attained to
very great wealth and influence. Throughout such fragments of his
correspondence as have escaped the ravages of the moths (who, in right
of their extensive absorption of the contents of deeds and papers, may
be called the general registers of the Insect World), we find him making
constant reference to an uncle, in respect of whom he would seem to have
entertained great expectations, as he was in the habit of seeking to
propitiate his favour by presents of plate, jewels, books, watches, and
other valuable articles. Thus, he writes on one occasion to his
brother in reference to a gravy-spoon, the brother's property, which he
(Diggory) would appear to have borrowed or otherwise possessed himself
of: 'Do not be angry, I have parted with it--to my uncle.' On another
occasion he expresses himself in a similar manner with regard to a
child's mug which had been entrusted to him to get repaired. On another
occasion he says, 'I have bestowed upon that irresistible uncle of mine
everything I ever possessed.' And that he was in the habit of paying
long and constant visits to this gentleman at his mansion, if, indeed,
he did not wholly reside there, is manifest from the following sentence:
'With the exception of the suit of clothes I carry about with me,
the whole of my wearing apparel is at present at my uncle's.' This
gentleman's patronage and influence must have been very extensive, for
his nephew writes, 'His interest is too high'--'It is too much'--'It is
tremendous'--and the like. Still it does not appear (which is strange)
to have procured for him any lucrative post at court or elsewhere, or
to have conferred upon him any other distinction than that which was
necessarily included in the countenance of so great a man, and the being
invited by him to certain entertainment's, so splendid and costly in
their nature, that he calls them 'Golden Balls.'
It is needless to multiply instances of the high and lofty station, and
the vast importance of the Chuzzlewits, at different periods. If it
came within the scope of reasonable probability that further proofs were
required, they might be heaped upon each other until they formed an Alps
of testimony, beneath which the boldest scepticism should be crushed
and beaten flat. As a goodly tumulus is already collected, and decently
battened up above the Family grave, the present chapter is content to
leave it as it is: merely adding, by way of a final spadeful, that many
Chuzzlewits, both male and female, are proved to demonstration, on the
faith of letters written by their own mothers, to have had chiselled
noses, undeniable chins, forms that might have served the sculptor for a
model, exquisitely-turned limbs and polished foreheads of so transparent
a texture that the blue veins might be seen branching off in various
directions, like so many roads on an ethereal map. This fact in itself,
though it had been a solitary one, would have utterly settled and
clenched the business in hand; for it is well known, on the authority
of all the books which treat of such matters, that every one of these
phenomena, but especially that of the chiselling, are invariably
peculiar to, and only make themselves apparent in, persons of the very
best condition.
This history having, to its own perfect satisfaction, (and,
consequently, to the full contentment of all its readers,) proved the
Chuzzlewits to have had an origin, and to have been at one time or other
of an importance which cannot fail to render them highly improving and
acceptable acquaintance to all right-minded individuals, may now proceed
in earnest with its task. And having shown that they must have had, by
reason of their ancient birth, a pretty large share in the foundation
and increase of the human family, it will one day become its province to
submit, that such of its members as shall be introduced in these pages,
have still many counterparts and prototypes in the Great World about us.
At present it contents itself with remarking, in a general way, on this
head: Firstly, that it may be safely asserted, and yet without
implying any direct participation in the Manboddo doctrine touching the
probability of the human race having once been monkeys, that men do
play very strange and extraordinary tricks. Secondly, and yet without
trenching on the Blumenbach theory as to the descendants of Adam having
a vast number of qualities which belong more particularly to swine than
to any other class of animals in the creation, that some men certainly
are remarkable for taking uncommon good care of themselves.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEREIN CERTAIN PERSONS ARE PRESENTED TO THE READER, WITH WHOM HE MAY,
IF HE PLEASE, BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED
It was pretty late in the autumn of the year, when the declining sun
struggling through the mist which had obscured it all day, looked
brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village, within an easy journey of
the fair old town of Salisbury.
Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kindling up the mind of an old
man, it shed a glory upon the scene, in which its departed youth and
freshness seemed to live again. The wet grass sparkled in the light;
the scanty patches of verdure in the hedges--where a few green twigs
yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping
winds and early frosts--took heart and brightened up; the stream which
had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile;
the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the
hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring
had come already. The vane upon the tapering spire of the old church
glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness;
and from the ivy-shaded windows such gleams of light shone back upon
the glowing sky, that it seemed as if the quiet buildings were the
hoarding-place of twenty summers, and all their ruddiness and warmth
were stored within.
Even those tokens of the season which emphatically whispered of the
coming winter, graced the landscape, and, for the moment, tinged its
livelier features with no oppressive air of sadness. The fallen leaves,
with which the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, and
subduing all harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels created a repose
in gentle unison with the light scattering of seed hither and thither by
the distant husbandman, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as
it turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a graceful pattern in
the stubbled fields. On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn
berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards
where the fruits were jewels; others stripped of all their garniture,
stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright red leaves, watching
their slow decay; others again, still wearing theirs, had them all
crunched and crackled up, as though they had been burnt; about the stems
of some were piled, in ruddy mounds, the apples they had borne that
year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern
and gloomy in their vigour, as charged by nature with the admonition
that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favourites she grants
the longest term of life. Still athwart their darker boughs, the
sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in
among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness
off, and aid the lustre of the dying day.
A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long
dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city,
wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all
withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot
to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on
everything.
An evening wind uprose too, and the slighter branches cracked and
rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The
withering leaves no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of
shelter from its chill pursuit; the labourer unyoked his horses, and
with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the
cottage windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening
fields.
Then the village forge came out in all its bright importance. The lusty
bellows roared Ha ha! to the clear fire, which roared in turn, and bade
the shining sparks dance gayly to the merry clinking of the hammers on
the anvil. The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled too, and shed
its red-hot gems around profusely. The strong smith and his men dealt
such strokes upon their work, as made even the melancholy night rejoice,
and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and
windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen loungers.
As to this idle company, there they stood, spellbound by the place, and,
casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled
their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little
further in: no more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had
been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so many crickets.
Out upon the angry wind! how from sighing, it began to bluster round the
merry forge, banging at the wicket, and grumbling in the chimney, as if
it bullied the jolly bellows for doing anything to order. And what an
impotent swaggerer it was too, for all its noise; for if it had any
influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his
cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn
the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gayly yet; at length, they
whizzed so madly round and round, that it was too much for such a surly
wind to bear; so off it flew with a howl giving the old sign before the
ale-house door such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more
rampant than usual ever afterwards, and indeed, before Christmas, reared
clean out of its crazy frame.
It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance
on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to
come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humour on the
insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away,
pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling
round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the
air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols in the extremity
of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury; for not
content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and
hunted them into the wheel wright's saw-pit, and below the planks and
timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked
for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove
them on and followed at their heels!
The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase
it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was no
outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round and round at his
pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses, and clung tightly to
the sides of hay-ricks, like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows,
and cowered close to hedges; and, in short, went anywhere for safety.
But the oddest feat they achieved was, to take advantage of the sudden
opening of Mr Pecksniff's front-door, to dash wildly into his passage;
whither the wind following close upon them, and finding the back-door
open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff,
and slammed the front-door against Mr Pecksniff who was at that moment
entering, with such violence, that in the twinkling of an eye he lay on
his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such
trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing,
roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea,
where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of
it.
In the meantime Mr Pecksniff, having received from a sharp angle in the
bottom step but one, that sort of knock on the head which lights up, for
the patient's entertainment, an imaginary general illumination of very
bright short-sixes, lay placidly staring at his own street door. And it
would seem to have been more suggestive in its aspect than street
doors usually are; for he continued to lie there, rather a lengthy and
unreasonable time, without so much as wondering whether he was hurt
or no; neither, when Miss Pecksniff inquired through the key-hole in a
shrill voice, which might have belonged to a wind in its teens, 'Who's
there' did he make any reply; nor, when Miss Pecksniff opened the door
again, and shading the candle with her hand, peered out, and looked
provokingly round him, and about him, and over him, and everywhere but
at him, did he offer any remark, or indicate in any manner the least
hint of a desire to be picked up.
'I see you,' cried Miss Pecksniff, to the ideal inflicter of a runaway
knock. 'You'll catch it, sir!'
Still Mr Pecksniff, perhaps from having caught it already, said nothing.
'You're round the corner now,' cried Miss Pecksniff. She said it at a
venture, but there was appropriate matter in it too; for Mr Pecksniff,
being in the act of extinguishing the candles before mentioned pretty
rapidly, and of reducing the number of brass knobs on his street door
from four or five hundred (which had previously been juggling of their
own accord before his eyes in a very novel manner) to a dozen or so,
might in one sense have been said to be coming round the corner, and
just turning it.
With a sharply delivered warning relative to the cage and the constable,
and the stocks and the gallows, Miss Pecksniff was about to close the
door again, when Mr Pecksniff (being still at the bottom of the steps)
raised himself on one elbow, and sneezed.
'That voice!' cried Miss Pecksniff. 'My parent!'
At this exclamation, another Miss Pecksniff bounced out of the parlour;
and the two Miss Pecksniffs, with many incoherent expressions, dragged
Mr Pecksniff into an upright posture.
'Pa!' they cried in concert. 'Pa! Speak, Pa! Do not look so wild my
dearest Pa!'
But as a gentleman's looks, in such a case of all others, are by no
means under his own control, Mr Pecksniff continued to keep his mouth
and his eyes very wide open, and to drop his lower jaw, somewhat after
the manner of a toy nut-cracker; and as his hat had fallen off, and his
face was pale, and his hair erect, and his coat muddy, the spectacle he
presented was so very doleful, that neither of the Miss Pecksniffs could
repress an involuntary screech.
'That'll do,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'I'm better.'
'He's come to himself!' cried the youngest Miss Pecksniff.
'He speaks again!' exclaimed the eldest.
With these joyful words they kissed Mr Pecksniff on either cheek; and
bore him into the house. Presently, the youngest Miss Pecksniff ran
out again to pick up his hat, his brown paper parcel, his umbrella, his
gloves, and other small articles; and that done, and the door closed,
both young ladies applied themselves to tending Mr Pecksniff's wounds in
the back parlour.
They were not very serious in their nature; being limited to abrasions
on what the eldest Miss Pecksniff called 'the knobby parts' of her
parent's anatomy, such as his knees and elbows, and to the development
of an entirely new organ, unknown to phrenologists, on the back of his
head. These injuries having been comforted externally, with patches of
pickled brown paper, and Mr Pecksniff having been comforted internally,
with some stiff brandy-and-water, the eldest Miss Pecksniff sat down
to make the tea, which was all ready. In the meantime the youngest Miss
Pecksniff brought from the kitchen a smoking dish of ham and eggs, and,
setting the same before her father, took up her station on a low stool
at his feet; thereby bringing her eyes on a level with the teaboard.
It must not be inferred from this position of humility, that the
youngest Miss Pecksniff was so young as to be, as one may say, forced to
sit upon a stool, by reason of the shortness of her legs. Miss Pecksniff
sat upon a stool because of her simplicity and innocence, which were
very great, very great. Miss Pecksniff sat upon a stool because she was
all girlishness, and playfulness, and wildness, and kittenish buoyancy.
She was the most arch and at the same time the most artless creature,
was the youngest Miss Pecksniff, that you can possibly imagine. It
was her great charm. She was too fresh and guileless, and too full of
child-like vivacity, was the youngest Miss Pecksniff, to wear combs in
her hair, or to turn it up, or to frizzle it, or braid it. She wore it
in a crop, a loosely flowing crop, which had so many rows of curls in
it, that the top row was only one curl. Moderately buxom was her shape,
and quite womanly too; but sometimes--yes, sometimes--she even wore
a pinafore; and how charming THAT was! Oh! she was indeed 'a gushing
thing' (as a young gentleman had observed in verse, in the Poet's Corner
of a provincial newspaper), was the youngest Miss Pecksniff!
Mr Pecksniff was a moral man--a grave man, a man of noble sentiments and
speech--and he had had her christened Mercy. Mercy! oh, what a charming
name for such a pure-souled Being as the youngest Miss Pecksniff! Her
sister's name was Charity. There was a good thing! Mercy and Charity!
And Charity, with her fine strong sense and her mild, yet not
reproachful gravity, was so well named, and did so well set off and
illustrate her sister! What a pleasant sight was that the contrast
they presented; to see each loved and loving one sympathizing with, and
devoted to, and leaning on, and yet correcting and counter-checking,
and, as it were, antidoting, the other! To behold each damsel in her
very admiration of her sister, setting up in business for herself on
an entirely different principle, and announcing no connection with
over-the-way, and if the quality of goods at that establishment don't
please you, you are respectfully invited to favour ME with a call! And
the crowning circumstance of the whole delightful catalogue was, that
both the fair creatures were so utterly unconscious of all this!
They had no idea of it. They no more thought or dreamed of it than Mr
Pecksniff did. Nature played them off against each other; THEY had no
hand in it, the two Miss Pecksniffs.
It has been remarked that Mr Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was.
Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr Pecksniff, especially
in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a
homely admirer, that he had a Fortunatus's purse of good sentiments in
his inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy tale,
except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips,
they were the very brightest paste, and shone prodigiously. He was a
most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book. Some
people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the
way to a place, and never goes there; but these were his enemies, the
shadows cast by his brightness; that was all. His very throat was moral.
You saw a good deal of it. You looked over a very low fence of white
cravat (whereof no man had ever beheld the tie for he fastened it
behind), and there it lay, a valley between two jutting heights of
collar, serene and whiskerless before you. It seemed to say, on the part
of Mr Pecksniff, 'There is no deception, ladies and gentlemen, all is
peace, a holy calm pervades me.' So did his hair, just grizzled with
an iron-grey which was all brushed off his forehead, and stood bolt
upright, or slightly drooped in kindred action with his heavy eyelids.
So did his person, which was sleek though free from corpulency. So did
his manner, which was soft and oily. In a word, even his plain black
suit, and state of widower and dangling double eye-glass, all tended to
the same purpose, and cried aloud, 'Behold the moral Pecksniff!'
The brazen plate upon the door (which being Mr Pecksniff's, could
not lie) bore this inscription, 'PECKSNIFF, ARCHITECT,' to which Mr
Pecksniff, on his cards of business, added, AND LAND SURVEYOR.' In one
sense, and only one, he may be said to have been a Land Surveyor on a
pretty large scale, as an extensive prospect lay stretched out before
the windows of his house. Of his architectural doings, nothing was
clearly known, except that he had never designed or built anything; but
it was generally understood that his knowledge of the science was almost
awful in its profundity.
Mr Pecksniff's professional engagements, indeed, were almost, if not
entirely, confined to the reception of pupils; for the collection of
rents, with which pursuit he occasionally varied and relieved his graver
toils, can hardly be said to be a strictly architectural employment. His
genius lay in ensnaring parents and guardians, and pocketing premiums. A
young gentleman's premium being paid, and the young gentleman come to
Mr Pecksniff's house, Mr Pecksniff borrowed his case of mathematical
instruments (if silver-mounted or otherwise valuable); entreated him,
from that moment, to consider himself one of the family; complimented
him highly on his parents or guardians, as the case might be; and
turned him loose in a spacious room on the two-pair front; where, in the
company of certain drawing-boards, parallel rulers, very stiff-legged
compasses, and two, or perhaps three, other young gentlemen, he improved
himself, for three or five years, according to his articles, in making
elevations of Salisbury Cathedral from every possible point of sight;
and in constructing in the air a vast quantity of Castles, Houses of
Parliament, and other Public Buildings. Perhaps in no place in the
world were so many gorgeous edifices of this class erected as under
Mr Pecksniff's auspices; and if but one-twentieth part of the churches
which were built in that front room, with one or other of the Miss
Pecksniffs at the altar in the act of marrying the architect, could only
be made available by the parliamentary commissioners, no more churches
would be wanted for at least five centuries.
'Even the worldly goods of which we have just disposed,' said Mr
Pecksniff, glancing round the table when he had finished, 'even cream,
sugar, tea, toast, ham--'
'And eggs,' suggested Charity in a low voice.
'And eggs,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'even they have their moral. See how they
come and go! Every pleasure is transitory. We can't even eat, long.
If we indulge in harmless fluids, we get the dropsy; if in exciting
liquids, we get drunk. What a soothing reflection is that!'
'Don't say WE get drunk, Pa,' urged the eldest Miss Pecksniff.
'When I say we, my dear,' returned her father, 'I mean mankind in
general; the human race, considered as a body, and not as individuals.
There is nothing personal in morality, my love. Even such a thing as
this,' said Mr Pecksniff, laying the fore-finger of his left hand upon
the brown paper patch on the top of his head, 'slight casual baldness
though it be, reminds us that we are but'--he was going to say 'worms,'
but recollecting that worms were not remarkable for heads of hair, he
substituted 'flesh and blood.'
'Which,' cried Mr Pecksniff after a pause, during which he seemed to
have been casting about for a new moral, and not quite successfully,
'which is also very soothing. Mercy, my dear, stir the fire and throw up
the cinders.'
The young lady obeyed, and having done so, resumed her stool, reposed
one arm upon her father's knee, and laid her blooming cheek upon
it. Miss Charity drew her chair nearer the fire, as one prepared for
conversation, and looked towards her father.
'Yes,' said Mr Pecksniff, after a short pause, during which he had been
silently smiling, and shaking his head at the fire--'I have again been
fortunate in the attainment of my object. A new inmate will very shortly
come among us.'
'A youth, papa?' asked Charity.
'Ye-es, a youth,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'He will avail himself of the
eligible opportunity which now offers, for uniting the advantages of the
best practical architectural education with the comforts of a home, and
the constant association with some who (however humble their sphere,
and limited their capacity) are not unmindful of their moral
responsibilities.'
'Oh Pa!' cried Mercy, holding up her finger archly. 'See advertisement!'
'Playful--playful warbler,' said Mr Pecksniff. It may be observed in
connection with his calling his daughter a 'warbler,' that she was not
at all vocal, but that Mr Pecksniff was in the frequent habit of using
any word that occurred to him as having a good sound, and rounding a
sentence well without much care for its meaning. And he did this so
boldly, and in such an imposing manner, that he would sometimes stagger
the wisest people with his eloquence, and make them gasp again.
His enemies asserted, by the way, that a strong trustfulness in sounds
and forms was the master-key to Mr Pecksniff's character.
'Is he handsome, Pa?' inquired the younger daughter.
'Silly Merry!' said the eldest: Merry being fond for Mercy. 'What is the
premium, Pa? tell us that.'
'Oh, good gracious, Cherry!' cried Miss Mercy, holding up her hands with
the most winning giggle in the world, 'what a mercenary girl you are! oh
you naughty, thoughtful, prudent thing!'
It was perfectly charming, and worthy of the Pastoral age, to see how
the two Miss Pecksniffs slapped each other after this, and then subsided
into an embrace expressive of their different dispositions.
'He is well looking,' said Mr Pecksniff, slowly and distinctly; 'well
looking enough. I do not positively expect any immediate premium with
him.'
Notwithstanding their different natures, both Charity and Mercy
concurred in opening their eyes uncommonly wide at this announcement,
and in looking for the moment as blank as if their thoughts had actually
had a direct bearing on the main chance.
'But what of that!' said Mr Pecksniff, still smiling at the fire. 'There
is disinterestedness in the world, I hope? We are not all arrayed in two
opposite ranks; the OFfensive and the DEfensive. Some few there are
who walk between; who help the needy as they go; and take no part with
either side. Umph!'
There was something in these morsels of philanthropy which reassured the
sisters. They exchanged glances, and brightened very much.
'Oh! let us not be for ever calculating, devising, and plotting for the
future,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling more and more, and looking at the
fire as a man might, who was cracking a joke with it: 'I am weary of
such arts. If our inclinations are but good and open-hearted, let us
gratify them boldly, though they bring upon us Loss instead of Profit.
Eh, Charity?'
Glancing towards his daughters for the first time since he had begun
these reflections, and seeing that they both smiled, Mr Pecksniff eyed
them for an instant so jocosely (though still with a kind of saintly
waggishness) that the younger one was moved to sit upon his knee
forthwith, put her fair arms round his neck, and kiss him twenty times.
During the whole of this affectionate display she laughed to a most
immoderate extent: in which hilarious indulgence even the prudent Cherry
joined.
'Tut, tut,' said Mr Pecksniff, pushing his latest-born away and running
his fingers through his hair, as he resumed his tranquil face. 'What
folly is this! Let us take heed how we laugh without reason lest we cry
with it. What is the domestic news since yesterday? John Westlock is
gone, I hope?'
'Indeed, no,' said Charity.
'And why not?' returned her father. 'His term expired yesterday. And his
box was packed, I know; for I saw it, in the morning, standing in the
hall.'
'He slept last night at the Dragon,' returned the young lady, 'and had
Mr Pinch to dine with him. They spent the evening together, and Mr Pinch
was not home till very late.'
'And when I saw him on the stairs this morning, Pa,' said Mercy with her
usual sprightliness, 'he looked, oh goodness, SUCH a monster! with his
face all manner of colours, and his eyes as dull as if they had been
boiled, and his head aching dreadfully, I am sure from the look of
it, and his clothes smelling, oh it's impossible to say how strong,
oh'--here the young lady shuddered--'of smoke and punch.'
'Now I think,' said Mr Pecksniff with his accustomed gentleness, though
still with the air of one who suffered under injury without complaint,
'I think Mr Pinch might have done better than choose for his companion
one who, at the close of a long intercourse, had endeavoured, as he
knew, to wound my feelings. I am not quite sure that this was delicate
in Mr Pinch. I am not quite sure that this was kind in Mr Pinch. I will
go further and say, I am not quite sure that this was even ordinarily
grateful in Mr Pinch.'
'But what can anyone expect from Mr Pinch!' cried Charity, with as
strong and scornful an emphasis on the name as if it would have given
her unspeakable pleasure to express it, in an acted charade, on the calf
of that gentleman's leg.
'Aye, aye,' returned her father, raising his hand mildly: 'it is
very well to say what can we expect from Mr Pinch, but Mr Pinch is
a fellow-creature, my dear; Mr Pinch is an item in the vast total of
humanity, my love; and we have a right, it is our duty, to expect in
Mr Pinch some development of those better qualities, the possession
of which in our own persons inspires our humble self-respect. No,'
continued Mr Pecksniff. 'No! Heaven forbid that I should say, nothing
can be expected from Mr Pinch; or that I should say, nothing can be
expected from any man alive (even the most degraded, which Mr Pinch is
not, no, really); but Mr Pinch has disappointed me; he has hurt me;
I think a little the worse of him on this account, but not if human
nature. Oh, no, no!'
'Hark!' said Miss Charity, holding up her finger, as a gentle rap was
heard at the street door. 'There is the creature! Now mark my words, he
has come back with John Westlock for his box, and is going to help
him to take it to the mail. Only mark my words, if that isn't his
intention!'
Even as she spoke, the box appeared to be in progress of conveyance from
the house, but after a brief murmuring of question and answer, it was
put down again, and somebody knocked at the parlour door.
'Come in!' cried Mr Pecksniff--not severely; only virtuously. 'Come in!'
An ungainly, awkward-looking man, extremely short-sighted, and
prematurely bald, availed himself of this permission; and seeing that
Mr Pecksniff sat with his back towards him, gazing at the fire,
stood hesitating, with the door in his hand. He was far from handsome
certainly; and was drest in a snuff-coloured suit, of an uncouth make at
the best, which, being shrunk with long wear, was twisted and tortured
into all kinds of odd shapes; but notwithstanding his attire, and his
clumsy figure, which a great stoop in his shoulders, and a ludicrous
habit he had of thrusting his head forward, by no means redeemed, one
would not have been disposed (unless Mr Pecksniff said so) to consider
him a bad fellow by any means. He was perhaps about thirty, but he might
have been almost any age between sixteen and sixty; being one of those
strange creatures who never decline into an ancient appearance, but look
their oldest when they are very young, and get it over at once.
Keeping his hand upon the lock of the door, he glanced from Mr Pecksniff
to Mercy, from Mercy to Charity, and from Charity to Mr Pecksniff again,
several times; but the young ladies being as intent upon the fire as
their father was, and neither of the three taking any notice of him, he
was fain to say, at last,
'Oh! I beg your pardon, Mr Pecksniff: I beg your pardon for intruding;
but--'
'No intrusion, Mr Pinch,' said that gentleman very sweetly, but without
looking round. 'Pray be seated, Mr Pinch. Have the goodness to shut the
door, Mr Pinch, if you please.'
'Certainly, sir,' said Pinch; not doing so, however, but holding it
rather wider open than before, and beckoning nervously to somebody
without: 'Mr Westlock, sir, hearing that you were come home--'
'Mr Pinch, Mr Pinch!' said Pecksniff, wheeling his chair about, and
looking at him with an aspect of the deepest melancholy, 'I did not
expect this from you. I have not deserved this from you!'
'No, but upon my word, sir--' urged Pinch.
'The less you say, Mr Pinch,' interposed the other, 'the better. I utter
no complaint. Make no defence.'
'No, but do have the goodness, sir,' cried Pinch, with great
earnestness, 'if you please. Mr Westlock, sir, going away for good and
all, wishes to leave none but friends behind him. Mr Westlock and you,
sir, had a little difference the other day; you have had many little
differences.'
'Little differences!' cried Charity.
'Little differences!' echoed Mercy.
'My loves!' said Mr Pecksniff, with the same serene upraising of his
hand; 'My dears!' After a solemn pause he meekly bowed to Mr Pinch, as
who should say, 'Proceed;' but Mr Pinch was so very much at a loss how
to resume, and looked so helplessly at the two Miss Pecksniffs, that
the conversation would most probably have terminated there, if a
good-looking youth, newly arrived at man's estate, had not stepped
forward from the doorway and taken up the thread of the discourse.
'Come, Mr Pecksniff,' he said, with a smile, 'don't let there be any
ill-blood between us, pray. I am sorry we have ever differed, and
extremely sorry I have ever given you offence. Bear me no ill-will at
parting, sir.'
'I bear,' answered Mr Pecksniff, mildly, 'no ill-will to any man on
earth.'
'I told you he didn't,' said Pinch, in an undertone; 'I knew he didn't!
He always says he don't.'
'Then you will shake hands, sir?' cried Westlock, advancing a step or
two, and bespeaking Mr Pinch's close attention by a glance.
'Umph!' said Mr Pecksniff, in his most winning tone.
'You will shake hands, sir.'
'No, John,' said Mr Pecksniff, with a calmness quite ethereal; 'no, I
will not shake hands, John. I have forgiven you. I had already forgiven
you, even before you ceased to reproach and taunt me. I have embraced
you in the spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands.'
'Pinch,' said the youth, turning towards him, with a hearty disgust of
his late master, 'what did I tell you?'
Poor Pinch looked down uneasily at Mr Pecksniff, whose eye was fixed
upon him as it had been from the first; and looking up at the ceiling
again, made no reply.
'As to your forgiveness, Mr Pecksniff,' said the youth, 'I'll not have
it upon such terms. I won't be forgiven.'
'Won't you, John?' retorted Mr Pecksniff, with a smile. 'You must. You
can't help it. Forgiveness is a high quality; an exalted virtue; far
above YOUR control or influence, John. I WILL forgive you. You cannot
move me to remember any wrong you have ever done me, John.'
'Wrong!' cried the other, with all the heat and impetuosity of his age.
'Here's a pretty fellow! Wrong! Wrong I have done him! He'll not even
remember the five hundred pounds he had with me under false pretences;
or the seventy pounds a year for board and lodging that would have been
dear at seventeen! Here's a martyr!'
'Money, John,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'is the root of all evil. I grieve
to see that it is already bearing evil fruit in you. But I will not
remember its existence. I will not even remember the conduct of that
misguided person'--and here, although he spoke like one at peace with
all the world, he used an emphasis that plainly said "I have my eye
upon the rascal now"--'that misguided person who has brought you here
to-night, seeking to disturb (it is a happiness to say, in vain) the
heart's repose and peace of one who would have shed his dearest blood to
serve him.'
The voice of Mr Pecksniff trembled as he spoke, and sobs were heard from
his daughters. Sounds floated on the air, moreover, as if two spirit
voices had exclaimed: one, 'Beast!' the other, 'Savage!'
'Forgiveness,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'entire and pure forgiveness is not
incompatible with a wounded heart; perchance when the heart is wounded,
it becomes a greater virtue. With my breast still wrung and grieved to
its inmost core by the ingratitude of that person, I am proud and glad
to say that I forgive him. Nay! I beg,' cried Mr Pecksniff, raising his
voice, as Pinch appeared about to speak, 'I beg that individual not to
offer a remark; he will truly oblige me by not uttering one word, just
now. I am not sure that I am equal to the trial. In a very short space
of time, I shall have sufficient fortitude, I trust to converse with
him as if these events had never happened. But not,' said Mr Pecksniff,
turning round again towards the fire, and waving his hand in the
direction of the door, 'not now.'
'Bah!' cried John Westlock, with the utmost disgust and disdain the
monosyllable is capable of expressing. 'Ladies, good evening. Come,
Pinch, it's not worth thinking of. I was right and you were wrong.
That's small matter; you'll be wiser another time.'
So saying, he clapped that dejected companion on the shoulder, turned
upon his heel, and walked out into the passage, whither poor Mr
Pinch, after lingering irresolutely in the parlour for a few seconds,
expressing in his countenance the deepest mental misery and gloom
followed him. Then they took up the box between them, and sallied out to
meet the mail.
That fleet conveyance passed, every night, the corner of a lane at some
distance; towards which point they bent their steps. For some minutes
they walked along in silence, until at length young Westlock burst into
a loud laugh, and at intervals into another, and another. Still there
was no response from his companion.
'I'll tell you what, Pinch!' he said abruptly, after another lengthened
silence--'You haven't half enough of the devil in you. Half enough! You
haven't any.'
'Well!' said Pinch with a sigh, 'I don't know, I'm sure. It's compliment
to say so. If I haven't, I suppose, I'm all the better for it.'
'All the better!' repeated his companion tartly: 'All the worse, you
mean to say.'
'And yet,' said Pinch, pursuing his own thoughts and not this last
remark on the part of his friend, 'I must have a good deal of what
you call the devil in me, too, or how could I make Pecksniff so
uncomfortable? I wouldn't have occasioned him so much distress--don't
laugh, please--for a mine of money; and Heaven knows I could find good
use for it too, John. How grieved he was!'
'HE grieved!' returned the other.
'Why didn't you observe that the tears were almost starting out of his
eyes!' cried Pinch. 'Bless my soul, John, is it nothing to see a man
moved to that extent and know one's self to be the cause! And did you
hear him say that he could have shed his blood for me?'
'Do you WANT any blood shed for you?' returned his friend, with
considerable irritation. 'Does he shed anything for you that you DO
want? Does he shed employment for you, instruction for you, pocket
money for you? Does he shed even legs of mutton for you in any decent
proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?'
'I am afraid,' said Pinch, sighing again, 'that I am a great eater; I
can't disguise from myself that I'm a great eater. Now, you know that,
John.'
'You a great eater!' retorted his companion, with no less indignation
than before. 'How do you know you are?'
There appeared to be forcible matter in this inquiry, for Mr Pinch only
repeated in an undertone that he had a strong misgiving on the subject,
and that he greatly feared he was.
'Besides, whether I am or no,' he added, 'that has little or nothing to
do with his thinking me ungrateful. John, there is scarcely a sin in the
world that is in my eyes such a crying one as ingratitude; and when
he taxes me with that, and believes me to be guilty of it, he makes me
miserable and wretched.'
'Do you think he don't know that?' returned the other scornfully.
'But come, Pinch, before I say anything more to you, just run over the
reasons you have for being grateful to him at all, will you? Change
hands first, for the box is heavy. That'll do. Now, go on.'
'In the first place,' said Pinch, 'he took me as his pupil for much less
than he asked.'
'Well,' rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of
generosity. 'What in the second place?'
'What in the second place?' cried Pinch, in a sort of desperation, 'why,
everything in the second place. My poor old grandmother died happy to
think that she had put me with such an excellent man. I have grown up
in his house, I am in his confidence, I am his assistant, he allows me a
salary; when his business improves, my prospects are to improve too.
All this, and a great deal more, is in the second place. And in the very
prologue and preface to the first place, John, you must consider this,
which nobody knows better than I: that I was born for much plainer and
poorer things, that I am not a good hand for his kind of business, and
have no talent for it, or indeed for anything else but odds and ends
that are of no use or service to anybody.'
He said this with so much earnestness, and in a tone so full of feeling,
that his companion instinctively changed his manner as he sat down on
the box (they had by this time reached the finger-post at the end of the
lane); motioned him to sit down beside him; and laid his hand upon his
shoulder.
'I believe you are one of the best fellows in the world,' he said, 'Tom
Pinch.'
'Not at all,' rejoined Tom. 'If you only knew Pecksniff as well as I do,
you might say it of him, indeed, and say it truly.'
'I'll say anything of him, you like,' returned the other, 'and not
another word to his disparagement.'
'It's for my sake, then; not his, I am afraid,' said Pinch, shaking his
head gravely.
'For whose you please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He's a
famous fellow! HE never scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor
grandmother's hard savings--she was a housekeeper, wasn't she, Tom?'
'Yes,' said Mr Pinch, nursing one of his large knees, and nodding his
head; 'a gentleman's housekeeper.'
'HE never scraped and clawed into his pouch all her hard savings;
dazzling her with prospects of your happiness and advancement, which he
knew (and no man better) never would be realised! HE never speculated
and traded on her pride in you, and her having educated you, and on her
desire that you at least should live to be a gentleman. Not he, Tom!'
'No,' said Tom, looking into his friend's face, as if he were a little
doubtful of his meaning. 'Of course not.'
'So I say,' returned the youth, 'of course he never did. HE didn't take
less than he had asked, because that less was all she had, and more than
he expected; not he, Tom! He doesn't keep you as his assistant
because you are of any use to him; because your wonderful faith in his
pretensions is of inestimable service in all his mean disputes; because
your honesty reflects honesty on him; because your wandering about this
little place all your spare hours, reading in ancient books and foreign
tongues, gets noised abroad, even as far as Salisbury, making of him,
Pecksniff the master, a man of learning and of vast importance. HE gets
no credit from you, Tom, not he.'
'Why, of course he don't,' said Pinch, gazing at his friend with a more
troubled aspect than before. 'Pecksniff get credit from me! Well!'
'Don't I say that it's ridiculous,' rejoined the other, 'even to think
of such a thing?'
'Why, it's madness,' said Tom.
'Madness!' returned young Westlock. 'Certainly it's madness. Who but
a madman would suppose he cares to hear it said on Sundays, that the
volunteer who plays the organ in the church, and practises on summer
evenings in the dark, is Mr Pecksniff's young man, eh, Tom? Who but a
madman would suppose it is the game of such a man as he, to have his
name in everybody's mouth, connected with the thousand useless odds and
ends you do (and which, of course, he taught you), eh, Tom? Who but a
madman would suppose you advertised him hereabouts, much cheaper and
much better than a chalker on the walls could, eh, Tom? As well might
one suppose that he doesn't on all occasions pour out his whole heart
and soul to you; that he doesn't make you a very liberal and indeed
rather an extravagant allowance; or, to be more wild and monstrous
still, if that be possible, as well might one suppose,' and here, at
every word, he struck him lightly on the breast, 'that Pecksniff traded
in your nature, and that your nature was to be timid and distrustful
of yourself, and trustful of all other men, but most of all, of him who
least deserves it. There would be madness, Tom!'
Mr Pinch had listened to all this with looks of bewilderment, which
seemed to be in part occasioned by the matter of his companion's speech,
and in part by his rapid and vehement manner. Now that he had come to a
close, he drew a very long breath; and gazing wistfully in his face as
if he were unable to settle in his own mind what expression it wore, and
were desirous to draw from it as good a clue to his real meaning as it
was possible to obtain in the dark, was about to answer, when the sound
of the mail guard's horn came cheerily upon their ears, putting
an immediate end to the conference; greatly as it seemed to the
satisfaction of the younger man, who jumped up briskly, and gave his
hand to his companion.
'Both hands, Tom. I shall write to you from London, mind!'
'Yes,' said Pinch. 'Yes. Do, please. Good-bye. Good-bye. I can hardly
believe you're going. It seems, now, but yesterday that you came.
Good-bye! my dear old fellow!'
John Westlock returned his parting words with no less heartiness of
manner, and sprung up to his seat upon the roof. Off went the mail at
a canter down the dark road; the lamps gleaming brightly, and the horn
awakening all the echoes, far and wide.
'Go your ways,' said Pinch, apostrophizing the coach; 'I can hardly
persuade myself but you're alive, and are some great monster who visits
this place at certain intervals, to bear my friends away into the world.
You're more exulting and rampant than usual tonight, I think; and you
may well crow over your prize; for he is a fine lad, an ingenuous lad,
and has but one fault that I know of; he don't mean it, but he is most
cruelly unjust to Pecksniff!'
CHAPTER THREE
IN WHICH CERTAIN OTHER PERSONS ARE INTRODUCED; ON THE SAME TERMS AS IN
THE LAST CHAPTER
Mention has been already made more than once, of a certain Dragon who
swung and creaked complainingly before the village alehouse door. A
faded, and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm of rain,
snow, sleet, and hail, had changed his colour from a gaudy blue to a
faint lack-lustre shade of grey. But there he hung; rearing, in a state
of monstrous imbecility, on his hind legs; waxing, with every month that
passed, so much more dim and shapeless, that as you gazed at him on
one side of the sign-board it seemed as if he must be gradually melting
through it, and coming out upon the other.
He was a courteous and considerate dragon, too; or had been in his
distincter days; for in the midst of his rampant feebleness, he kept
one of his forepaws near his nose, as though he would say, 'Don't
mind me--it's only my fun;' while he held out the other in polite and
hospitable entreaty. Indeed it must be conceded to the whole brood
of dragons of modern times, that they have made a great advance in
civilisation and refinement. They no longer demand a beautiful virgin
for breakfast every morning, with as much regularity as any tame single
gentleman expects his hot roll, but rest content with the society of
idle bachelors and roving married men; and they are now remarkable
rather for holding aloof from the softer sex and discouraging their
visits (especially on Saturday nights), than for rudely insisting on
their company without any reference to their inclinations, as they are
known to have done in days of yore.
Nor is this tribute to the reclaimed animals in question so wide a
digression into the realms of Natural History as it may, at first sight,
appear to be; for the present business of these pages in with the dragon
who had his retreat in Mr Pecksniff's neighbourhood, and that courteous
animal being already on the carpet, there is nothing in the way of its
immediate transaction.
For many years, then, he had swung and creaked, and flapped himself
about, before the two windows of the best bedroom of that house of
entertainment to which he lent his name; but never in all his swinging,
creaking, and flapping, had there been such a stir within its dingy
precincts, as on the evening next after that upon which the incidents,
detailed in the last chapter occurred; when there was such a hurrying up
and down stairs of feet, such a glancing of lights, such a whispering
of voices, such a smoking and sputtering of wood newly lighted in a
damp chimney, such an airing of linen, such a scorching smell of hot
warming-pans, such a domestic bustle and to-do, in short, as never
dragon, griffin, unicorn, or other animal of that species presided over,
since they first began to interest themselves in household affairs.
An old gentleman and a young lady, travelling, unattended, in a rusty
old chariot with post-horses; coming nobody knew whence and going nobody
knew whither; had turned out of the high road, and driven unexpectedly
to the Blue Dragon; and here was the old gentleman, who had taken this
step by reason of his sudden illness in the carriage, suffering the most
horrible cramps and spasms, yet protesting and vowing in the very midst
of his pain, that he wouldn't have a doctor sent for, and wouldn't take
any remedies but those which the young lady administered from a small
medicine-chest, and wouldn't, in a word, do anything but terrify the
landlady out of her five wits, and obstinately refuse compliance with
every suggestion that was made to him.
Of all the five hundred proposals for his relief which the good woman
poured out in less than half an hour, he would entertain but one. That
was that he should go to bed. And it was in the preparation of his bed
and the arrangement of his chamber, that all the stir was made in the
room behind the Dragon.
He was, beyond all question, very ill, and suffered exceedingly; not the
less, perhaps, because he was a strong and vigorous old man, with a will
of iron, and a voice of brass. But neither the apprehensions which
he plainly entertained, at times, for his life, nor the great pain he
underwent, influenced his resolution in the least degree. He would have
no person sent for. The worse he grew, the more rigid and inflexible he
became in his determination. If they sent for any person to attend him,
man, woman, or child, he would leave the house directly (so he told
them), though he quitted it on foot, and died upon the threshold of the
door.
Now, there being no medical practitioner actually resident in the
village, but a poor apothecary who was also a grocer and general dealer,
the landlady had, upon her own responsibility, sent for him, in the
very first burst and outset of the disaster. Of course it followed, as
a necessary result of his being wanted, that he was not at home. He had
gone some miles away, and was not expected home until late at night; so
the landlady, being by this time pretty well beside herself, dispatched
the same messenger in all haste for Mr Pecksniff, as a learned man
who could bear a deal of responsibility, and a moral man who could
administer a world of comfort to a troubled mind. That her guest had
need of some efficient services under the latter head was obvious enough
from the restless expressions, importing, however, rather a worldly than
a spiritual anxiety, to which he gave frequent utterance.
From this last-mentioned secret errand, the messenger returned with no
better news than from the first; Mr Pecksniff was not at home. However,
they got the patient into bed without him; and in the course of two
hours, he gradually became so far better that there were much longer
intervals than at first between his terms of suffering. By degrees, he
ceased to suffer at all; though his exhaustion was occasionally so great
that it suggested hardly less alarm than his actual endurance had done.
It was in one of his intervals of repose, when, looking round with
great caution, and reaching uneasily out of his nest of pillows, he
endeavoured, with a strange air of secrecy and distrust, to make use
of the writing materials which he had ordered to be placed on a table
beside him, that the young lady and the mistress of the Blue Dragon
found themselves sitting side by side before the fire in the sick
chamber.
The mistress of the Blue Dragon was in outward appearance just what a
landlady should be: broad, buxom, comfortable, and good looking, with a
face of clear red and white, which, by its jovial aspect, at once bore
testimony to her hearty participation in the good things of the larder
and cellar, and to their thriving and healthful influences. She was a
widow, but years ago had passed through her state of weeds, and burst
into flower again; and in full bloom she had continued ever since; and
in full bloom she was now; with roses on her ample skirts, and roses
on her bodice, roses in her cap, roses in her cheeks,--aye, and roses,
worth the gathering too, on her lips, for that matter. She had still a
bright black eye, and jet black hair; was comely, dimpled, plump, and
tight as a gooseberry; and though she was not exactly what the world
calls young, you may make an affidavit, on trust, before any mayor or
magistrate in Christendom, that there are a great many young ladies in
the world (blessings on them one and all!) whom you wouldn't like half
as well, or admire half as much, as the beaming hostess of the Blue
Dragon.
As this fair matron sat beside the fire, she glanced occasionally with
all the pride of ownership, about the room; which was a large apartment,
such as one may see in country places, with a low roof and a sunken
flooring, all downhill from the door, and a descent of two steps on
the inside so exquisitely unexpected, that strangers, despite the
most elaborate cautioning, usually dived in head first, as into a
plunging-bath. It was none of your frivolous and preposterously bright
bedrooms, where nobody can close an eye with any kind of propriety or
decent regard to the association of ideas; but it was a good, dull,
leaden, drowsy place, where every article of furniture reminded you
that you came there to sleep, and that you were expected to go to sleep.
There was no wakeful reflection of the fire there, as in your modern
chambers, which upon the darkest nights have a watchful consciousness of
French polish; the old Spanish mahogany winked at it now and then, as
a dozing cat or dog might, nothing more. The very size and shape, and
hopeless immovability of the bedstead, and wardrobe, and in a minor
degree of even the chairs and tables, provoked sleep; they were plainly
apoplectic and disposed to snore. There were no staring portraits
to remonstrate with you for being lazy; no round-eyed birds upon the
curtains, disgustingly wide awake, and insufferably prying. The
thick neutral hangings, and the dark blinds, and the heavy heap
of bed-clothes, were all designed to hold in sleep, and act as
nonconductors to the day and getting up. Even the old stuffed fox upon
the top of the wardrobe was devoid of any spark of vigilance, for his
glass eye had fallen out, and he slumbered as he stood.
The wandering attention of the mistress of the Blue Dragon roved to
these things but twice or thrice, and then for but an instant at a time.
It soon deserted them, and even the distant bed with its strange burden,
for the young creature immediately before her, who, with her downcast
eyes intently fixed upon the fire, sat wrapped in silent meditation.
She was very young; apparently no more than seventeen; timid and
shrinking in her manner, and yet with a greater share of self possession
and control over her emotions than usually belongs to a far more
advanced period of female life. This she had abundantly shown, but now,
in her tending of the sick gentleman. She was short in stature; and her
figure was slight, as became her years; but all the charms of youth and
maidenhood set it off, and clustered on her gentle brow. Her face was
very pale, in part no doubt from recent agitation. Her dark brown hair,
disordered from the same cause, had fallen negligently from its bonds,
and hung upon her neck; for which instance of its waywardness no male
observer would have had the heart to blame it.
Her attire was that of a lady, but extremely plain; and in her manner,
even when she sat as still as she did then, there was an indefinable
something which appeared to be in kindred with her scrupulously
unpretending dress. She had sat, at first looking anxiously towards the
bed; but seeing that the patient remained quiet, and was busy with his
writing, she had softly moved her chair into its present place; partly,
as it seemed, from an instinctive consciousness that he desired to avoid
observation; and partly that she might, unseen by him, give some vent to
the natural feelings she had hitherto suppressed.
Of all this, and much more, the rosy landlady of the Blue Dragon took
as accurate note and observation as only woman can take of woman. And at
length she said, in a voice too low, she knew, to reach the bed:
'You have seen the gentleman in this way before, miss? Is he used to
these attacks?'
'I have seen him very ill before, but not so ill as he has been
tonight.'
'What a Providence!' said the landlady of the Dragon, 'that you had the
prescriptions and the medicines with you, miss!'
'They are intended for such an emergency. We never travel without them.'
'Oh!' thought the hostess, 'then we are in the habit of travelling, and
of travelling together.'
She was so conscious of expressing this in her face, that meeting
the young lady's eyes immediately afterwards, and being a very honest
hostess, she was rather confused.
'The gentleman--your grandpapa'--she resumed, after a short pause,
'being so bent on having no assistance, must terrify you very much,
miss?'
'I have been very much alarmed to-night. He--he is not my grandfather.'
'Father, I should have said,' returned the hostess, sensible of having
made an awkward mistake.
'Nor my father' said the young lady. 'Nor,' she added, slightly smiling
with a quick perception of what the landlady was going to add, 'Nor my
uncle. We are not related.'
'Oh dear me!' returned the landlady, still more embarrassed than before;
'how could I be so very much mistaken; knowing, as anybody in their
proper senses might that when a gentleman is ill, he looks so much older
than he really is? That I should have called you "Miss," too, ma'am!'
But when she had proceeded thus far, she glanced involuntarily at the
third finger of the young lady's left hand, and faltered again; for
there was no ring upon it.
'When I told you we were not related,' said the other mildly, but not
without confusion on her own part, 'I meant not in any way. Not even by
marriage. Did you call me, Martin?'
'Call you?' cried the old man, looking quickly up, and hurriedly drawing
beneath the coverlet the paper on which he had been writing. 'No.'
She had moved a pace or two towards the bed, but stopped immediately,
and went no farther.
'No,' he repeated, with a petulant emphasis. 'Why do you ask me? If I
had called you, what need for such a question?'
'It was the creaking of the sign outside, sir, I dare say,' observed the
landlady; a suggestion by the way (as she felt a moment after she had
made it), not at all complimentary to the voice of the old gentleman.
'No matter what, ma'am,' he rejoined: 'it wasn't I. Why how you stand
there, Mary, as if I had the plague! But they're all afraid of me,' he
added, leaning helplessly backward on his pillow; 'even she! There is a
curse upon me. What else have I to look for?'
'Oh dear, no. Oh no, I'm sure,' said the good-tempered landlady, rising,
and going towards him. 'Be of better cheer, sir. These are only sick
fancies.'
'What are only sick fancies?' he retorted. 'What do you know about
fancies? Who told you about fancies? The old story! Fancies!'
'Only see again there, how you take one up!' said the mistress of the
Blue Dragon, with unimpaired good humour. 'Dear heart alive, there is
no harm in the word, sir, if it is an old one. Folks in good health have
their fancies, too, and strange ones, every day.'
Harmless as this speech appeared to be, it acted on the traveller's
distrust, like oil on fire. He raised his head up in the bed, and,
fixing on her two dark eyes whose brightness was exaggerated by the
paleness of his hollow cheeks, as they in turn, together with his
straggling locks of long grey hair, were rendered whiter by the tight
black velvet skullcap which he wore, he searched her face intently.
'Ah! you begin too soon,' he said, in so low a voice that he seemed to
be thinking it, rather than addressing her. 'But you lose no time. You
do your errand, and you earn your fee. Now, who may be your client?'
The landlady looked in great astonishment at her whom he called Mary,
and finding no rejoinder in the drooping face, looked back again at him.
At first she had recoiled involuntarily, supposing him disordered in
his mind; but the slow composure of his manner, and the settled purpose
announced in his strong features, and gathering, most of all, about his
puckered mouth, forbade the supposition.
'Come,' he said, 'tell me who is it? Being here, it is not very hard for
me to guess, you may suppose.'
'Martin,' interposed the young lady, laying her hand upon his arm;
'reflect how short a time we have been in this house, and that even your
name is unknown here.'
'Unless,' he said, 'you--' He was evidently tempted to express a
suspicion of her having broken his confidence in favour of the landlady,
but either remembering her tender nursing, or being moved in some sort
by her face, he checked himself, and changing his uneasy posture in the
bed, was silent.
'There!' said Mrs Lupin; for in that name the Blue Dragon was licensed
to furnish entertainment, both to man and beast. 'Now, you will be well
again, sir. You forgot, for the moment, that there were none but friends
here.'
'Oh!' cried the old man, moaning impatiently, as he tossed one restless
arm upon the coverlet; 'why do you talk to me of friends! Can you or
anybody teach me to know who are my friends, and who my enemies?'
'At least,' urged Mrs Lupin, gently, 'this young lady is your friend, I
am sure.'
'She has no temptation to be otherwise,' cried the old man, like one
whose hope and confidence were utterly exhausted. 'I suppose she is.
Heaven knows. There, let me try to sleep. Leave the candle where it is.'
As they retired from the bed, he drew forth the writing which had
occupied him so long, and holding it in the flame of the taper burnt
it to ashes. That done, he extinguished the light, and turning his face
away with a heavy sigh, drew the coverlet about his head, and lay quite
still.
This destruction of the paper, both as being strangely inconsistent with
the labour he had devoted to it, and as involving considerable danger of
fire to the Dragon, occasioned Mrs Lupin not a little consternation. But
the young lady evincing no surprise, curiosity, or alarm, whispered her,
with many thanks for her solicitude and company, that she would remain
there some time longer; and that she begged her not to share her watch,
as she was well used to being alone, and would pass the time in reading.
Mrs Lupin had her full share and dividend of that large capital of
curiosity which is inherited by her sex, and at another time it might
have been difficult so to impress this hint upon her as to induce her to
take it. But now, in sheer wonder and amazement at these mysteries, she
withdrew at once, and repairing straightway to her own little parlour
below stairs, sat down in her easy-chair with unnatural composure.
At this very crisis, a step was heard in the entry, and Mr Pecksniff,
looking sweetly over the half-door of the bar, and into the vista of
snug privacy beyond, murmured:
'Good evening, Mrs Lupin!'
'Oh dear me, sir!' she cried, advancing to receive him, 'I am so very
glad you have come.'
'And I am very glad I have come,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'if I can be of
service. I am very glad I have come. What is the matter, Mrs Lupin?'
'A gentleman taken ill upon the road, has been so very bad upstairs,
sir,' said the tearful hostess.
'A gentleman taken ill upon the road, has been so very bad upstairs, has
he?' repeated Mr Pecksniff. 'Well, well!'
Now there was nothing that one may call decidedly original in this
remark, nor can it be exactly said to have contained any wise precept
theretofore unknown to mankind, or to have opened any hidden source of
consolation; but Mr Pecksniff's manner was so bland, and he nodded his
head so soothingly, and showed in everything such an affable sense of
his own excellence, that anybody would have been, as Mrs Lupin was,
comforted by the mere voice and presence of such a man; and, though he
had merely said 'a verb must agree with its nominative case in number
and person, my good friend,' or 'eight times eight are sixty-four, my
worthy soul,' must have felt deeply grateful to him for his humanity and
wisdom.
'And how,' asked Mr Pecksniff, drawing off his gloves and warming his
hands before the fire, as benevolently as if they were somebody else's,
not his; 'and how is he now?'
'He is better, and quite tranquil,' answered Mrs Lupin.
'He is better, and quite tranquil,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Very well! Ve-ry
well!'
Here again, though the statement was Mrs Lupin's and not Mr Pecksniff's,
Mr Pecksniff made it his own and consoled her with it. It was not much
when Mrs Lupin said it, but it was a whole book when Mr Pecksniff said
it. 'I observe,' he seemed to say, 'and through me, morality in general
remarks, that he is better and quite tranquil.'
'There must be weighty matters on his mind, though,' said the hostess,
shaking her head, 'for he talks, sir, in the strangest way you ever
heard. He is far from easy in his thoughts, and wants some proper advice
from those whose goodness makes it worth his having.'
'Then,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'he is the sort of customer for me.' But
though he said this in the plainest language, he didn't speak a word. He
only shook his head; disparagingly of himself too.
'I am afraid, sir,' continued the landlady, first looking round to
assure herself that there was nobody within hearing, and then looking
down upon the floor. 'I am very much afraid, sir, that his conscience
is troubled by his not being related to--or--or even married to--a very
young lady--'
'Mrs Lupin!' said Mr Pecksniff, holding up his hand with something in
his manner as nearly approaching to severity as any expression of his,
mild being that he was, could ever do. 'Person! young person?'
'A very young person,' said Mrs Lupin, curtseying and blushing; '--I beg
your pardon, sir, but I have been so hurried to-night, that I don't know
what I say--who is with him now.'
'Who is with him now,' ruminated Mr Pecksniff, warming his back (as he
had warmed his hands) as if it were a widow's back, or an orphan's back,
or an enemy's back, or a back that any less excellent man would have
suffered to be cold. 'Oh dear me, dear me!'
'At the same time I am bound to say, and I do say with all my heart,'
observed the hostess, earnestly, 'that her looks and manner almost
disarm suspicion.'
'Your suspicion, Mrs Lupin,' said Mr Pecksniff gravely, 'is very
natural.'
Touching which remark, let it be written down to their confusion, that
the enemies of this worthy man unblushingly maintained that he always
said of what was very bad, that it was very natural; and that he
unconsciously betrayed his own nature in doing so.
'Your suspicion, Mrs Lupin,' he repeated, 'is very natural, and I have
no doubt correct. I will wait upon these travellers.'
With that he took off his great-coat, and having run his fingers through
his hair, thrust one hand gently in the bosom of his waist-coat and
meekly signed to her to lead the way.
'Shall I knock?' asked Mrs Lupin, when they reached the chamber door.
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'enter if you please.'
They went in on tiptoe; or rather the hostess took that precaution for
Mr Pecksniff always walked softly. The old gentleman was still asleep,
and his young companion still sat reading by the fire.
'I am afraid,' said Mr Pecksniff, pausing at the door, and giving
his head a melancholy roll, 'I am afraid that this looks artful. I am
afraid, Mrs Lupin, do you know, that this looks very artful!'
As he finished this whisper, he advanced before the hostess; and at the
same time the young lady, hearing footsteps, rose. Mr Pecksniff glanced
at the volume she held, and whispered Mrs Lupin again; if possible, with
increased despondency.
'Yes, ma'am,' he said, 'it is a good book. I was fearful of that
beforehand. I am apprehensive that this is a very deep thing indeed!'
'What gentleman is this?' inquired the object of his virtuous doubts.
'Hush! don't trouble yourself, ma'am,' said Mr Pecksniff, as the
landlady was about to answer. 'This young'--in spite of himself he
hesitated when "person" rose to his lips, and substituted another word:
'this young stranger, Mrs Lupin, will excuse me for replying briefly,
that I reside in this village; it may be in an influential manner,
however, undeserved; and that I have been summoned here by you. I am
here, as I am everywhere, I hope, in sympathy for the sick and sorry.'
With these impressive words, Mr Pecksniff passed over to the bedside,
where, after patting the counterpane once or twice in a very solemn
manner, as if by that means he gained a clear insight into the patient's
disorder, he took his seat in a large arm-chair, and in an attitude of
some thoughtfulness and much comfort, waited for his waking. Whatever
objection the young lady urged to Mrs Lupin went no further, for nothing
more was said to Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff said nothing more to
anybody else.
Full half an hour elapsed before the old man stirred, but at length he
turned himself in bed, and, though not yet awake, gave tokens that
his sleep was drawing to an end. By little and little he removed the
bed-clothes from about his head, and turned still more towards the side
where Mr Pecksniff sat. In course of time his eyes opened; and he
lay for a few moments as people newly roused sometimes will, gazing
indolently at his visitor, without any distinct consciousness of his
presence.
There was nothing remarkable in these proceedings, except the influence
they worked on Mr Pecksniff, which could hardly have been surpassed by
the most marvellous of natural phenomena. Gradually his hands became
tightly clasped upon the elbows of the chair, his eyes dilated with
surprise, his mouth opened, his hair stood more erect upon his forehead
than its custom was, until, at length, when the old man rose in bed,
and stared at him with scarcely less emotion than he showed himself, the
Pecksniff doubts were all resolved, and he exclaimed aloud:
'You ARE Martin Chuzzlewit!'
His consternation of surprise was so genuine, that the old man, with all
the disposition that he clearly entertained to believe it assumed, was
convinced of its reality.
'I am Martin Chuzzlewit,' he said, bitterly: 'and Martin Chuzzlewit
wishes you had been hanged, before you had come here to disturb him in
his sleep. Why, I dreamed of this fellow!' he said, lying down again,
and turning away his face, 'before I knew that he was near me!'
'My good cousin--' said Mr Pecksniff.
'There! His very first words!' cried the old man, shaking his grey head
to and fro upon the pillow, and throwing up his hands. 'In his very
first words he asserts his relationship! I knew he would; they all do
it! Near or distant, blood or water, it's all one. Ugh! What a calendar
of deceit, and lying, and false-witnessing, the sound of any word of
kindred opens before me!'
'Pray do not be hasty, Mr Chuzzlewit,' said Pecksniff, in a tone that
was at once in the sublimest degree compassionate and dispassionate;
for he had by this time recovered from his surprise, and was in full
possession of his virtuous self. 'You will regret being hasty, I know
you will.'
'You know!' said Martin, contemptuously.
'Yes,' retorted Mr Pecksniff. 'Aye, aye, Mr Chuzzlewit; and don't
imagine that I mean to court or flatter you; for nothing is further from
my intention. Neither, sir, need you entertain the least misgiving that
I shall repeat that obnoxious word which has given you so much offence
already. Why should I? What do I expect or want from you? There is
nothing in your possession that I know of, Mr Chuzzlewit, which is much
to be coveted for the happiness it brings you.'
'That's true enough,' muttered the old man.
'Apart from that consideration,' said Mr Pecksniff, watchful of the
effect he made, 'it must be plain to you (I am sure) by this time, that
if I had wished to insinuate myself into your good opinion, I should
have been, of all things, careful not to address you as a relative;
knowing your humour, and being quite certain beforehand that I could not
have a worse letter of recommendation.'
Martin made not any verbal answer; but he as clearly implied though only
by a motion of his legs beneath the bed-clothes, that there was reason
in this, and that he could not dispute it, as if he had said as much in
good set terms.
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, keeping his hand in his waistcoat as though
he were ready, on the shortest notice, to produce his heart for
Martin Chuzzlewit's inspection, 'I came here to offer my services to
a stranger. I make no offer of them to you, because I know you would
distrust me if I did. But lying on that bed, sir, I regard you as a
stranger, and I have just that amount of interest in you which I hope I
should feel in any stranger, circumstanced as you are. Beyond that, I am
quite as indifferent to you, Mr Chuzzlewit, as you are to me.'
Having said which, Mr Pecksniff threw himself back in the easy-chair;
so radiant with ingenuous honesty, that Mrs Lupin almost wondered not to
see a stained-glass Glory, such as the Saint wore in the church, shining
about his head.
A long pause succeeded. The old man, with increased restlessness,
changed his posture several times. Mrs Lupin and the young lady gazed
in silence at the counterpane. Mr Pecksniff toyed abstractedly with his
eye-glass, and kept his eyes shut, that he might ruminate the better.
'Eh?' he said at last, opening them suddenly, and looking towards the
bed. 'I beg your pardon. I thought you spoke. Mrs Lupin,' he continued,
slowly rising 'I am not aware that I can be of any service to you here.
The gentleman is better, and you are as good a nurse as he can have.
Eh?'
This last note of interrogation bore reference to another change
of posture on the old man's part, which brought his face towards Mr
Pecksniff for the first time since he had turned away from him.
'If you desire to speak to me before I go, sir,' continued that
gentleman, after another pause, 'you may command my leisure; but I
must stipulate, in justice to myself, that you do so as to a stranger,
strictly as to a stranger.'
Now if Mr Pecksniff knew, from anything Martin Chuzzlewit had expressed
in gestures, that he wanted to speak to him, he could only have found it
out on some such principle as prevails in melodramas, and in virtue of
which the elderly farmer with the comic son always knows what the dumb
girl means when she takes refuge in his garden, and relates her personal
memoirs in incomprehensible pantomime. But without stopping to make any
inquiry on this point, Martin Chuzzlewit signed to his young companion
to withdraw, which she immediately did, along with the landlady leaving
him and Mr Pecksniff alone together. For some time they looked at each
other in silence; or rather the old man looked at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr
Pecksniff again closing his eyes on all outward objects, took an inward
survey of his own breast. That it amply repaid him for his trouble,
and afforded a delicious and enchanting prospect, was clear from the
expression of his face.
'You wish me to speak to you as to a total stranger,' said the old man,
'do you?'
Mr Pecksniff replied, by a shrug of his shoulders and an apparent
turning round of his eyes in their sockets before he opened them, that
he was still reduced to the necessity of entertaining that desire.
'You shall be gratified,' said Martin. 'Sir, I am a rich man. Not so
rich as some suppose, perhaps, but yet wealthy. I am not a miser sir,
though even that charge is made against me, as I hear, and currently
believed. I have no pleasure in hoarding. I have no pleasure in the
possession of money, The devil that we call by that name can give me
nothing but unhappiness.'
It would be no description of Mr Pecksniff's gentleness of manner to
adopt the common parlance, and say that he looked at this moment as if
butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He rather looked as if any quantity
of butter might have been made out of him, by churning the milk of human
kindness, as it spouted upwards from his heart.
'For the same reason that I am not a hoarder of money,' said the old
man, 'I am not lavish of it. Some people find their gratification in
storing it up; and others theirs in parting with it; but I have no
gratification connected with the thing. Pain and bitterness are the only
goods it ever could procure for me. I hate it. It is a spectre walking
before me through the world, and making every social pleasure hideous.'
A thought arose in Pecksniff's mind, which must have instantly mounted
to his face, or Martin Chuzzlewit would not have resumed as quickly and
as sternly as he did:
'You would advise me for my peace of mind, to get rid of this source of
misery, and transfer it to some one who could bear it better. Even you,
perhaps, would rid me of a burden under which I suffer so grievously.
But, kind stranger,' said the old man, whose every feature darkened as
he spoke, 'good Christian stranger, that is a main part of my trouble.
In other hands, I have known money do good; in other hands I have known
it triumphed in, and boasted of with reason, as the master-key to all
the brazen gates that close upon the paths to worldly honour,
fortune, and enjoyment. To what man or woman; to what worthy, honest,
incorruptible creature; shall I confide such a talisman, either now
or when I die? Do you know any such person? YOUR virtues are of course
inestimable, but can you tell me of any other living creature who will
bear the test of contact with myself?'
'Of contact with yourself, sir?' echoed Mr Pecksniff.
'Aye,' returned the old man, 'the test of contact with me--with me. You
have heard of him whose misery (the gratification of his own foolish
wish) was, that he turned every thing he touched into gold. The curse
of my existence, and the realisation of my own mad desire is that by the
golden standard which I bear about me, I am doomed to try the metal of
all other men, and find it false and hollow.'
Mr Pecksniff shook his head, and said, 'You think so.'
'Oh yes,' cried the old man, 'I think so! and in your telling me "I
think so," I recognize the true unworldly ring of YOUR metal. I tell
you, man,' he added, with increasing bitterness, 'that I have gone, a
rich man, among people of all grades and kinds; relatives, friends, and
strangers; among people in whom, when I was poor, I had confidence, and
justly, for they never once deceived me then, or, to me, wronged each
other. But I have never found one nature, no, not one, in which, being
wealthy and alone, I was not forced to detect the latent corruption that
lay hid within it waiting for such as I to bring it forth. Treachery,
deceit, and low design; hatred of competitors, real or fancied, for my
favour; meanness, falsehood, baseness, and servility; or,' and here
he looked closely in his cousin's eyes, 'or an assumption of honest
independence, almost worse than all; these are the beauties which my
wealth has brought to light. Brother against brother, child against
parent, friends treading on the faces of friends, this is the social
company by whom my way has been attended. There are stories told--they
may be true or false--of rich men who, in the garb of poverty, have
found out virtue and rewarded it. They were dolts and idiots for their
pains. They should have made the search in their own characters. They
should have shown themselves fit objects to be robbed and preyed upon
and plotted against and adulated by any knaves, who, but for joy, would
have spat upon their coffins when they died their dupes; and then their
search would have ended as mine has done, and they would be what I am.'
Mr Pecksniff, not at all knowing what it might be best to say in the
momentary pause which ensued upon these remarks, made an elaborate
demonstration of intending to deliver something very oracular indeed;
trusting to the certainty of the old man interrupting him, before he
should utter a word. Nor was he mistaken, for Martin Chuzzlewit having
taken breath, went on to say:
'Hear me to an end; judge what profit you are like to gain from any
repetition of this visit; and leave me. I have so corrupted and changed
the nature of all those who have ever attended on me, by breeding
avaricious plots and hopes within them; I have engendered such domestic
strife and discord, by tarrying even with members of my own family; I
have been such a lighted torch in peaceful homes, kindling up all the
inflammable gases and vapours in their moral atmosphere, which, but for
me, might have proved harmless to the end, that I have, I may say, fled
from all who knew me, and taking refuge in secret places have lived, of
late, the life of one who is hunted. The young girl whom you just now
saw--what! your eye lightens when I talk of her! You hate her already,
do you?'
'Upon my word, sir!' said Mr Pecksniff, laying his hand upon his breast,
and dropping his eyelids.
'I forgot,' cried the old man, looking at him with a keenness which the
other seemed to feel, although he did not raise his eyes so as to see
it. 'I ask your pardon. I forgot you were a stranger. For the moment
you reminded me of one Pecksniff, a cousin of mine. As I was saying--the
young girl whom you just now saw, is an orphan child, whom, with one
steady purpose, I have bred and educated, or, if you prefer the word,
adopted. For a year or more she has been my constant companion, and she
is my only one. I have taken, as she knows, a solemn oath never to
leave her sixpence when I die, but while I live I make her an annual
allowance; not extravagant in its amount and yet not stinted. There is
a compact between us that no term of affectionate cajolery shall ever be
addressed by either to the other, but that she shall call me always by
my Christian name; I her, by hers. She is bound to me in life by ties
of interest, and losing by my death, and having no expectation
disappointed, will mourn it, perhaps; though for that I care little.
This is the only kind of friend I have or will have. Judge from such
premises what a profitable hour you have spent in coming here, and leave
me, to return no more.'
With these words, the old man fell slowly back upon his pillow. Mr
Pecksniff as slowly rose, and, with a prefatory hem, began as follows:
'Mr Chuzzlewit.'
'There. Go!' interposed the other. 'Enough of this. I am weary of you.'
'I am sorry for that, sir,' rejoined Mr Pecksniff, 'because I have a
duty to discharge, from which, depend upon it, I shall not shrink. No,
sir, I shall not shrink.'
It is a lamentable fact, that as Mr Pecksniff stood erect beside the
bed, in all the dignity of Goodness, and addressed him thus, the old man
cast an angry glance towards the candlestick, as if he were possessed
by a strong inclination to launch it at his cousin's head. But he
constrained himself, and pointing with his finger to the door, informed
him that his road lay there.
'Thank you,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'I am aware of that. I am going.
But before I go, I crave your leave to speak, and more than that, Mr
Chuzzlewit, I must and will--yes indeed, I repeat it, must and will--be
heard. I am not surprised, sir, at anything you have told me tonight.
It is natural, very natural, and the greater part of it was known to
me before. I will not say,' continued Mr Pecksniff, drawing out his
pocket-handkerchief, and winking with both eyes at once, as it were,
against his will, 'I will not say that you are mistaken in me. While
you are in your present mood I would not say so for the world. I almost
wish, indeed, that I had a different nature, that I might repress even
this slight confession of weakness; which I cannot disguise from you;
which I feel is humiliating; but which you will have the goodness to
excuse. We will say, if you please,' added Mr Pecksniff, with great
tenderness of manner, 'that it arises from a cold in the head, or is
attributable to snuff, or smelling-salts, or onions, or anything but the
real cause.'
Here he paused for an instant, and concealed his face behind his
pocket-handkerchief. Then, smiling faintly, and holding the bed
furniture with one hand, he resumed:
'But, Mr Chuzzlewit, while I am forgetful of myself, I owe it to myself,
and to my character--aye, sir, and I HAVE a character which is very dear
to me, and will be the best inheritance of my two daughters--to tell
you, on behalf of another, that your conduct is wrong, unnatural,
indefensible, monstrous. And I tell you, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff,
towering on tiptoe among the curtains, as if he were literally rising
above all worldly considerations, and were fain to hold on tight, to
keep himself from darting skyward like a rocket, 'I tell you without
fear or favour, that it will not do for you to be unmindful of your
grandson, young Martin, who has the strongest natural claim upon you.
It will not do, sir,' repeated Mr Pecksniff, shaking his head. 'You may
think it will do, but it won't. You must provide for that young man;
you shall provide for him; you WILL provide for him. I believe,' said Mr
Pecksniff, glancing at the pen-and-ink, 'that in secret you have already
done so. Bless you for doing so. Bless you for doing right, sir. Bless
you for hating me. And good night!'
So saying, Mr Pecksniff waved his right hand with much solemnity, and
once more inserting it in his waistcoat, departed. There was emotion in
his manner, but his step was firm. Subject to human weaknesses, he was
upheld by conscience.
Martin lay for some time, with an expression on his face of silent
wonder, not unmixed with rage; at length he muttered in a whisper:
'What does this mean? Can the false-hearted boy have chosen such a
tool as yonder fellow who has just gone out? Why not! He has conspired
against me, like the rest, and they are but birds of one feather. A new
plot; a new plot! Oh self, self, self! At every turn nothing but self!'
He fell to trifling, as he ceased to speak, with the ashes of the burnt
paper in the candlestick. He did so, at first, in pure abstraction, but
they presently became the subject of his thoughts.
'Another will made and destroyed,' he said, 'nothing determined on,
nothing done, and I might have died to-night! I plainly see to what foul
uses all this money will be put at last,' he cried, almost writhing in
the bed; 'after filling me with cares and miseries all my life, it will
perpetuate discord and bad passions when I am dead. So it always is.
What lawsuits grow out of the graves of rich men, every day; sowing
perjury, hatred, and lies among near kindred, where there should be
nothing but love! Heaven help us, we have much to answer for! Oh self,
self, self! Every man for himself, and no creature for me!'
Universal self! Was there nothing of its shadow in these reflections,
and in the history of Martin Chuzzlewit, on his own showing?
CHAPTER FOUR
FROM WHICH IT WILL APPEAR THAT IF UNION BE STRENGTH, AND FAMILY
AFFECTION BE PLEASANT TO CONTEMPLATE, THE CHUZZLEWITS WERE THE STRONGEST
AND MOST AGREEABLE FAMILY IN THE WORLD
That worthy man Mr Pecksniff having taken leave of his cousin in the
solemn terms recited in the last chapter, withdrew to his own home, and
remained there three whole days; not so much as going out for a walk
beyond the boundaries of his own garden, lest he should be hastily
summoned to the bedside of his penitent and remorseful relative,
whom, in his ample benevolence, he had made up his mind to forgive
unconditionally, and to love on any terms. But such was the obstinacy
and such the bitter nature of that stern old man, that no repentant
summons came; and the fourth day found Mr Pecksniff apparently much
farther from his Christian object than the first.
During the whole of this interval, he haunted the Dragon at all times
and seasons in the day and night, and, returning good for evil evinced
the deepest solicitude in the progress of the obdurate invalid, in so
much that Mrs Lupin was fairly melted by his disinterested anxiety (for
he often particularly required her to take notice that he would do the
same by any stranger or pauper in the like condition), and shed many
tears of admiration and delight.
Meantime, old Martin Chuzzlewit remained shut up in his own chamber, and
saw no person but his young companion, saving the hostess of the Blue
Dragon, who was, at certain times, admitted to his presence. So surely
as she came into the room, however, Martin feigned to fall asleep. It
was only when he and the young lady were alone, that he would utter a
word, even in answer to the simplest inquiry; though Mr Pecksniff
could make out, by hard listening at the door, that they two being left
together, he was talkative enough.
It happened on the fourth evening, that Mr Pecksniff walking, as usual,
into the bar of the Dragon and finding no Mrs Lupin there, went straight
upstairs; purposing, in the fervour of his affectionate zeal, to apply
his ear once more to the keyhole, and quiet his mind by assuring himself
that the hard-hearted patient was going on well. It happened that Mr
Pecksniff, coming softly upon the dark passage into which a spiral ray
of light usually darted through the same keyhole, was astonished to find
no such ray visible; and it happened that Mr Pecksniff, when he had felt
his way to the chamber-door, stooping hurriedly down to ascertain by
personal inspection whether the jealousy of the old man had caused this
keyhole to be stopped on the inside, brought his head into such violent
contact with another head that he could not help uttering in an audible
voice the monosyllable 'Oh!' which was, as it were, sharply unscrewed
and jerked out of him by very anguish. It happened then, and lastly,
that Mr Pecksniff found himself immediately collared by something which
smelt like several damp umbrellas, a barrel of beer, a cask of warm
brandy-and-water, and a small parlour-full of stale tobacco smoke,
mixed; and was straightway led downstairs into the bar from which he
had lately come, where he found himself standing opposite to, and in
the grasp of, a perfectly strange gentleman of still stranger appearance
who, with his disengaged hand, rubbed his own head very hard, and looked
at him, Pecksniff, with an evil countenance.
The gentleman was of that order of appearance which is currently termed
shabby-genteel, though in respect of his dress he can hardly be said to
have been in any extremities, as his fingers were a long way out of his
gloves, and the soles of his feet were at an inconvenient distance from
the upper leather of his boots. His nether garments were of a
bluish grey--violent in its colours once, but sobered now by age and
dinginess--and were so stretched and strained in a tough conflict
between his braces and his straps, that they appeared every moment in
danger of flying asunder at the knees. His coat, in colour blue and of
a military cut, was buttoned and frogged up to his chin. His cravat was,
in hue and pattern, like one of those mantles which hairdressers are
accustomed to wrap about their clients, during the progress of the
professional mysteries. His hat had arrived at such a pass that it would
have been hard to determine whether it was originally white or black.
But he wore a moustache--a shaggy moustache too; nothing in the meek and
merciful way, but quite in the fierce and scornful style; the regular
Satanic sort of thing--and he wore, besides, a vast quantity of
unbrushed hair. He was very dirty and very jaunty; very bold and very
mean; very swaggering and very slinking; very much like a man who might
have been something better, and unspeakably like a man who deserved to
be something worse.
'You were eaves-dropping at that door, you vagabond!' said this
gentleman.
Mr Pecksniff cast him off, as Saint George might have repudiated the
Dragon in that animal's last moments, and said:
'Where is Mrs Lupin, I wonder! can the good woman possibly be aware that
there is a person here who--'
'Stay!' said the gentleman. 'Wait a bit. She DOES know. What then?'
'What then, sir?' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'What then? Do you know, sir,
that I am the friend and relative of that sick gentleman? That I am his
protector, his guardian, his--'
'Not his niece's husband,' interposed the stranger, 'I'll be sworn; for
he was there before you.'
'What do you mean?' said Mr Pecksniff, with indignant surprise. 'What do
you tell me, sir?'
'Wait a bit!' cried the other, 'Perhaps you are a cousin--the cousin who
lives in this place?'
'I AM the cousin who lives in this place,' replied the man of worth.
'Your name is Pecksniff?' said the gentleman.
'It is.'
'I am proud to know you, and I ask your pardon,' said the gentleman,
touching his hat, and subsequently diving behind his cravat for a
shirt-collar, which however he did not succeed in bringing to the
surface. 'You behold in me, sir, one who has also an interest in that
gentleman upstairs. Wait a bit.'
As he said this, he touched the tip of his high nose, by way of
intimation that he would let Mr Pecksniff into a secret presently; and
pulling off his hat, began to search inside the crown among a mass of
crumpled documents and small pieces of what may be called the bark of
broken cigars; whence he presently selected the cover of an old letter,
begrimed with dirt and redolent of tobacco.
'Read that,' he cried, giving it to Mr Pecksniff.
'This is addressed to Chevy Slyme, Esquire,' said that gentleman.
'You know Chevy Slyme, Esquire, I believe?' returned the stranger.
Mr Pecksniff shrugged his shoulders as though he would say 'I know there
is such a person, and I am sorry for it.'
'Very good,' remarked the gentleman. 'That is my interest and business
here.' With that he made another dive for his shirt-collar and brought
up a string.
'Now, this is very distressing, my friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, shaking
his head and smiling composedly. 'It is very distressing to me, to be
compelled to say that you are not the person you claim to be. I know Mr
Slyme, my friend; this will not do; honesty is the best policy you had
better not; you had indeed.'
'Stop' cried the gentleman, stretching forth his right arm, which was
so tightly wedged into his threadbare sleeve that it looked like a cloth
sausage. 'Wait a bit!'
He paused to establish himself immediately in front of the fire with his
back towards it. Then gathering the skirts of his coat under his left
arm, and smoothing his moustache with his right thumb and forefinger, he
resumed:
'I understand your mistake, and I am not offended. Why? Because it's
complimentary. You suppose I would set myself up for Chevy Slyme.
Sir, if there is a man on earth whom a gentleman would feel proud and
honoured to be mistaken for, that man is my friend Slyme. For he is,
without an exception, the highest-minded, the most independent-spirited,
most original, spiritual, classical, talented, the most thoroughly
Shakspearian, if not Miltonic, and at the same time the most
disgustingly-unappreciated dog I know. But, sir, I have not the vanity
to attempt to pass for Slyme. Any other man in the wide world, I am
equal to; but Slyme is, I frankly confess, a great many cuts above me.
Therefore you are wrong.'
'I judged from this,' said Mr Pecksniff, holding out the cover of the
letter.
'No doubt you did,' returned the gentleman. 'But, Mr Pecksniff, the
whole thing resolves itself into an instance of the peculiarities
of genius. Every man of true genius has his peculiarity. Sir, the
peculiarity of my friend Slyme is, that he is always waiting round the
corner. He is perpetually round the corner, sir. He is round the corner
at this instant. Now,' said the gentleman, shaking his forefinger before
his nose, and planting his legs wider apart as he looked attentively in
Mr Pecksniff's face, 'that is a remarkably curious and interesting trait
in Mr Slyme's character; and whenever Slyme's life comes to be written,
that trait must be thoroughly worked out by his biographer or society
will not be satisfied. Observe me, society will not be satisfied!'
Mr Pecksniff coughed.
'Slyme's biographer, sir, whoever he may be,' resumed the gentleman,
'must apply to me; or, if I am gone to that what's-his-name from which
no thingumbob comes back, he must apply to my executors for leave to
search among my papers. I have taken a few notes in my poor way, of some
of that man's proceedings--my adopted brother, sir,--which would amaze
you. He made use of an expression, sir, only on the fifteenth of last
month when he couldn't meet a little bill and the other party wouldn't
renew, which would have done honour to Napoleon Bonaparte in addressing
the French army.'
'And pray,' asked Mr Pecksniff, obviously not quite at his ease, 'what
may be Mr Slyme's business here, if I may be permitted to inquire, who
am compelled by a regard for my own character to disavow all interest in
his proceedings?'
'In the first place,' returned the gentleman, 'you will permit me to
say, that I object to that remark, and that I strongly and indignantly
protest against it on behalf of my friend Slyme. In the next place, you
will give me leave to introduce myself. My name, sir, is Tigg. The name
of Montague Tigg will perhaps be familiar to you, in connection with the
most remarkable events of the Peninsular War?'
Mr Pecksniff gently shook his head.
'No matter,' said the gentleman. 'That man was my father, and I bear his
name. I am consequently proud--proud as Lucifer. Excuse me one moment.
I desire my friend Slyme to be present at the remainder of this
conference.'
With this announcement he hurried away to the outer door of the Blue
Dragon, and almost immediately returned with a companion shorter than
himself, who was wrapped in an old blue camlet cloak with a lining of
faded scarlet. His sharp features being much pinched and nipped by long
waiting in the cold, and his straggling red whiskers and frowzy hair
being more than usually dishevelled from the same cause, he certainly
looked rather unwholesome and uncomfortable than Shakspearian or
Miltonic.
'Now,' said Mr Tigg, clapping one hand on the shoulder of his
prepossessing friend, and calling Mr Pecksniff's attention to him with
the other, 'you two are related; and relations never did agree, and
never will; which is a wise dispensation and an inevitable thing, or
there would be none but family parties, and everybody in the world
would bore everybody else to death. If you were on good terms, I should
consider you a most confoundedly unnatural pair; but standing
towards each other as you do, I took upon you as a couple of devilish
deep-thoughted fellows, who may be reasoned with to any extent.'
Here Mr Chevy Slyme, whose great abilities seemed one and all to point
towards the sneaking quarter of the moral compass, nudged his friend
stealthily with his elbow, and whispered in his ear.
'Chiv,' said Mr Tigg aloud, in the high tone of one who was not to
be tampered with. 'I shall come to that presently. I act upon my own
responsibility, or not at all. To the extent of such a trifling loan
as a crownpiece to a man of your talents, I look upon Mr Pecksniff
as certain;' and seeing at this juncture that the expression of Mr
Pecksniff's face by no means betokened that he shared this certainty, Mr
Tigg laid his finger on his nose again for that gentleman's private
and especial behoof; calling upon him thereby to take notice that the
requisition of small loans was another instance of the peculiarities of
genius as developed in his friend Slyme; that he, Tigg, winked at the
same, because of the strong metaphysical interest which these weaknesses
possessed; and that in reference to his own personal advocacy of such
small advances, he merely consulted the humour of his friend, without
the least regard to his own advantage or necessities.
'Oh, Chiv, Chiv!' added Mr Tigg, surveying his adopted brother with an
air of profound contemplation after dismissing this piece of pantomime.
'You are, upon my life, a strange instance of the little frailties that
beset a mighty mind. If there had never been a telescope in the world,
I should have been quite certain from my observation of you, Chiv,
that there were spots on the sun! I wish I may die, if this isn't the
queerest state of existence that we find ourselves forced into without
knowing why or wherefore, Mr Pecksniff! Well, never mind! Moralise as we
will, the world goes on. As Hamlet says, Hercules may lay about him with
his club in every possible direction, but he can't prevent the cats from
making a most intolerable row on the roofs of the houses, or the
dogs from being shot in the hot weather if they run about the streets
unmuzzled. Life's a riddle; a most infernally hard riddle to guess, Mr
Pecksniff. My own opinions, that like that celebrated conundrum, "Why's
a man in jail like a man out of jail?" there's no answer to it. Upon my
soul and body, it's the queerest sort of thing altogether--but there's
no use in talking about it. Ha! Ha!'
With which consolatory deduction from the gloomy premises recited,
Mr Tigg roused himself by a great effort, and proceeded in his former
strain.
'Now I'll tell you what it is. I'm a most confoundedly soft-hearted
kind of fellow in my way, and I cannot stand by, and see you two blades
cutting each other's throats when there's nothing to be got by it. Mr
Pecksniff, you're the cousin of the testator upstairs and we're the
nephew--I say we, meaning Chiv. Perhaps in all essential points you are
more nearly related to him than we are. Very good. If so, so be it. But
you can't get at him, neither can we. I give you my brightest word of
honour, sir, that I've been looking through that keyhole with short
intervals of rest, ever since nine o'clock this morning, in expectation
of receiving an answer to one of the most moderate and gentlemanly
applications for a little temporary assistance--only fifteen pounds, and
MY security--that the mind of man can conceive. In the meantime, sir, he
is perpetually closeted with, and pouring his whole confidence into the
bosom of, a stranger. Now I say decisively with regard to this state of
circumstances, that it won't do; that it won't act; that it can't be;
and that it must not be suffered to continue.'
'Every man,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'has a right, an undoubted right, (which
I, for one, would not call in question for any earthly consideration; oh
no!) to regulate his own proceedings by his own likings and dislikings,
supposing they are not immoral and not irreligious. I may feel in my
own breast, that Mr Chuzzlewit does not regard--me, for instance; say
me--with exactly that amount of Christian love which should subsist
between us. I may feel grieved and hurt at the circumstance; still I
may not rush to the conclusion that Mr Chuzzlewit is wholly without a
justification in all his coldnesses. Heaven forbid! Besides; how, Mr
Tigg,' continued Pecksniff even more gravely and impressively than he
had spoken yet, 'how could Mr Chuzzlewit be prevented from having these
peculiar and most extraordinary confidences of which you speak; the
existence of which I must admit; and which I cannot but deplore--for
his sake? Consider, my good sir--' and here Mr Pecksniff eyed him
wistfully--'how very much at random you are talking.'
'Why, as to that,' rejoined Tigg, 'it certainly is a difficult
question.'
'Undoubtedly it is a difficult question,' Mr Pecksniff answered. As he
spoke he drew himself aloft, and seemed to grow more mindful, suddenly,
of the moral gulf between himself and the creature he addressed.
'Undoubtedly it is a very difficult question. And I am far from feeling
sure that it is a question any one is authorized to discuss. Good
evening to you.'
'You don't know that the Spottletoes are here, I suppose?' said Mr Tigg.
'What do you mean, sir? what Spottletoes?' asked Pecksniff, stopping
abruptly on his way to the door.
'Mr and Mrs Spottletoe,' said Chevy Slyme, Esquire, speaking aloud for
the first time, and speaking very sulkily; shambling with his legs the
while. 'Spottletoe married my father's brother's child, didn't he?
And Mrs Spottletoe is Chuzzlewit's own niece, isn't she? She was his
favourite once. You may well ask what Spottletoes.'
'Now upon my sacred word!' cried Mr Pecksniff, looking upwards. 'This is
dreadful. The rapacity of these people is absolutely frightful!'
'It's not only the Spottletoes either, Tigg,' said Slyme, looking at
that gentleman and speaking at Mr Pecksniff. 'Anthony Chuzzlewit and his
son have got wind of it, and have come down this afternoon. I saw 'em
not five minutes ago, when I was waiting round the corner.'
'Oh, Mammon, Mammon!' cried Mr Pecksniff, smiting his forehead.
'So there,' said Slyme, regardless of the interruption, 'are his brother
and another nephew for you, already.'
'This is the whole thing, sir,' said Mr Tigg; 'this is the point and
purpose at which I was gradually arriving when my friend Slyme here,
with six words, hit it full. Mr Pecksniff, now that your cousin (and
Chiv's uncle) has turned up, some steps must be taken to prevent his
disappearing again; and, if possible, to counteract the influence which
is exercised over him now, by this designing favourite. Everybody who
is interested feels it, sir. The whole family is pouring down to this
place. The time has come when individual jealousies and interests must
be forgotten for a time, sir, and union must be made against the
common enemy. When the common enemy is routed, you will all set up for
yourselves again; every lady and gentleman who has a part in the game,
will go in on their own account and bowl away, to the best of their
ability, at the testator's wicket, and nobody will be in a worse
position than before. Think of it. Don't commit yourself now. You'll
find us at the Half Moon and Seven Stars in this village, at any time,
and open to any reasonable proposition. Hem! Chiv, my dear fellow, go
out and see what sort of a night it is.'
Mr Slyme lost no time in disappearing, and it is to be presumed in going
round the corner. Mr Tigg, planting his legs as wide apart as he could
be reasonably expected by the most sanguine man to keep them, shook his
head at Mr Pecksniff and smiled.
'We must not be too hard,' he said, 'upon the little eccentricities of
our friend Slyme. You saw him whisper me?'
Mr Pecksniff had seen him.
'You heard my answer, I think?'
Mr Pecksniff had heard it.
'Five shillings, eh?' said Mr Tigg, thoughtfully. 'Ah! what an
extraordinary fellow! Very moderate too!'
Mr Pecksniff made no answer.
'Five shillings!' pursued Mr Tigg, musing; 'and to be punctually repaid
next week; that's the best of it. You heard that?'
Mr Pecksniff had not heard that.
'No! You surprise me!' cried Tigg. 'That's the cream of the thing sir. I
never knew that man fail to redeem a promise, in my life. You're not in
want of change, are you?'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'thank you. Not at all.'
'Just so,' returned Mr Tigg. 'If you had been, I'd have got it for you.'
With that he began to whistle; but a dozen seconds had not elapsed when
he stopped short, and looking earnestly at Mr Pecksniff, said:
'Perhaps you'd rather not lend Slyme five shillings?'
'I would much rather not,' Mr Pecksniff rejoined.
'Egad!' cried Tigg, gravely nodding his head as if some ground of
objection occurred to him at that moment for the first time, 'it's
very possible you may be right. Would you entertain the same sort of
objection to lending me five shillings now?'
'Yes, I couldn't do it, indeed,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'Not even half-a-crown, perhaps?' urged Mr Tigg.
'Not even half-a-crown.'
'Why, then we come,' said Mr Tigg, 'to the ridiculously small amount of
eighteen pence. Ha! ha!'
'And that,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'would be equally objectionable.'
On receipt of this assurance, Mr Tigg shook him heartily by both hands,
protesting with much earnestness, that he was one of the most consistent
and remarkable men he had ever met, and that he desired the honour
of his better acquaintance. He moreover observed that there were many
little characteristics about his friend Slyme, of which he could by no
means, as a man of strict honour, approve; but that he was prepared to
forgive him all these slight drawbacks, and much more, in consideration
of the great pleasure he himself had that day enjoyed in his social
intercourse with Mr Pecksniff, which had given him a far higher and more
enduring delight than the successful negotiation of any small loan on
the part of his friend could possibly have imparted. With which remarks
he would beg leave, he said, to wish Mr Pecksniff a very good evening.
And so he took himself off; as little abashed by his recent failure as
any gentleman would desire to be.
The meditations of Mr Pecksniff that evening at the bar of the Dragon,
and that night in his own house, were very serious and grave indeed; the
more especially as the intelligence he had received from Messrs Tigg and
Slyme touching the arrival of other members of the family, were fully
confirmed on more particular inquiry. For the Spottletoes had actually
gone straight to the Dragon, where they were at that moment housed and
mounting guard, and where their appearance had occasioned such a vast
sensation that Mrs Lupin, scenting their errand before they had been
under her roof half an hour, carried the news herself with all possible
secrecy straight to Mr Pecksniff's house; indeed it was her great
caution in doing so which occasioned her to miss that gentleman, who
entered at the front door of the Dragon just as she emerged from
the back one. Moreover, Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit and his son Jonas were
economically quartered at the Half Moon and Seven Stars, which was an
obscure ale-house; and by the very next coach there came posting to the
scene of action, so many other affectionate members of the family (who
quarrelled with each other, inside and out, all the way down, to the
utter distraction of the coachman), that in less than four-and-twenty
hours the scanty tavern accommodation was at a premium, and all the
private lodgings in the place, amounting to full four beds and sofa,
rose cent per cent in the market.
In a word, things came to that pass that nearly the whole family sat
down before the Blue Dragon, and formally invested it; and Martin
Chuzzlewit was in a state of siege. But he resisted bravely; refusing
to receive all letters, messages, and parcels; obstinately declining to
treat with anybody; and holding out no hope or promise of capitulation.
Meantime the family forces were perpetually encountering each other
in divers parts of the neighbourhood; and, as no one branch of the
Chuzzlewit tree had ever been known to agree with another within the
memory of man, there was such a skirmishing, and flouting, and snapping
off of heads, in the metaphorical sense of that expression; such a
bandying of words and calling of names; such an upturning of noses and
wrinkling of brows; such a formal interment of good feelings and violent
resurrection of ancient grievances; as had never been known in those
quiet parts since the earliest record of their civilized existence.
At length, in utter despair and hopelessness, some few of the
belligerents began to speak to each other in only moderate terms of
mutual aggravation; and nearly all addressed themselves with a show of
tolerable decency to Mr Pecksniff, in recognition of his high character
and influential position. Thus, by little and little, they made common
cause of Martin Chuzzlewit's obduracy, until it was agreed (if such a
word can be used in connection with the Chuzzlewits) that there should
be a general council and conference held at Mr Pecksniff's house upon
a certain day at noon; which all members of the family who had brought
themselves within reach of the summons, were forthwith bidden and
invited, solemnly, to attend.
If ever Mr Pecksniff wore an apostolic look, he wore it on this
memorable day. If ever his unruffled smile proclaimed the words, 'I am
a messenger of peace!' that was its mission now. If ever man combined
within himself all the mild qualities of the lamb with a considerable
touch of the dove, and not a dash of the crocodile, or the least
possible suggestion of the very mildest seasoning of the serpent, that
man was he. And, oh, the two Miss Pecksniffs! Oh, the serene expression
on the face of Charity, which seemed to say, 'I know that all my family
have injured me beyond the possibility of reparation, but I forgive
them, for it is my duty so to do!' And, oh, the gay simplicity of Mercy;
so charming, innocent, and infant-like, that if she had gone out
walking by herself, and it had been a little earlier in the season, the
robin-redbreasts might have covered her with leaves against her will,
believing her to be one of the sweet children in the wood, come out of
it, and issuing forth once more to look for blackberries in the young
freshness of her heart! What words can paint the Pecksniffs in that
trying hour? Oh, none; for words have naughty company among them, and
the Pecksniffs were all goodness.
But when the company arrived! That was the time. When Mr Pecksniff,
rising from his seat at the table's head, with a daughter on either
hand, received his guests in the best parlour and motioned them to
chairs, with eyes so overflowing and countenance so damp with gracious
perspiration, that he may be said to have been in a kind of moist
meekness! And the company; the jealous stony-hearted distrustful
company, who were all shut up in themselves, and had no faith in
anybody, and wouldn't believe anything, and would no more allow
themselves to be softened or lulled asleep by the Pecksniffs than if
they had been so many hedgehogs or porcupines!
First, there was Mr Spottletoe, who was so bald and had such big
whiskers, that he seemed to have stopped his hair, by the sudden
application of some powerful remedy, in the very act of falling off his
head, and to have fastened it irrevocably on his face. Then there was
Mrs Spottletoe, who being much too slim for her years, and of a poetical
constitution, was accustomed to inform her more intimate friends that
the said whiskers were 'the lodestar of her existence;' and who could
now, by reason of her strong affection for her uncle Chuzzlewit, and the
shock it gave her to be suspected of testamentary designs upon him, do
nothing but cry--except moan. Then there were Anthony Chuzzlewit, and
his son Jonas; the face of the old man so sharpened by the wariness and
cunning of his life, that it seemed to cut him a passage through the
crowded room, as he edged away behind the remotest chairs; while the son
had so well profited by the precept and example of the father, that he
looked a year or two the elder of the twain, as they stood winking their
red eyes, side by side, and whispering to each other softly. Then there
was the widow of a deceased brother of Mr Martin Chuzzlewit, who being
almost supernaturally disagreeable, and having a dreary face and a bony
figure and a masculine voice, was, in right of these qualities, what is
commonly called a strong-minded woman; and who, if she could, would have
established her claim to the title, and have shown herself, mentally
speaking, a perfect Samson, by shutting up her brother-in-law in a
private madhouse, until he proved his complete sanity by loving her very
much. Beside her sat her spinster daughters, three in number, and of
gentlemanly deportment, who had so mortified themselves with tight
stays, that their tempers were reduced to something less than their
waists, and sharp lacing was expressed in their very noses. Then there
was a young gentleman, grandnephew of Mr Martin Chuzzlewit, very dark
and very hairy, and apparently born for no particular purpose but to
save looking-glasses the trouble of reflecting more than just the first
idea and sketchy notion of a face, which had never been carried out.
Then there was a solitary female cousin who was remarkable for nothing
but being very deaf, and living by herself, and always having the
toothache. Then there was George Chuzzlewit, a gay bachelor cousin,
who claimed to be young but had been younger, and was inclined to
corpulency, and rather overfed himself; to that extent, indeed, that his
eyes were strained in their sockets, as if with constant surprise; and
he had such an obvious disposition to pimples, that the bright spots on
his cravat, the rich pattern on his waistcoat, and even his glittering
trinkets, seemed to have broken out upon him, and not to have come into
existence comfortably. Last of all there were present Mr Chevy Slyme and
his friend Tigg. And it is worthy of remark, that although each person
present disliked the other, mainly because he or she DID belong to the
family, they one and all concurred in hating Mr Tigg because he didn't.
Such was the pleasant little family circle now assembled in Mr
Pecksniff's best parlour, agreeably prepared to fall foul of Mr
Pecksniff or anybody else who might venture to say anything whatever
upon any subject.
'This,' said Mr Pecksniff, rising and looking round upon them with
folded hands, 'does me good. It does my daughters good. We thank you for
assembling here. We are grateful to you with our whole hearts. It is a
blessed distinction that you have conferred upon us, and believe me'--it
is impossible to conceive how he smiled here--'we shall not easily
forget it.'
'I am sorry to interrupt you, Pecksniff,' remarked Mr Spottletoe, with
his whiskers in a very portentous state; 'but you are assuming too much
to yourself, sir. Who do you imagine has it in contemplation to confer a
distinction upon YOU, sir?'
A general murmur echoed this inquiry, and applauded it.
'If you are about to pursue the course with which you have begun, sir,'
pursued Mr Spottletoe in a great heat, and giving a violent rap on
the table with his knuckles, 'the sooner you desist, and this assembly
separates, the better. I am no stranger, sir, to your preposterous
desire to be regarded as the head of this family, but I can tell YOU,
sir--'
Oh yes, indeed! HE tell. HE! What? He was the head, was he? From the
strong-minded woman downwards everybody fell, that instant, upon Mr
Spottletoe, who after vainly attempting to be heard in silence was
fain to sit down again, folding his arms and shaking his head most
wrathfully, and giving Mrs Spottletoe to understand in dumb show, that
that scoundrel Pecksniff might go on for the present, but he would cut
in presently, and annihilate him.
'I am not sorry,' said Mr Pecksniff in resumption of his address, 'I am
really not sorry that this little incident has happened. It is good to
feel that we are met here without disguise. It is good to know that we
have no reserve before each other, but are appearing freely in our own
characters.'
Here, the eldest daughter of the strong-minded woman rose a little way
from her seat, and trembling violently from head to foot, more as it
seemed with passion than timidity, expressed a general hope that some
people WOULD appear in their own characters, if it were only for such
a proceeding having the attraction of novelty to recommend it; and that
when they (meaning the some people before mentioned) talked about their
relations, they would be careful to observe who was present in company
at the time; otherwise it might come round to those relations' ears, in
a way they little expected; and as to red noses (she observed) she
had yet to learn that a red nose was any disgrace, inasmuch as people
neither made nor coloured their own noses, but had that feature provided
for them without being first consulted; though even upon that branch of
the subject she had great doubts whether certain noses were redder than
other noses, or indeed half as red as some. This remark being received
with a shrill titter by the two sisters of the speaker, Miss Charity
Pecksniff begged with much politeness to be informed whether any of
those very low observations were levelled at her; and receiving no more
explanatory answer than was conveyed in the adage 'Those the cap fits,
let them wear it,' immediately commenced a somewhat acrimonious and
personal retort, wherein she was much comforted and abetted by her
sister Mercy, who laughed at the same with great heartiness; indeed
far more naturally than life. And it being quite impossible that any
difference of opinion can take place among women without every woman who
is within hearing taking active part in it, the strong-minded lady and
her two daughters, and Mrs Spottletoe, and the deaf cousin (who was
not at all disqualified from joining in the dispute by reason of being
perfectly unacquainted with its merits), one and all plunged into the
quarrel directly.
The two Miss Pecksniffs being a pretty good match for the three Miss
Chuzzlewits, and all five young ladies having, in the figurative
language of the day, a great amount of steam to dispose of, the
altercation would no doubt have been a long one but for the high valour
and prowess of the strong-minded woman, who, in right of her reputation
for powers of sarcasm, did so belabour and pummel Mrs Spottletoe with
taunting words that the poor lady, before the engagement was two minutes
old, had no refuge but in tears. These she shed so plentifully, and so
much to the agitation and grief of Mr Spottletoe, that that gentleman,
after holding his clenched fist close to Mr Pecksniff's eyes, as if
it were some natural curiosity from the near inspection whereof he was
likely to derive high gratification and improvement, and after offering
(for no particular reason that anybody could discover) to kick Mr George
Chuzzlewit for, and in consideration of, the trifling sum of sixpence,
took his wife under his arm and indignantly withdrew. This diversion, by
distracting the attention of the combatants, put an end to the strife,
which, after breaking out afresh some twice or thrice in certain
inconsiderable spurts and dashes, died away in silence.
It was then that Mr Pecksniff once more rose from his chair. It was then
that the two Miss Pecksniffs composed themselves to look as if there
were no such beings--not to say present, but in the whole compass of the
world--as the three Miss Chuzzlewits; while the three Miss Chuzzlewits
became equally unconscious of the existence of the two Miss Pecksniffs.
'It is to be lamented,' said Mr Pecksniff, with a forgiving recollection
of Mr Spottletoe's fist, 'that our friend should have withdrawn himself
so very hastily, though we have cause for mutual congratulation even in
that, since we are assured that he is not distrustful of us in regard
to anything we may say or do while he is absent. Now, that is very
soothing, is it not?'
'Pecksniff,' said Anthony, who had been watching the whole party with
peculiar keenness from the first--'don't you be a hypocrite.'
'A what, my good sir?' demanded Mr Pecksniff.
'A hypocrite.'
'Charity, my dear,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'when I take my chamber
candlestick to-night, remind me to be more than usually particular in
praying for Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit; who has done me an injustice.'
This was said in a very bland voice, and aside, as being addressed to
his daughter's private ear. With a cheerfulness of conscience, prompting
almost a sprightly demeanour, he then resumed:
'All our thoughts centring in our very dear but unkind relative, and he
being as it were beyond our reach, we are met to-day, really as if we
were a funeral party, except--a blessed exception--that there is no body
in the house.'
The strong-minded lady was not at all sure that this was a blessed
exception. Quite the contrary.
'Well, my dear madam!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Be that as it may, here we
are; and being here, we are to consider whether it is possible by any
justifiable means--'
'Why, you know as well as I,' said the strong-minded lady, 'that any
means are justifiable in such a case, don't you?'
'Very good, my dear madam, very good; whether it is possible by ANY
means, we will say by ANY means, to open the eyes of our valued
relative to his present infatuation. Whether it is possible to make
him acquainted by any means with the real character and purpose of that
young female whose strange, whose very strange position, in reference
to himself'--here Mr Pecksniff sunk his voice to an impressive
whisper--'really casts a shadow of disgrace and shame upon this family;
and who, we know'--here he raised his voice again--'else why is she his
companion? harbours the very basest designs upon his weakness and his
property.'
In their strong feeling on this point, they, who agreed in nothing else,
all concurred as one mind. Good Heaven, that she should harbour designs
upon his property! The strong-minded lady was for poison, her three
daughters were for Bridewell and bread-and-water, the cousin with
the toothache advocated Botany Bay, the two Miss Pecksniffs suggested
flogging. Nobody but Mr Tigg, who, notwithstanding his extreme
shabbiness, was still understood to be in some sort a lady's man,
in right of his upper lip and his frogs, indicated a doubt of the
justifiable nature of these measures; and he only ogled the three Miss
Chuzzlewits with the least admixture of banter in his admiration, as
though he would observe, 'You are positively down upon her to too great
an extent, my sweet creatures, upon my soul you are!'
'Now,' said Mr Pecksniff, crossing his two forefingers in a manner which
was at once conciliatory and argumentative; 'I will not, upon the one
hand, go so far as to say that she deserves all the inflictions which
have been so very forcibly and hilariously suggested;' one of his
ornamental sentences; 'nor will I, upon the other, on any account
compromise my common understanding as a man, by making the assertion
that she does not. What I would observe is, that I think some practical
means might be devised of inducing our respected, shall I say our
revered--?'
'No!' interposed the strong-minded woman in a loud voice.
'Then I will not,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'You are quite right, my
dear madam, and I appreciate and thank you for your discriminating
objection--our respected relative, to dispose himself to listen to the
promptings of nature, and not to the--'
'Go on, Pa!' cried Mercy.
'Why, the truth is, my dear,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling upon his
assembled kindred, 'that I am at a loss for a word. The name of those
fabulous animals (pagan, I regret to say) who used to sing in the water,
has quite escaped me.'
Mr George Chuzzlewit suggested 'swans.'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Not swans. Very like swans, too. Thank you.'
The nephew with the outline of a countenance, speaking for the first and
last time on that occasion, propounded 'Oysters.'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, with his own peculiar urbanity, 'nor oysters.
But by no means unlike oysters; a very excellent idea; thank you, my
dear sir, very much. Wait! Sirens. Dear me! sirens, of course. I think,
I say, that means might be devised of disposing our respected relative
to listen to the promptings of nature, and not to the siren-like
delusions of art. Now we must not lose sight of the fact that our
esteemed friend has a grandson, to whom he was, until lately, very much
attached, and whom I could have wished to see here to-day, for I have a
real and deep regard for him. A fine young man, a very fine young man!
I would submit to you, whether we might not remove Mr Chuzzlewit's
distrust of us, and vindicate our own disinterestedness by--'
'If Mr George Chuzzlewit has anything to say to ME,' interposed the
strong-minded woman, sternly, 'I beg him to speak out like a man; and
not to look at me and my daughters as if he could eat us.'
'As to looking, I have heard it said, Mrs Ned,' returned Mr George,
angrily, 'that a cat is free to contemplate a monarch; and therefore
I hope I have some right, having been born a member of this family, to
look at a person who only came into it by marriage. As to eating, I
beg to say, whatever bitterness your jealousies and disappointed
expectations may suggest to you, that I am not a cannibal, ma'am.'
'I don't know that!' cried the strong-minded woman.
'At all events, if I was a cannibal,' said Mr George Chuzzlewit, greatly
stimulated by this retort, 'I think it would occur to me that a lady
who had outlived three husbands, and suffered so very little from their
loss, must be most uncommonly tough.'
The strong-minded woman immediately rose.
'And I will further add,' said Mr George, nodding his head violently at
every second syllable; 'naming no names, and therefore hurting nobody
but those whose consciences tell them they are alluded to, that I think
it would be much more decent and becoming, if those who hooked and
crooked themselves into this family by getting on the blind side of some
of its members before marriage, and manslaughtering them afterwards by
crowing over them to that strong pitch that they were glad to die, would
refrain from acting the part of vultures in regard to other members of
this family who are living. I think it would be full as well, if not
better, if those individuals would keep at home, contenting themselves
with what they have got (luckily for them) already; instead of hovering
about, and thrusting their fingers into, a family pie, which they
flavour much more than enough, I can tell them, when they are fifty
miles away.'
'I might have been prepared for this!' cried the strong-minded woman,
looking about her with a disdainful smile as she moved towards the door,
followed by her three daughters. 'Indeed I was fully prepared for it
from the first. What else could I expect in such an atmosphere as this!'
'Don't direct your halfpay-officers' gaze at me, ma'am, if you please,'
interposed Miss Charity; 'for I won't bear it.'
This was a smart stab at a pension enjoyed by the strong-minded woman,
during her second widowhood and before her last coverture. It told
immensely.
'I passed from the memory of a grateful country, you very miserable
minx,' said Mrs Ned, 'when I entered this family; and I feel now, though
I did not feel then, that it served me right, and that I lost my claim
upon the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland when I so degraded
myself. Now, my dears, if you're quite ready, and have sufficiently
improved yourselves by taking to heart the genteel example of these two
young ladies, I think we'll go. Mr Pecksniff, we are very much obliged
to you, really. We came to be entertained, and you have far surpassed
our utmost expectations, in the amusement you have provided for us.
Thank you. Good-bye!'
With such departing words, did this strong-minded female paralyse the
Pecksniffian energies; and so she swept out of the room, and out of
the house, attended by her daughters, who, as with one accord, elevated
their three noses in the air, and joined in a contemptuous titter.
As they passed the parlour window on the outside, they were seen to
counterfeit a perfect transport of delight among themselves; and
with this final blow and great discouragement for those within, they
vanished.
Before Mr Pecksniff or any of his remaining visitors could offer a
remark, another figure passed this window, coming, at a great rate in
the opposite direction; and immediately afterwards, Mr Spottletoe burst
into the chamber. Compared with his present state of heat, he had gone
out a man of snow or ice. His head distilled such oil upon his whiskers,
that they were rich and clogged with unctuous drops; his face was
violently inflamed, his limbs trembled; and he gasped and strove for
breath.
'My good sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff.
'Oh yes!' returned the other; 'oh yes, certainly! Oh to be sure! Oh, of
course! You hear him? You hear him? all of you!'
'What's the matter?' cried several voices.
'Oh nothing!' cried Spottletoe, still gasping. 'Nothing at all! It's of
no consequence! Ask him! HE'll tell you!'
'I do not understand our friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, looking about him
in utter amazement. 'I assure you that he is quite unintelligible to
me.'
'Unintelligible, sir!' cried the other. 'Unintelligible! Do you mean
to say, sir, that you don't know what has happened! That you haven't
decoyed us here, and laid a plot and a plan against us! Will you venture
to say that you didn't know Mr Chuzzlewit was going, sir, and that you
don't know he's gone, sir?'
'Gone!' was the general cry.
'Gone,' echoed Mr Spottletoe. 'Gone while we were sitting here. Gone.
Nobody knows where he's gone. Oh, of course not! Nobody knew he was
going. Oh, of course not! The landlady thought up to the very last
moment that they were merely going for a ride; she had no other
suspicion. Oh, of course not! She's not this fellow's creature. Oh, of
course not!'
Adding to these exclamations a kind of ironical howl, and gazing upon
the company for one brief instant afterwards, in a sudden silence, the
irritated gentleman started off again at the same tremendous pace, and
was seen no more.
It was in vain for Mr Pecksniff to assure them that this new and
opportune evasion of the family was at least as great a shock
and surprise to him as to anybody else. Of all the bullyings and
denunciations that were ever heaped on one unlucky head, none can
ever have exceeded in energy and heartiness those with which he was
complimented by each of his remaining relatives, singly, upon bidding
him farewell.
The moral position taken by Mr Tigg was something quite tremendous; and
the deaf cousin, who had the complicated aggravation of seeing all the
proceedings and hearing nothing but the catastrophe, actually scraped
her shoes upon the scraper, and afterwards distributed impressions of
them all over the top step, in token that she shook the dust from her
feet before quitting that dissembling and perfidious mansion.
Mr Pecksniff had, in short, but one comfort, and that was the knowledge
that all these his relations and friends had hated him to the very
utmost extent before; and that he, for his part, had not distributed
among them any more love than, with his ample capital in that respect,
he could comfortably afford to part with. This view of his affairs
yielded him great consolation; and the fact deserves to be noted, as
showing with what ease a good man may be consoled under circumstances of
failure and disappointment.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONTAINING A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE INSTALLATION OF MR PECKSNIFF'S NEW
PUPIL INTO THE BOSOM OF MR PECKSNIFF'S FAMILY. WITH ALL THE FESTIVITIES
HELD ON THAT OCCASION, AND THE GREAT ENJOYMENT OF MR PINCH
The best of architects and land surveyors kept a horse, in whom the
enemies already mentioned more than once in these pages pretended to
detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. Not in his outward
person, for he was a raw-boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter
allowance of corn than Mr Pecksniff; but in his moral character,
wherein, said they, he was full of promise, but of no performance.
He was always in a manner, going to go, and never going. When at his
slowest rate of travelling he would sometimes lift up his legs so high,
and display such mighty action, that it was difficult to believe he was
doing less than fourteen miles an hour; and he was for ever so
perfectly satisfied with his own speed, and so little disconcerted by
opportunities of comparing himself with the fastest trotters, that the
illusion was the more difficult of resistance. He was a kind of animal
who infused into the breasts of strangers a lively sense of hope, and
possessed all those who knew him better with a grim despair. In what
respect, having these points of character, he might be fairly likened
to his master, that good man's slanderers only can explain. But it is a
melancholy truth, and a deplorable instance of the uncharitableness of
the world, that they made the comparison.
In this horse, and the hooded vehicle, whatever its proper name might
be, to which he was usually harnessed--it was more like a gig with a
tumour than anything else--all Mr Pinch's thoughts and wishes centred,
one bright frosty morning; for with this gallant equipage he was about
to drive to Salisbury alone, there to meet with the new pupil, and
thence to bring him home in triumph.
Blessings on thy simple heart, Tom Pinch, how proudly dost thou button
up that scanty coat, called by a sad misnomer, for these many years,
a 'great' one; and how thoroughly, as with thy cheerful voice thou
pleasantly adjurest Sam the hostler 'not to let him go yet,' dost thou
believe that quadruped desires to go, and would go if he might! Who
could repress a smile--of love for thee, Tom Pinch, and not in jest at
thy expense, for thou art poor enough already, Heaven knows--to think
that such a holiday as lies before thee should awaken that quick flow
and hurry of the spirits, in which thou settest down again, almost
untasted, on the kitchen window-sill, that great white mug (put by, by
thy own hands, last night, that breakfast might not hold thee late), and
layest yonder crust upon the seat beside thee, to be eaten on the road,
when thou art calmer in thy high rejoicing! Who, as thou drivest off, a
happy, man, and noddest with a grateful lovingness to Pecksniff in his
nightcap at his chamber-window, would not cry, 'Heaven speed thee, Tom,
and send that thou wert going off for ever to some quiet home where thou
mightst live at peace, and sorrow should not touch thee!'
What better time for driving, riding, walking, moving through the air by
any means, than a fresh, frosty morning, when hope runs cheerily through
the veins with the brisk blood, and tingles in the frame from head to
foot! This was the glad commencement of a bracing day in early winter,
such as may put the languid summer season (speaking of it when it can't
be had) to the blush, and shame the spring for being sometimes cold by
halves. The sheep-bells rang as clearly in the vigorous air, as if they
felt its wholesome influence like living creatures; the trees, in lieu
of leaves or blossoms, shed upon the ground a frosty rime that sparkled
as it fell, and might have been the dust of diamonds. So it was to Tom.
From cottage chimneys, smoke went streaming up high, high, as if the
earth had lost its grossness, being so fair, and must not be oppressed
by heavy vapour. The crust of ice on the else rippling brook was so
transparent, and so thin in texture, that the lively water might of its
own free will have stopped--in Tom's glad mind it had--to look upon the
lovely morning. And lest the sun should break this charm too eagerly,
there moved between him and the ground, a mist like that which waits
upon the moon on summer nights--the very same to Tom--and wooed him to
dissolve it gently.
Tom Pinch went on; not fast, but with a sense of rapid motion, which did
just as well; and as he went, all kinds of things occurred to keep him
happy. Thus when he came within sight of the turnpike, and was--oh a
long way off!--he saw the tollman's wife, who had that moment checked a
waggon, run back into the little house again like mad, to say (she knew)
that Mr Pinch was coming up. And she was right, for when he drew within
hail of the gate, forth rushed the tollman's children, shrieking in tiny
chorus, 'Mr Pinch!' to Tom's intense delight. The very tollman, though
an ugly chap in general, and one whom folks were rather shy of handling,
came out himself to take the toll, and give him rough good morning; and
that with all this, and a glimpse of the family breakfast on a little
round table before the fire, the crust Tom Pinch had brought away with
him acquired as rich a flavour as though it had been cut from a fairy
loaf.
But there was more than this. It was not only the married people and the
children who gave Tom Pinch a welcome as he passed. No, no. Sparkling
eyes and snowy breasts came hurriedly to many an upper casement as he
clattered by, and gave him back his greeting: not stinted either, but
sevenfold, good measure. They were all merry. They all laughed. And some
of the wickedest among them even kissed their hands as Tom looked back.
For who minded poor Mr Pinch? There was no harm in HIM.
And now the morning grew so fair, and all things were so wide awake and
gay, that the sun seeming to say--Tom had no doubt he said--'I can't
stand it any longer; I must have a look,' streamed out in radiant
majesty. The mist, too shy and gentle for such lusty company, fled off,
quite scared, before it; and as it swept away, the hills and mounds and
distant pasture lands, teeming with placid sheep and noisy crows, came
out as bright as though they were unrolled bran new for the occasion. In
compliment to which discovery, the brook stood still no longer, but ran
briskly off to bear the tidings to the water-mill, three miles away.
Mr Pinch was jogging along, full of pleasant thoughts and cheerful
influences, when he saw, upon the path before him, going in the same
direction with himself, a traveller on foot, who walked with a light
quick step, and sang as he went--for certain in a very loud voice, but
not unmusically. He was a young fellow, of some five or six-and-twenty
perhaps, and was dressed in such a free and fly-away fashion, that the
long ends of his loose red neckcloth were streaming out behind him
quite as often as before; and the bunch of bright winter berries in the
buttonhole of his velveteen coat was as visible to Mr Pinch's rearward
observation, as if he had worn that garment wrong side foremost. He
continued to sing with so much energy, that he did not hear the sound
of wheels until it was close behind him; when he turned a whimsical
face and a very merry pair of blue eyes on Mr Pinch, and checked himself
directly.
'Why, Mark?' said Tom Pinch, stopping. 'Who'd have thought of seeing you
here? Well! this is surprising!'
Mark touched his hat, and said, with a very sudden decrease of vivacity,
that he was going to Salisbury.
'And how spruce you are, too!' said Mr Pinch, surveying him with great
pleasure. 'Really, I didn't think you were half such a tight-made
fellow, Mark!'
'Thankee, Mr Pinch. Pretty well for that, I believe. It's not my fault,
you know. With regard to being spruce, sir, that's where it is, you
see.' And here he looked particularly gloomy.
'Where what is?' Mr Pinch demanded.
'Where the aggravation of it is. Any man may be in good spirits and good
temper when he's well dressed. There an't much credit in that. If I was
very ragged and very jolly, then I should begin to feel I had gained a
point, Mr Pinch.'
'So you were singing just now, to bear up, as it were, against being
well dressed, eh, Mark?' said Pinch.
'Your conversation's always equal to print, sir,' rejoined Mark, with a
broad grin. 'That was it.'
'Well!' cried Pinch, 'you are the strangest young man, Mark, I ever knew
in my life. I always thought so; but now I am quite certain of it. I am
going to Salisbury, too. Will you get in? I shall be very glad of your
company.'
The young fellow made his acknowledgments and accepted the offer;
stepping into the carriage directly, and seating himself on the very
edge of the seat with his body half out of it, to express his being
there on sufferance, and by the politeness of Mr Pinch. As they went
along, the conversation proceeded after this manner.
'I more than half believed, just now, seeing you so very smart,' said
Pinch, 'that you must be going to be married, Mark.'
'Well, sir, I've thought of that, too,' he replied. 'There might be some
credit in being jolly with a wife, 'specially if the children had the
measles and that, and was very fractious indeed. But I'm a'most afraid
to try it. I don't see my way clear.'
'You're not very fond of anybody, perhaps?' said Pinch.
'Not particular, sir, I think.'
'But the way would be, you know, Mark, according to your views of
things,' said Mr Pinch, 'to marry somebody you didn't like, and who was
very disagreeable.'
'So it would, sir; but that might be carrying out a principle a little
too far, mightn't it?'
'Perhaps it might,' said Mr Pinch. At which they both laughed gayly.
'Lord bless you, sir,' said Mark, 'you don't half know me, though. I
don't believe there ever was a man as could come out so strong under
circumstances that would make other men miserable, as I could, if I
could only get a chance. But I can't get a chance. It's my opinion
that nobody never will know half of what's in me, unless something very
unexpected turns up. And I don't see any prospect of that. I'm a-going
to leave the Dragon, sir.'
'Going to leave the Dragon!' cried Mr Pinch, looking at him with great
astonishment. 'Why, Mark, you take my breath away!'
'Yes, sir,' he rejoined, looking straight before him and a long way off,
as men do sometimes when they cogitate profoundly. 'What's the use of my
stopping at the Dragon? It an't at all the sort of place for ME. When
I left London (I'm a Kentish man by birth, though), and took that
situation here, I quite made up my mind that it was the dullest little
out-of-the-way corner in England, and that there would be some credit in
being jolly under such circumstances. But, Lord, there's no dullness at
the Dragon! Skittles, cricket, quoits, nine-pins, comic songs, choruses,
company round the chimney corner every winter's evening. Any man could
be jolly at the Dragon. There's no credit in THAT.'
'But if common report be true for once, Mark, as I think it is, being
able to confirm it by what I know myself,' said Mr Pinch, 'you are the
cause of half this merriment, and set it going.'
'There may be something in that, too, sir,' answered Mark. 'But that's
no consolation.'
'Well!' said Mr Pinch, after a short silence, his usually subdued tone
being even now more subdued than ever. 'I can hardly think enough of
what you tell me. Why, what will become of Mrs Lupin, Mark?'
Mark looked more fixedly before him, and further off still, as he
answered that he didn't suppose it would be much of an object to her.
There were plenty of smart young fellows as would be glad of the place.
He knew a dozen himself.
'That's probable enough,' said Mr Pinch, 'but I am not at all sure that
Mrs Lupin would be glad of them. Why, I always supposed that Mrs Lupin
and you would make a match of it, Mark; and so did every one, as far as
I know.'
'I never,' Mark replied, in some confusion, 'said nothing as was in a
direct way courting-like to her, nor she to me, but I don't know what I
mightn't do one of these odd times, and what she mightn't say in answer.
Well, sir, THAT wouldn't suit.'
'Not to be landlord of the Dragon, Mark?' cried Mr Pinch.
'No, sir, certainly not,' returned the other, withdrawing his gaze from
the horizon, and looking at his fellow-traveller. 'Why that would be the
ruin of a man like me. I go and sit down comfortably for life, and no
man never finds me out. What would be the credit of the landlord of the
Dragon's being jolly? Why, he couldn't help it, if he tried.'
'Does Mrs Lupin know you are going to leave her?' Mr Pinch inquired.
'I haven't broke it to her yet, sir, but I must. I'm looking out this
morning for something new and suitable,' he said, nodding towards the
city.
'What kind of thing now?' Mr Pinch demanded.
'I was thinking,' Mark replied, 'of something in the grave-digging
way.'
'Good gracious, Mark?' cried Mr Pinch.
'It's a good damp, wormy sort of business, sir,' said Mark, shaking his
head argumentatively, 'and there might be some credit in being jolly,
with one's mind in that pursuit, unless grave-diggers is usually given
that way; which would be a drawback. You don't happen to know how that
is in general, do you, sir?'
'No,' said Mr Pinch, 'I don't indeed. I never thought upon the subject.'
'In case of that not turning out as well as one could wish, you know,'
said Mark, musing again, 'there's other businesses. Undertaking now.
That's gloomy. There might be credit to be gained there. A broker's man
in a poor neighbourhood wouldn't be bad perhaps. A jailor sees a deal of
misery. A doctor's man is in the very midst of murder. A bailiff's an't
a lively office nat'rally. Even a tax-gatherer must find his feelings
rather worked upon, at times. There's lots of trades in which I should
have an opportunity, I think.'
Mr Pinch was so perfectly overwhelmed by these remarks that he could
do nothing but occasionally exchange a word or two on some indifferent
subject, and cast sidelong glances at the bright face of his odd friend
(who seemed quite unconscious of his observation), until they reached a
certain corner of the road, close upon the outskirts of the city, when
Mark said he would jump down there, if he pleased.
'But bless my soul, Mark,' said Mr Pinch, who in the progress of
his observation just then made the discovery that the bosom of his
companion's shirt was as much exposed as if it was Midsummer, and was
ruffled by every breath of air, 'why don't you wear a waistcoat?'
'What's the good of one, sir?' asked Mark.
'Good of one?' said Mr Pinch. 'Why, to keep your chest warm.'
'Lord love you, sir!' cried Mark, 'you don't know me. My chest don't
want no warming. Even if it did, what would no waistcoat bring it to?
Inflammation of the lungs, perhaps? Well, there'd be some credit in
being jolly, with a inflammation of the lungs.'
As Mr Pinch returned no other answer than such as was conveyed in his
breathing very hard, and opening his eyes very wide, and nodding his
head very much, Mark thanked him for his ride, and without troubling
him to stop, jumped lightly down. And away he fluttered, with his red
neckerchief, and his open coat, down a cross-lane; turning back from
time to time to nod to Mr Pinch, and looking one of the most careless,
good-humoured comical fellows in life. His late companion, with a
thoughtful face pursued his way to Salisbury.
Mr Pinch had a shrewd notion that Salisbury was a very desperate sort of
place; an exceeding wild and dissipated city; and when he had put up the
horse, and given the hostler to understand that he would look in again
in the course of an hour or two to see him take his corn, he set forth
on a stroll about the streets with a vague and not unpleasant idea that
they teemed with all kinds of mystery and bedevilment. To one of
his quiet habits this little delusion was greatly assisted by the
circumstance of its being market-day, and the thoroughfares about the
market-place being filled with carts, horses, donkeys, baskets, waggons,
garden-stuff, meat, tripe, pies, poultry and huckster's wares of every
opposite description and possible variety of character. Then there were
young farmers and old farmers with smock-frocks, brown great-coats, drab
great-coats, red worsted comforters, leather-leggings, wonderful shaped
hats, hunting-whips, and rough sticks, standing about in groups, or
talking noisily together on the tavern steps, or paying and receiving
huge amounts of greasy wealth, with the assistance of such bulky
pocket-books that when they were in their pockets it was apoplexy to
get them out, and when they were out it was spasms to get them in again.
Also there were farmers' wives in beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding
shaggy horses purged of all earthly passions, who went soberly into all
manner of places without desiring to know why, and who, if required,
would have stood stock still in a china shop, with a complete
dinner-service at each hoof. Also a great many dogs, who were strongly
interested in the state of the market and the bargains of their masters;
and a great confusion of tongues, both brute and human.
Mr Pinch regarded everything exposed for sale with great delight, and
was particularly struck by the itinerant cutlery, which he considered
of the very keenest kind, insomuch that he purchased a pocket knife with
seven blades in it, and not a cut (as he afterwards found out) among
them. When he had exhausted the market-place, and watched the farmers
safe into the market dinner, he went back to look after the horse.
Having seen him eat unto his heart's content he issued forth again,
to wander round the town and regale himself with the shop windows;
previously taking a long stare at the bank, and wondering in what
direction underground the caverns might be where they kept the money;
and turning to look back at one or two young men who passed him, whom
he knew to be articled to solicitors in the town; and who had a sort of
fearful interest in his eyes, as jolly dogs who knew a thing or two, and
kept it up tremendously.
But the shops. First of all there were the jewellers' shops, with all
the treasures of the earth displayed therein, and such large silver
watches hanging up in every pane of glass, that if they were anything
but first-rate goers it certainly was not because the works could
decently complain of want of room. In good sooth they were big enough,
and perhaps, as the saying is, ugly enough, to be the most correct of
all mechanical performers; in Mr Pinch's eyes, however they were smaller
than Geneva ware; and when he saw one very bloated watch announced as a
repeater, gifted with the uncommon power of striking every quarter of an
hour inside the pocket of its happy owner, he almost wished that he were
rich enough to buy it.
But what were even gold and silver, precious stones and clockwork, to
the bookshops, whence a pleasant smell of paper freshly pressed came
issuing forth, awakening instant recollections of some new grammar had
at school, long time ago, with 'Master Pinch, Grove House Academy,'
inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia
leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged
within--what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were
the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and
sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open;
tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the
impossibility of turning over, to rush blindly in, and buy it! Here too
were the dainty frontispiece and trim vignette, pointing like handposts
on the outskirts of great cities, to the rich stock of incident beyond;
and store of books, with many a grave portrait and time-honoured name,
whose matter he knew well, and would have given mines to have, in any
form, upon the narrow shell beside his bed at Mr Pecksniff's. What a
heart-breaking shop it was!
There was another; not quite so bad at first, but still a trying shop;
where children's books were sold, and where poor Robinson Crusoe
stood alone in his might, with dog and hatchet, goat-skin cap and
fowling-pieces; calmly surveying Philip Quarn and the host of imitators
round him, and calling Mr Pinch to witness that he, of all the crowd,
impressed one solitary footprint on the shore of boyish memory, whereof
the tread of generations should not stir the lightest grain of sand.
And there too were the Persian tales, with flying chests and students of
enchanted books shut up for years in caverns; and there too was Abudah,
the merchant, with the terrible little old woman hobbling out of the box
in his bedroom; and there the mighty talisman, the rare Arabian Nights,
with Cassim Baba, divided by four, like the ghost of a dreadful sum,
hanging up, all gory, in the robbers' cave. Which matchless wonders,
coming fast on Mr Pinch's mind, did so rub up and chafe that wonderful
lamp within him, that when he turned his face towards the busy street,
a crowd of phantoms waited on his pleasure, and he lived again, with new
delight, the happy days before the Pecksniff era.
He had less interest now in the chemists' shops, with their great
glowing bottles (with smaller repositories of brightness in their very
stoppers); and in their agreeable compromises between medicine and
perfumery, in the shape of toothsome lozenges and virgin honey. Neither
had he the least regard (but he never had much) for the tailors', where
the newest metropolitan waistcoat patterns were hanging up, which by
some strange transformation always looked amazing there, and never
appeared at all like the same thing anywhere else. But he stopped to
read the playbill at the theatre and surveyed the doorway with a kind
of awe, which was not diminished when a sallow gentleman with long dark
hair came out, and told a boy to run home to his lodgings and bring down
his broadsword. Mr Pinch stood rooted to the spot on hearing this, and
might have stood there until dark, but that the old cathedral bell began
to ring for vesper service, on which he tore himself away.
Now, the organist's assistant was a friend of Mr Pinch's, which was a
good thing, for he too was a very quiet gentle soul, and had been, like
Tom, a kind of old-fashioned boy at school, though well liked by the
noisy fellow too. As good luck would have it (Tom always said he had
great good luck) the assistant chanced that very afternoon to be on duty
by himself, with no one in the dusty organ loft but Tom; so while he
played, Tom helped him with the stops; and finally, the service being
just over, Tom took the organ himself. It was then turning dark, and the
yellow light that streamed in through the ancient windows in the choir
was mingled with a murky red. As the grand tones resounded through
the church, they seemed, to Tom, to find an echo in the depth of every
ancient tomb, no less than in the deep mystery of his own heart. Great
thoughts and hopes came crowding on his mind as the rich music rolled
upon the air and yet among them--something more grave and solemn in
their purpose, but the same--were all the images of that day, down to
its very lightest recollection of childhood. The feeling that the sounds
awakened, in the moment of their existence, seemed to include his whole
life and being; and as the surrounding realities of stone and wood
and glass grew dimmer in the darkness, these visions grew so much the
brighter that Tom might have forgotten the new pupil and the expectant
master, and have sat there pouring out his grateful heart till midnight,
but for a very earthy old verger insisting on locking up the cathedral
forthwith. So he took leave of his friend, with many thanks, groped his
way out, as well as he could, into the now lamp-lighted streets, and
hurried off to get his dinner.
All the farmers being by this time jogging homewards, there was nobody
in the sanded parlour of the tavern where he had left the horse; so he
had his little table drawn out close before the fire, and fell to
work upon a well-cooked steak and smoking hot potatoes, with a strong
appreciation of their excellence, and a very keen sense of enjoyment.
Beside him, too, there stood a jug of most stupendous Wiltshire beer;
and the effect of the whole was so transcendent, that he was obliged
every now and then to lay down his knife and fork, rub his hands, and
think about it. By the time the cheese and celery came, Mr Pinch had
taken a book out of his pocket, and could afford to trifle with the
viands; now eating a little, now drinking a little, now reading a
little, and now stopping to wonder what sort of a young man the new
pupil would turn out to be. He had passed from this latter theme and was
deep in his book again, when the door opened, and another guest came in,
bringing with him such a quantity of cold air, that he positively seemed
at first to put the fire out.
'Very hard frost to-night, sir,' said the newcomer, courteously
acknowledging Mr Pinch's withdrawal of the little table, that he might
have place: 'Don't disturb yourself, I beg.'
Though he said this with a vast amount of consideration for Mr Pinch's
comfort, he dragged one of the great leather-bottomed chairs to the
very centre of the hearth, notwithstanding; and sat down in front of the
fire, with a foot on each hob.
'My feet are quite numbed. Ah! Bitter cold to be sure.'
'You have been in the air some considerable time, I dare say?' said Mr
Pinch.
'All day. Outside a coach, too.'
'That accounts for his making the room so cool,' thought Mr Pinch. 'Poor
fellow! How thoroughly chilled he must be!'
The stranger became thoughtful likewise, and sat for five or ten minutes
looking at the fire in silence. At length he rose and divested himself
of his shawl and great-coat, which (far different from Mr Pinch's) was
a very warm and thick one; but he was not a whit more conversational out
of his great-coat than in it, for he sat down again in the same place
and attitude, and leaning back in his chair, began to bite his nails. He
was young--one-and-twenty, perhaps--and handsome; with a keen dark eye,
and a quickness of look and manner which made Tom sensible of a great
contrast in his own bearing, and caused him to feel even more shy than
usual.
There was a clock in the room, which the stranger often turned to
look at. Tom made frequent reference to it also; partly from a nervous
sympathy with its taciturn companion; and partly because the new pupil
was to inquire for him at half after six, and the hands were getting
on towards that hour. Whenever the stranger caught him looking at this
clock, a kind of confusion came upon Tom as if he had been found out in
something; and it was a perception of his uneasiness which caused the
younger man to say, perhaps, with a smile:
'We both appear to be rather particular about the time. The fact is, I
have an engagement to meet a gentleman here.'
'So have I,' said Mr Pinch.
'At half-past six,' said the stranger.
'At half-past six,' said Tom in the very same breath; whereupon the
other looked at him with some surprise.
'The young gentleman, I expect,' remarked Tom, timidly, 'was to inquire
at that time for a person by the name of Pinch.'
'Dear me!' cried the other, jumping up. 'And I have been keeping the
fire from you all this while! I had no idea you were Mr Pinch. I am the
Mr Martin for whom you were to inquire. Pray excuse me. How do you do?
Oh, do draw nearer, pray!'
'Thank you,' said Tom, 'thank you. I am not at all cold, and you are;
and we have a cold ride before us. Well, if you wish it, I will. I--I am
very glad,' said Tom, smiling with an embarrassed frankness peculiarly
his, and which was as plainly a confession of his own imperfections, and
an appeal to the kindness of the person he addressed, as if he had drawn
one up in simple language and committed it to paper: 'I am very glad
indeed that you turn out to be the party I expected. I was thinking, but
a minute ago, that I could wish him to be like you.'
'I am very glad to hear it,' returned Martin, shaking hands with him
again; 'for I assure you, I was thinking there could be no such luck as
Mr Pinch's turning out like you.'
'No, really!' said Tom, with great pleasure. 'Are you serious?'
'Upon my word I am,' replied his new acquaintance. 'You and I will get
on excellently well, I know; which it's no small relief to me to feel,
for to tell you the truth, I am not at all the sort of fellow who could
get on with everybody, and that's the point on which I had the greatest
doubts. But they're quite relieved now.--Do me the favour to ring the
bell, will you?'
Mr Pinch rose, and complied with great alacrity--the handle hung just
over Martin's head, as he warmed himself--and listened with a smiling
face to what his friend went on to say. It was:
'If you like punch, you'll allow me to order a glass apiece, as hot
as it can be made, that we may usher in our friendship in a becoming
manner. To let you into a secret, Mr Pinch, I never was so much in want
of something warm and cheering in my life; but I didn't like to run the
chance of being found drinking it, without knowing what kind of person
you were; for first impressions, you know, often go a long way, and last
a long time.'
Mr Pinch assented, and the punch was ordered. In due course it came; hot
and strong. After drinking to each other in the steaming mixture, they
became quite confidential.
'I'm a sort of relation of Pecksniff's, you know,' said the young man.
'Indeed!' cried Mr Pinch.
'Yes. My grandfather is his cousin, so he's kith and kin to me, somehow,
if you can make that out. I can't.'
'Then Martin is your Christian name?' said Mr Pinch, thoughtfully. 'Oh!'
'Of course it is,' returned his friend: 'I wish it was my surname for
my own is not a very pretty one, and it takes a long time to sign.
Chuzzlewit is my name.'
'Dear me!' cried Mr Pinch, with an involuntary start.
'You're not surprised at my having two names, I suppose?' returned the
other, setting his glass to his lips. 'Most people have.'
'Oh, no,' said Mr Pinch, 'not at all. Oh dear no! Well!' And then
remembering that Mr Pecksniff had privately cautioned him to say nothing
in reference to the old gentleman of the same name who had lodged at
the Dragon, but to reserve all mention of that person for him, he had
no better means of hiding his confusion than by raising his own glass
to his mouth. They looked at each other out of their respective tumblers
for a few seconds, and then put them down empty.
'I told them in the stable to be ready for us ten minutes ago,' said Mr
Pinch, glancing at the clock again. 'Shall we go?'
'If you please,' returned the other.
'Would you like to drive?' said Mr Pinch; his whole face beaming with a
consciousness of the splendour of his offer. 'You shall, if you wish.'
'Why, that depends, Mr Pinch,' said Martin, laughing, 'upon what sort
of a horse you have. Because if he's a bad one, I would rather keep my
hands warm by holding them comfortably in my greatcoat pockets.'
He appeared to think this such a good joke, that Mr Pinch was quite sure
it must be a capital one. Accordingly, he laughed too, and was fully
persuaded that he enjoyed it very much. Then he settled his bill, and Mr
Chuzzlewit paid for the punch; and having wrapped themselves up, to the
extent of their respective means, they went out together to the front
door, where Mr Pecksniff's property stopped the way.
'I won't drive, thank you, Mr Pinch,' said Martin, getting into the
sitter's place. 'By the bye, there's a box of mine. Can we manage to
take it?'
'Oh, certainly,' said Tom. 'Put it in, Dick, anywhere!'
It was not precisely of that convenient size which would admit of its
being squeezed into any odd corner, but Dick the hostler got it in
somehow, and Mr Chuzzlewit helped him. It was all on Mr Pinch's side,
and Mr Chuzzlewit said he was very much afraid it would encumber him; to
which Tom said, 'Not at all;' though it forced him into such an awkward
position, that he had much ado to see anything but his own knees. But it
is an ill wind that blows nobody any good; and the wisdom of the saying
was verified in this instance; for the cold air came from Mr Pinch's
side of the carriage, and by interposing a perfect wall of box and
man between it and the new pupil, he shielded that young gentleman
effectually; which was a great comfort.
It was a clear evening, with a bright moon. The whole landscape was
silvered by its light and by the hoar-frost; and everything looked
exquisitely beautiful. At first, the great serenity and peace through
which they travelled, disposed them both to silence; but in a very short
time the punch within them and the healthful air without, made them
loquacious, and they talked incessantly. When they were halfway home,
and stopped to give the horse some water, Martin (who was very generous
with his money) ordered another glass of punch, which they drank between
them, and which had not the effect of making them less conversational
than before. Their principal topic of discourse was naturally Mr
Pecksniff and his family; of whom, and of the great obligations they had
heaped upon him, Tom Pinch, with the tears standing in his eyes, drew
such a picture as would have inclined any one of common feeling
almost to revere them; and of which Mr Pecksniff had not the slightest
foresight or preconceived idea, or he certainly (being very humble)
would not have sent Tom Pinch to bring the pupil home.
In this way they went on, and on, and on--in the language of the
story-books--until at last the village lights appeared before them, and
the church spire cast a long reflection on the graveyard grass; as if
it were a dial (alas, the truest in the world!) marking, whatever light
shone out of Heaven, the flight of days and weeks and years, by some new
shadow on that solemn ground.
'A pretty church!' said Martin, observing that his companion slackened
the slack pace of the horse, as they approached.
'Is it not?' cried Tom, with great pride. 'There's the sweetest little
organ there you ever heard. I play it for them.'
'Indeed?' said Martin. 'It is hardly worth the trouble, I should think.
What do you get for that, now?'
'Nothing,' answered Tom.
'Well,' returned his friend, 'you ARE a very strange fellow!'
To which remark there succeeded a brief silence.
'When I say nothing,' observed Mr Pinch, cheerfully, 'I am wrong, and
don't say what I mean, because I get a great deal of pleasure from it,
and the means of passing some of the happiest hours I know. It led to
something else the other day; but you will not care to hear about that I
dare say?'
'Oh yes I shall. What?'
'It led to my seeing,' said Tom, in a lower voice, 'one of the loveliest
and most beautiful faces you can possibly picture to yourself.'
'And yet I am able to picture a beautiful one,' said his friend,
thoughtfully, 'or should be, if I have any memory.'
'She came' said Tom, laying his hand upon the other's arm, 'for the
first time very early in the morning, when it was hardly light; and when
I saw her, over my shoulder, standing just within the porch, I turned
quite cold, almost believing her to be a spirit. A moment's reflection
got the better of that, of course, and fortunately it came to my relief
so soon, that I didn't leave off playing.'
'Why fortunately?'
'Why? Because she stood there, listening. I had my spectacles on, and
saw her through the chinks in the curtains as plainly as I see you; and
she was beautiful. After a while she glided off, and I continued to play
until she was out of hearing.'
'Why did you do that?'
'Don't you see?' responded Tom. 'Because she might suppose I hadn't seen
her; and might return.'
'And did she?'
'Certainly she did. Next morning, and next evening too; but always when
there were no people about, and always alone. I rose earlier and sat
there later, that when she came, she might find the church door open,
and the organ playing, and might not be disappointed. She strolled that
way for some days, and always stayed to listen. But she is gone now,
and of all unlikely things in this wide world, it is perhaps the most
improbable that I shall ever look upon her face again.'
'You don't know anything more about her?'
'No.'
'And you never followed her when she went away?'
'Why should I distress her by doing that?' said Tom Pinch. 'Is it likely
that she wanted my company? She came to hear the organ, not to see me;
and would you have had me scare her from a place she seemed to grow
quite fond of? Now, Heaven bless her!' cried Tom, 'to have given her but
a minute's pleasure every day, I would have gone on playing the organ
at those times until I was an old man; quite contented if she sometimes
thought of a poor fellow like me, as a part of the music; and more than
recompensed if she ever mixed me up with anything she liked as well as
she liked that!'
The new pupil was clearly very much amazed by Mr Pinch's weakness, and
would probably have told him so, and given him some good advice, but
for their opportune arrival at Mr Pecksniff's door; the front door this
time, on account of the occasion being one of ceremony and rejoicing.
The same man was in waiting for the horse who had been adjured by Mr
Pinch in the morning not to yield to his rabid desire to start;
and after delivering the animal into his charge, and beseeching Mr
Chuzzlewit in a whisper never to reveal a syllable of what he had just
told him in the fullness of his heart, Tom led the pupil in, for instant
presentation.
Mr Pecksniff had clearly not expected them for hours to come; for he was
surrounded by open books, and was glancing from volume to volume, with a
black lead-pencil in his mouth, and a pair of compasses in his hand,
at a vast number of mathematical diagrams, of such extraordinary shapes
that they looked like designs for fireworks. Neither had Miss Charity
expected them, for she was busied, with a capacious wicker basket before
her, in making impracticable nightcaps for the poor. Neither had Miss
Mercy expected them, for she was sitting upon her stool, tying on
the--oh good gracious!--the petticoat of a large doll that she was
dressing for a neighbour's child--really, quite a grown-up doll, which
made it more confusing--and had its little bonnet dangling by the ribbon
from one of her fair curls, to which she had fastened it lest it should
be lost or sat upon. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to
conceive a family so thoroughly taken by surprise as the Pecksniffs
were, on this occasion.
Bless my life!' said Mr Pecksniff, looking up, and gradually exchanging
his abstracted face for one of joyful recognition. 'Here already!
Martin, my dear boy, I am delighted to welcome you to my poor house!'
With this kind greeting, Mr Pecksniff fairly took him to his arms, and
patted him several times upon the back with his right hand the while,
as if to express that his feelings during the embrace were too much for
utterance.
'But here,' he said, recovering, 'are my daughters, Martin; my two only
children, whom (if you ever saw them) you have not beheld--ah, these sad
family divisions!--since you were infants together. Nay, my dears, why
blush at being detected in your everyday pursuits? We had prepared
to give you the reception of a visitor, Martin, in our little room of
state,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling, 'but I like this better, I like this
better!'
Oh blessed star of Innocence, wherever you may be, how did you glitter
in your home of ether, when the two Miss Pecksniffs put forth each her
lily hand, and gave the same, with mantling cheeks, to Martin! How did
you twinkle, as if fluttering with sympathy, when Mercy, reminded of
the bonnet in her hair, hid her fair face and turned her head aside; the
while her gentle sister plucked it out, and smote her with a sister's
soft reproof, upon her buxom shoulder!
'And how,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning round after the contemplation of
these passages, and taking Mr Pinch in a friendly manner by the elbow,
'how has our friend used you, Martin?'
'Very well indeed, sir. We are on the best terms, I assure you.'
'Old Tom Pinch!' said Mr Pecksniff, looking on him with affectionate
sadness. 'Ah! It seems but yesterday that Thomas was a boy fresh from
a scholastic course. Yet years have passed, I think, since Thomas Pinch
and I first walked the world together!'
Mr Pinch could say nothing. He was too much moved. But he pressed his
master's hand, and tried to thank him.
'And Thomas Pinch and I,' said Mr Pecksniff, in a deeper voice, 'will
walk it yet, in mutual faithfulness and friendship! And if it comes to
pass that either of us be run over in any of those busy crossings which
divide the streets of life, the other will convey him to the hospital in
Hope, and sit beside his bed in Bounty!'
'Well, well, well!' he added in a happier tone, as he shook Mr Pinch's
elbow hard. 'No more of this! Martin, my dear friend, that you may be at
home within these walls, let me show you how we live, and where. Come!'
With that he took up a lighted candle, and, attended by his young
relative, prepared to leave the room. At the door, he stopped.
'You'll bear us company, Tom Pinch?'
Aye, cheerfully, though it had been to death, would Tom have followed
him; glad to lay down his life for such a man!
'This,' said Mr Pecksniff, opening the door of an opposite parlour, 'is
the little room of state, I mentioned to you. My girls have pride in it,
Martin! This,' opening another door, 'is the little chamber in which my
works (slight things at best) have been concocted. Portrait of myself
by Spiller. Bust by Spoker. The latter is considered a good likeness.
I seem to recognize something about the left-hand corner of the nose,
myself.'
Martin thought it was very like, but scarcely intellectual enough. Mr
Pecksniff observed that the same fault had been found with it before. It
was remarkable it should have struck his young relation too. He was glad
to see he had an eye for art.
'Various books you observe,' said Mr Pecksniff, waving his hand towards
the wall, 'connected with our pursuit. I have scribbled myself, but
have not yet published. Be careful how you come upstairs. This,' opening
another door, 'is my chamber. I read here when the family suppose I have
retired to rest. Sometimes I injure my health rather more than I can
quite justify to myself, by doing so; but art is long and time is short.
Every facility you see for jotting down crude notions, even here.'
These latter words were explained by his pointing to a small round table
on which were a lamp, divers sheets of paper, a piece of India rubber,
and a case of instruments; all put ready, in case an architectural idea
should come into Mr Pecksniff's head in the night; in which event he
would instantly leap out of bed, and fix it for ever.
Mr Pecksniff opened another door on the same floor, and shut it again,
all at once, as if it were a Blue Chamber. But before he had well done
so, he looked smilingly round, and said, 'Why not?'
Martin couldn't say why not, because he didn't know anything at all
about it. So Mr Pecksniff answered himself, by throwing open the door,
and saying:
'My daughters' room. A poor first-floor to us, but a bower to them. Very
neat. Very airy. Plants you observe; hyacinths; books again; birds.'
These birds, by the bye, comprised, in all, one staggering old sparrow
without a tail, which had been borrowed expressly from the kitchen.
'Such trifles as girls love are here. Nothing more. Those who seek
heartless splendour, would seek here in vain.'
With that he led them to the floor above.
'This,' said Mr Pecksniff, throwing wide the door of the memorable
two-pair front; 'is a room where some talent has been developed I
believe. This is a room in which an idea for a steeple occurred to me
that I may one day give to the world. We work here, my dear Martin. Some
architects have been bred in this room; a few, I think, Mr Pinch?'
Tom fully assented; and, what is more, fully believed it.
'You see,' said Mr Pecksniff, passing the candle rapidly from roll to
roll of paper, 'some traces of our doings here. Salisbury Cathedral
from the north. From the south. From the east. From the west. From the
south-east. From the nor'west. A bridge. An almshouse. A jail. A
church. A powder-magazine. A wine-cellar. A portico. A summer-house. An
ice-house. Plans, elevations, sections, every kind of thing. And this,'
he added, having by this time reached another large chamber on the same
story, with four little beds in it, 'this is your room, of which Mr
Pinch here is the quiet sharer. A southern aspect; a charming prospect;
Mr Pinch's little library, you perceive; everything agreeable and
appropriate. If there is any additional comfort you would desire to have
here at anytime, pray mention it. Even to strangers, far less to you, my
dear Martin, there is no restriction on that point.'
It was undoubtedly true, and may be stated in corroboration of Mr
Pecksniff, that any pupil had the most liberal permission to mention
anything in this way that suggested itself to his fancy. Some young
gentlemen had gone on mentioning the very same thing for five years
without ever being stopped.
'The domestic assistants,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'sleep above; and that
is all.' After which, and listening complacently as he went, to the
encomiums passed by his young friend on the arrangements generally, he
led the way to the parlour again.
Here a great change had taken place; for festive preparations on
a rather extensive scale were already completed, and the two Miss
Pecksniffs were awaiting their return with hospitable looks. There were
two bottles of currant wine, white and red; a dish of sandwiches (very
long and very slim); another of apples; another of captain's biscuits
(which are always a moist and jovial sort of viand); a plate of oranges
cut up small and gritty; with powdered sugar, and a highly geological
home-made cake. The magnitude of these preparations quite took away Tom
Pinch's breath; for though the new pupils were usually let down softly,
as one may say, particularly in the wine department, which had so many
stages of declension, that sometimes a young gentleman was a whole
fortnight in getting to the pump; still this was a banquet; a sort of
Lord Mayor's feast in private life; a something to think of, and hold on
by, afterwards.
To this entertainment, which apart from its own intrinsic merits, had
the additional choice quality, that it was in strict keeping with the
night, being both light and cool, Mr Pecksniff besought the company to
do full justice.
'Martin,' he said, 'will seat himself between you two, my dears, and
Mr Pinch will come by me. Let us drink to our new inmate, and may we be
happy together! Martin, my dear friend, my love to you! Mr Pinch, if you
spare the bottle we shall quarrel.'
And trying (in his regard for the feelings of the rest) to look as if
the wine were not acid and didn't make him wink, Mr Pecksniff did honour
to his own toast.
'This,' he said, in allusion to the party, not the wine, 'is a mingling
that repays one for much disappointment and vexation. Let us be merry.'
Here he took a captain's biscuit. 'It is a poor heart that never
rejoices; and our hearts are not poor. No!'
With such stimulants to merriment did he beguile the time, and do the
honours of the table; while Mr Pinch, perhaps to assure himself that
what he saw and heard was holiday reality, and not a charming dream, ate
of everything, and in particular disposed of the slim sandwiches to a
surprising extent. Nor was he stinted in his draughts of wine; but on
the contrary, remembering Mr Pecksniff's speech, attacked the bottle
with such vigour, that every time he filled his glass anew, Miss
Charity, despite her amiable resolves, could not repress a fixed and
stony glare, as if her eyes had rested on a ghost. Mr Pecksniff also
became thoughtful at those moments, not to say dejected; but as he
knew the vintage, it is very likely he may have been speculating on the
probable condition of Mr Pinch upon the morrow, and discussing within
himself the best remedies for colic.
Martin and the young ladies were excellent friends already, and compared
recollections of their childish days, to their mutual liveliness and
entertainment. Miss Mercy laughed immensely at everything that was said;
and sometimes, after glancing at the happy face of Mr Pinch, was
seized with such fits of mirth as brought her to the very confines of
hysterics. But for these bursts of gaiety, her sister, in her better
sense, reproved her; observing, in an angry whisper, that it was far
from being a theme for jest; and that she had no patience with the
creature; though it generally ended in her laughing too--but much more
moderately--and saying that indeed it was a little too ridiculous and
intolerable to be serious about.
At length it became high time to remember the first clause of that great
discovery made by the ancient philosopher, for securing health, riches,
and wisdom; the infallibility of which has been for generations verified
by the enormous fortunes constantly amassed by chimney-sweepers and
other persons who get up early and go to bed betimes. The young ladies
accordingly rose, and having taken leave of Mr Chuzzlewit with much
sweetness, and of their father with much duty and of Mr Pinch with
much condescension, retired to their bower. Mr Pecksniff insisted on
accompanying his young friend upstairs for personal superintendence of
his comforts; and taking him by the arm, conducted him once more to his
bedroom, followed by Mr Pinch, who bore the light.
'Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, seating himself with folded arms on one of
the spare beds. 'I don't see any snuffers in that candlestick. Will you
oblige me by going down, and asking for a pair?'
Mr Pinch, only too happy to be useful, went off directly.
'You will excuse Thomas Pinch's want of polish, Martin,' said Mr
Pecksniff, with a smile of patronage and pity, as soon as he had left
the room. 'He means well.'
'He is a very good fellow, sir.'
'Oh, yes,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Yes. Thomas Pinch means well. He is very
grateful. I have never regretted having befriended Thomas Pinch.'
'I should think you never would, sir.'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'No. I hope not. Poor fellow, he is always
disposed to do his best; but he is not gifted. You will make him useful
to you, Martin, if you please. If Thomas has a fault, it is that he is
sometimes a little apt to forget his position. But that is soon checked.
Worthy soul! You will find him easy to manage. Good night!'
'Good night, sir.'
By this time Mr Pinch had returned with the snuffers.
'And good night to YOU, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'And sound sleep to
you both. Bless you! Bless you!'
Invoking this benediction on the heads of his young friends with great
fervour, he withdrew to his own room; while they, being tired, soon fell
asleep. If Martin dreamed at all, some clue to the matter of his visions
may possibly be gathered from the after-pages of this history. Those
of Thomas Pinch were all of holidays, church organs, and seraphic
Pecksniffs. It was some time before Mr Pecksniff dreamed at all, or even
sought his pillow, as he sat for full two hours before the fire in his
own chamber, looking at the coals and thinking deeply. But he, too,
slept and dreamed at last. Thus in the quiet hours of the night, one
house shuts in as many incoherent and incongruous fancies as a madman's
head.
CHAPTER SIX
COMPRISES, AMONG OTHER IMPORTANT MATTERS, PECKSNIFFIAN AND
ARCHITECTURAL, AND EXACT RELATION OF THE PROGRESS MADE BY MR PINCH IN
THE CONFIDENCE AND FRIENDSHIP OF THE NEW PUPIL
It was morning; and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been
written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak Miss
Pecksniff's nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the Goddess, in her
intercourse with the fair Cherry, so to do; or in more prosaic phrase,
the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's countenance was always
very red at breakfast-time. For the most part, indeed, it wore, at that
season of the day, a scraped and frosty look, as if it had been rasped;
while a similar phenomenon developed itself in her humour, which was
then observed to be of a sharp and acid quality, as though an extra
lemon (figuratively speaking) had been squeezed into the nectar of her
disposition, and had rather damaged its flavour.
This additional pungency on the part of the fair young creature led, on
ordinary occasions, to such slight consequences as the copious dilution
of Mr Pinch's tea, or to his coming off uncommonly short in respect
of butter, or to other the like results. But on the morning after the
Installation Banquet, she suffered him to wander to and fro among the
eatables and drinkables, a perfectly free and unchecked man; so utterly
to Mr Pinch's wonder and confusion, that like the wretched captive who
recovered his liberty in his old age, he could make but little use of
his enlargement, and fell into a strange kind of flutter for want of
some kind hand to scrape his bread, and cut him off in the article of
sugar with a lump, and pay him those other little attentions to which
he was accustomed. There was something almost awful, too, about the
self-possession of the new pupil; who 'troubled' Mr Pecksniff for the
loaf, and helped himself to a rasher of that gentleman's own particular
and private bacon, with all the coolness in life. He even seemed to
think that he was doing quite a regular thing, and to expect that Mr
Pinch would follow his example, since he took occasion to observe of
that young man 'that he didn't get on'; a speech of so tremendous a
character, that Tom cast down his eyes involuntarily, and felt as if
he himself had committed some horrible deed and heinous breach of Mr
Pecksniff's confidence. Indeed, the agony of having such an indiscreet
remark addressed to him before the assembled family, was breakfast
enough in itself, and would, without any other matter of reflection,
have settled Mr Pinch's business and quenched his appetite, for one
meal, though he had been never so hungry.
The young ladies, however, and Mr Pecksniff likewise, remained in
the very best of spirits in spite of these severe trials, though with
something of a mysterious understanding among themselves. When the meal
was nearly over, Mr Pecksniff smilingly explained the cause of their
common satisfaction.
'It is not often,' he said, 'Martin, that my daughters and I desert our
quiet home to pursue the giddy round of pleasures that revolves abroad.
But we think of doing so to-day.'
'Indeed, sir!' cried the new pupil.
'Yes,' said Mr Pecksniff, tapping his left hand with a letter which
he held in his right. 'I have a summons here to repair to London;
on professional business, my dear Martin; strictly on professional
business; and I promised my girls, long ago, that whenever that happened
again, they should accompany me. We shall go forth to-night by the
heavy coach--like the dove of old, my dear Martin--and it will be a week
before we again deposit our olive-branches in the passage. When I say
olive-branches,' observed Mr Pecksniff, in explanation, 'I mean, our
unpretending luggage.'
'I hope the young ladies will enjoy their trip,' said Martin.
'Oh! that I'm sure we shall!' cried Mercy, clapping her hands. 'Good
gracious, Cherry, my darling, the idea of London!'
'Ardent child!' said Mr Pecksniff, gazing on her in a dreamy way. 'And
yet there is a melancholy sweetness in these youthful hopes! It is
pleasant to know that they never can be realised. I remember thinking
once myself, in the days of my childhood, that pickled onions grew on
trees, and that every elephant was born with an impregnable castle on
his back. I have not found the fact to be so; far from it; and yet those
visions have comforted me under circumstances of trial. Even when I have
had the anguish of discovering that I have nourished in my breast on
ostrich, and not a human pupil--even in that hour of agony, they have
soothed me.'
At this dread allusion to John Westlock, Mr Pinch precipitately choked
in his tea; for he had that very morning received a letter from him, as
Mr Pecksniff very well knew.
'You will take care, my dear Martin,' said Mr Pecksniff, resuming his
former cheerfulness, 'that the house does not run away in our absence.
We leave you in charge of everything. There is no mystery; all is free
and open. Unlike the young man in the Eastern tale--who is described as
a one-eyed almanac, if I am not mistaken, Mr Pinch?--'
'A one-eyed calender, I think, sir,' faltered Tom.
'They are pretty nearly the same thing, I believe,' said Mr Pecksniff,
smiling compassionately; 'or they used to be in my time. Unlike that
young man, my dear Martin, you are forbidden to enter no corner of this
house; but are requested to make yourself perfectly at home in every
part of it. You will be jovial, my dear Martin, and will kill the fatted
calf if you please!'
There was not the least objection, doubtless, to the young man's
slaughtering and appropriating to his own use any calf, fat or lean,
that he might happen to find upon the premises; but as no such animal
chanced at that time to be grazing on Mr Pecksniff's estate, this
request must be considered rather as a polite compliment that
a substantial hospitality. It was the finishing ornament of the
conversation; for when he had delivered it, Mr Pecksniff rose and led
the way to that hotbed of architectural genius, the two-pair front.
'Let me see,' he said, searching among the papers, 'how you can best
employ yourself, Martin, while I am absent. Suppose you were to give
me your idea of a monument to a Lord Mayor of London; or a tomb for a
sheriff; or your notion of a cow-house to be erected in a nobleman's
park. Do you know, now,' said Mr Pecksniff, folding his hands, and
looking at his young relation with an air of pensive interest, 'that I
should very much like to see your notion of a cow-house?'
But Martin by no means appeared to relish this suggestion.
'A pump,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'is very chaste practice. I have found that
a lamp post is calculated to refine the mind and give it a classical
tendency. An ornamental turnpike has a remarkable effect upon the
imagination. What do you say to beginning with an ornamental turnpike?'
'Whatever Mr Pecksniff pleased,' said Martin, doubtfully.
'Stay,' said that gentleman. 'Come! as you're ambitious, and are a very
neat draughtsman, you shall--ha ha!--you shall try your hand on these
proposals for a grammar-school; regulating your plan, of course, by the
printed particulars. Upon my word, now,' said Mr Pecksniff, merrily, 'I
shall be very curious to see what you make of the grammar-school.
Who knows but a young man of your taste might hit upon something,
impracticable and unlikely in itself, but which I could put into shape?
For it really is, my dear Martin, it really is in the finishing touches
alone, that great experience and long study in these matters tell. Ha,
ha, ha! Now it really will be,' continued Mr Pecksniff, clapping his
young friend on the back in his droll humour, 'an amusement to me, to
see what you make of the grammar-school.'
Martin readily undertook this task, and Mr Pecksniff forthwith proceeded
to entrust him with the materials necessary for its execution; dwelling
meanwhile on the magical effect of a few finishing touches from the hand
of a master; which, indeed, as some people said (and these were the
old enemies again!) was unquestionably very surprising, and almost
miraculous; as there were cases on record in which the masterly
introduction of an additional back window, or a kitchen door, or
half-a-dozen steps, or even a water spout, had made the design of a
pupil Mr Pecksniff's own work, and had brought substantial rewards into
that gentleman's pocket. But such is the magic of genius, which changes
all it handles into gold!
'When your mind requires to be refreshed by change of occupation,' said
Mr Pecksniff, 'Thomas Pinch will instruct you in the art of surveying
the back garden, or in ascertaining the dead level of the road between
this house and the finger-post, or in any other practical and pleasing
pursuit. There are a cart-load of loose bricks, and a score or two of
old flower-pots, in the back yard. If you could pile them up my dear
Martin, into any form which would remind me on my return say of St.
Peter's at Rome, or the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it would
be at once improving to you and agreeable to my feelings. And now,' said
Mr Pecksniff, in conclusion, 'to drop, for the present, our professional
relations and advert to private matters, I shall be glad to talk with
you in my own room, while I pack up my portmanteau.'
Martin attended him; and they remained in secret conference together for
an hour or more; leaving Tom Pinch alone. When the young man returned,
he was very taciturn and dull, in which state he remained all day; so
that Tom, after trying him once or twice with indifferent conversation,
felt a delicacy in obtruding himself upon his thoughts, and said no
more.
He would not have had leisure to say much, had his new friend been ever
so loquacious; for first of all Mr Pecksniff called him down to stand
upon the top of his portmanteau and represent ancient statues there,
until such time as it would consent to be locked; and then Miss Charity
called him to come and cord her trunk; and then Miss Mercy sent for him
to come and mend her box; and then he wrote the fullest possible cards
for all the luggage; and then he volunteered to carry it all downstairs;
and after that to see it safely carried on a couple of barrows to the
old finger-post at the end of the lane; and then to mind it till the
coach came up. In short, his day's work would have been a pretty heavy
one for a porter, but his thorough good-will made nothing of it; and as
he sat upon the luggage at last, waiting for the Pecksniffs, escorted by
the new pupil, to come down the lane, his heart was light with the hope
of having pleased his benefactor.
'I was almost afraid,' said Tom, taking a letter from his pocket and
wiping his face, for he was hot with bustling about though it was a cold
day, 'that I shouldn't have had time to write it, and that would have
been a thousand pities; postage from such a distance being a serious
consideration, when one's not rich. She will be glad to see my hand,
poor girl, and to hear that Pecksniff is as kind as ever. I would have
asked John Westlock to call and see her, and tell her all about me by
word of mouth, but I was afraid he might speak against Pecksniff to her,
and make her uneasy. Besides, they are particular people where she is,
and it might have rendered her situation uncomfortable if she had had a
visit from a young man like John. Poor Ruth!'
Tom Pinch seemed a little disposed to be melancholy for half a minute or
so, but he found comfort very soon, and pursued his ruminations thus:
'I'm a nice man, I don't think, as John used to say (John was a kind,
merry-hearted fellow; I wish he had liked Pecksniff better), to be
feeling low, on account of the distance between us, when I ought to
be thinking, instead, of my extraordinary good luck in having ever got
here. I must have been born with a silver spoon in my mouth, I am sure,
to have ever come across Pecksniff. And here have I fallen again into
my usual good luck with the new pupil! Such an affable, generous, free
fellow, as he is, I never saw. Why, we were companions directly! and he
a relation of Pecksniff's too, and a clever, dashing youth who might cut
his way through the world as if it were a cheese! Here he comes while
the words are on my lips' said Tom; 'walking down the lane as if the
lane belonged to him.'
In truth, the new pupil, not at all disconcerted by the honour of having
Miss Mercy Pecksniff on his arm, or by the affectionate adieux of that
young lady, approached as Mr Pinch spoke, followed by Miss Charity and
Mr Pecksniff. As the coach appeared at the same moment, Tom lost no time
in entreating the gentleman last mentioned, to undertake the delivery of
his letter.
'Oh!' said Mr Pecksniff, glancing at the superscription. 'For your
sister, Thomas. Yes, oh yes, it shall be delivered, Mr Pinch. Make your
mind easy upon that score. She shall certainly have it, Mr Pinch.'
He made the promise with so much condescension and patronage, that
Tom felt he had asked a great deal (this had not occurred to his mind
before), and thanked him earnestly. The Miss Pecksniffs, according to
a custom they had, were amused beyond description at the mention of
Mr Pinch's sister. Oh the fright! The bare idea of a Miss Pinch! Good
heavens!
Tom was greatly pleased to see them so merry, for he took it as a token
of their favour, and good-humoured regard. Therefore he laughed too and
rubbed his hands and wished them a pleasant journey and safe return,
and was quite brisk. Even when the coach had rolled away with the
olive-branches in the boot and the family of doves inside, he stood
waving his hand and bowing; so much gratified by the unusually courteous
demeanour of the young ladies, that he was quite regardless, for the
moment, of Martin Chuzzlewit, who stood leaning thoughtfully against
the finger-post, and who after disposing of his fair charge had hardly
lifted his eyes from the ground.
The perfect silence which ensued upon the bustle and departure of the
coach, together with the sharp air of the wintry afternoon, roused them
both at the same time. They turned, as by mutual consent, and moved off
arm-in-arm.
'How melancholy you are!' said Tom; 'what is the matter?'
'Nothing worth speaking of,' said Martin. 'Very little more than was
the matter yesterday, and much more, I hope, than will be the matter
to-morrow. I'm out of spirits, Pinch.'
'Well,' cried Tom, 'now do you know I am in capital spirits today, and
scarcely ever felt more disposed to be good company. It was a very kind
thing in your predecessor, John, to write to me, was it not?'
'Why, yes,' said Martin carelessly; 'I should have thought he would have
had enough to do to enjoy himself, without thinking of you, Pinch.'
'Just what I felt to be so very likely,' Tom rejoined; 'but no, he keeps
his word, and says, "My dear Pinch, I often think of you," and all sorts
of kind and considerate things of that description.'
'He must be a devilish good-natured fellow,' said Martin, somewhat
peevishly: 'because he can't mean that, you know.'
'I don't suppose he can, eh?' said Tom, looking wistfully in his
companion's face. 'He says so to please me, you think?'
'Why, is it likely,' rejoined Martin, with greater earnestness, 'that
a young man newly escaped from this kennel of a place, and fresh to all
the delights of being his own master in London, can have much leisure
or inclination to think favourably of anything or anybody he has left
behind him here? I put it to you, Pinch, is it natural?'
After a short reflection, Mr Pinch replied, in a more subdued tone, that
to be sure it was unreasonable to expect any such thing, and that he had
no doubt Martin knew best.
'Of course I know best,' Martin observed.
'Yes, I feel that,' said Mr Pinch mildly. 'I said so.' And when he had
made this rejoinder, they fell into a blank silence again, which lasted
until they reached home; by which time it was dark.
Now, Miss Charity Pecksniff, in consideration of the inconvenience of
carrying them with her in the coach, and the impossibility of preserving
them by artificial means until the family's return, had set forth, in a
couple of plates, the fragments of yesterday's feast. In virtue of which
liberal arrangement, they had the happiness to find awaiting them in
the parlour two chaotic heaps of the remains of last night's pleasure,
consisting of certain filmy bits of oranges, some mummied sandwiches,
various disrupted masses of the geological cake, and several entire
captain's biscuits. That choice liquor in which to steep these dainties
might not be wanting, the remains of the two bottles of currant wine
had been poured together and corked with a curl-paper; so that every
material was at hand for making quite a heavy night of it.
Martin Chuzzlewit beheld these roystering preparations with infinite
contempt, and stirring the fire into a blaze (to the great destruction
of Mr Pecksniff's coals), sat moodily down before it, in the most
comfortable chair he could find. That he might the better squeeze
himself into the small corner that was left for him, Mr Pinch took up
his position on Miss Mercy Pecksniff's stool, and setting his glass down
upon the hearthrug and putting his plate upon his knees, began to enjoy
himself.
If Diogenes coming to life again could have rolled himself, tub and all,
into Mr Pecksniff's parlour and could have seen Tom Pinch as he sat on
Mercy Pecksniff's stool with his plate and glass before him he could
not have faced it out, though in his surliest mood, but must have
smiled good-temperedly. The perfect and entire satisfaction of Tom; his
surpassing appreciation of the husky sandwiches, which crumbled in his
mouth like saw-dust; the unspeakable relish with which he swallowed the
thin wine by drops, and smacked his lips, as though it were so rich and
generous that to lose an atom of its fruity flavour were a sin; the look
with which he paused sometimes, with his glass in his hand, proposing
silent toasts to himself; and the anxious shade that came upon his
contented face when, after wandering round the room, exulting in
its uninvaded snugness, his glance encountered the dull brow of his
companion; no cynic in the world, though in his hatred of its men a very
griffin, could have withstood these things in Thomas Pinch.
Some men would have slapped him on the back, and pledged him in a bumper
of the currant wine, though it had been the sharpest vinegar--aye, and
liked its flavour too; some would have seized him by his honest hand,
and thanked him for the lesson that his simple nature taught them. Some
would have laughed with, and others would have laughed at him; of which
last class was Martin Chuzzlewit, who, unable to restrain himself, at
last laughed loud and long.
'That's right,' said Tom, nodding approvingly. 'Cheer up! That's
capital!'
At which encouragement young Martin laughed again; and said, as soon as
he had breath and gravity enough:
'I never saw such a fellow as you are, Pinch.'
'Didn't you though?' said Tom. 'Well, it's very likely you do find me
strange, because I have hardly seen anything of the world, and you have
seen a good deal I dare say?'
'Pretty well for my time of life,' rejoined Martin, drawing his chair
still nearer to the fire, and spreading his feet out on the fender.
'Deuce take it, I must talk openly to somebody. I'll talk openly to you,
Pinch.'
'Do!' said Tom. 'I shall take it as being very friendly of you,'
'I'm not in your way, am I?' inquired Martin, glancing down at Mr Pinch,
who was by this time looking at the fire over his leg.
'Not at all!' cried Tom.
'You must know then, to make short of a long story,' said Martin,
beginning with a kind of effort, as if the revelation were not
agreeable to him; 'that I have been bred up from childhood with great
expectations, and have always been taught to believe that I should be,
one day, very rich. So I should have been, but for certain brief
reasons which I am going to tell you, and which have led to my being
disinherited.'
'By your father?' inquired Mr Pinch, with open eyes.
'By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Scarcely
within my remembrance.'
'Neither have I,' said Tom, touching the young man's hand with his own
and timidly withdrawing it again. 'Dear me!'
'Why, as to that, you know, Pinch,' pursued the other, stirring the fire
again, and speaking in his rapid, off-hand way; 'it's all very right
and proper to be fond of parents when we have them, and to bear them in
remembrance after they're dead, if you have ever known anything of them.
But as I never did know anything about mine personally, you know, why, I
can't be expected to be very sentimental about 'em. And I am not; that's
the truth.'
Mr Pinch was just then looking thoughtfully at the bars. But on
his companion pausing in this place, he started, and said 'Oh! of
course'--and composed himself to listen again.
'In a word,' said Martin, 'I have been bred and reared all my life by
this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many
good points--there is no doubt about that; I'll not disguise the fact
from you--but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his
bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of
character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he is
most abominably selfish.'
'Is he indeed?' cried Tom.
'In those two respects,' returned the other, 'there never was such a
man. I have often heard from those who know, that they have been, time
out of mind, the failings of our family; and I believe there's some
truth in it. But I can't say of my own knowledge. All I have to do, you
know, is to be very thankful that they haven't descended to me, and, to
be very careful that I don't contract 'em.'
'To be sure,' said Mr Pinch. 'Very proper.'
'Well, sir,' resumed Martin, stirring the fire once more, and drawing
his chair still closer to it, 'his selfishness makes him exacting,
you see; and his obstinacy makes him resolute in his exactions. The
consequence is that he has always exacted a great deal from me in the
way of respect, and submission, and self-denial when his wishes were in
question, and so forth. I have borne a great deal from him, because I
have been under obligations to him (if one can ever be said to be under
obligations to one's own grandfather), and because I have been really
attached to him; but we have had a great many quarrels for all that, for
I could not accommodate myself to his ways very often--not out of the
least reference to myself, you understand, but because--' he stammered
here, and was rather at a loss.
Mr Pinch being about the worst man in the world to help anybody out of a
difficulty of this sort, said nothing.
'Well! as you understand me,' resumed Martin, quickly, 'I needn't hunt
for the precise expression I want. Now I come to the cream of my story,
and the occasion of my being here. I am in love, Pinch.'
Mr Pinch looked up into his face with increased interest.
'I say I am in love. I am in love with one of the most beautiful girls
the sun ever shone upon. But she is wholly and entirely dependent upon
the pleasure of my grandfather; and if he were to know that she favoured
my passion, she would lose her home and everything she possesses in the
world. There is nothing very selfish in THAT love, I think?'
'Selfish!' cried Tom. 'You have acted nobly. To love her as I am sure
you do, and yet in consideration for her state of dependence, not even
to disclose--'
'What are you talking about, Pinch?' said Martin pettishly: 'don't
make yourself ridiculous, my good fellow! What do you mean by not
disclosing?'
'I beg your pardon,' answered Tom. 'I thought you meant that, or I
wouldn't have said it.'
'If I didn't tell her I loved her, where would be the use of my being in
love?' said Martin: 'unless to keep myself in a perpetual state of worry
and vexation?'
'That's true,' Tom answered. 'Well! I can guess what SHE said when you
told her,' he added, glancing at Martin's handsome face.
'Why, not exactly, Pinch,' he rejoined, with a slight frown; 'because
she has some girlish notions about duty and gratitude, and all the rest
of it, which are rather hard to fathom; but in the main you are right.
Her heart was mine, I found.'
'Just what I supposed,' said Tom. 'Quite natural!' and, in his great
satisfaction, he took a long sip out of his wine-glass.
'Although I had conducted myself from the first with the utmost
circumspection,' pursued Martin, 'I had not managed matters so well but
that my grandfather, who is full of jealousy and distrust, suspected me
of loving her. He said nothing to her, but straightway attacked me
in private, and charged me with designing to corrupt the fidelity to
himself (there you observe his selfishness), of a young creature whom
he had trained and educated to be his only disinterested and faithful
companion, when he should have disposed of me in marriage to his heart's
content. Upon that, I took fire immediately, and told him that with his
good leave I would dispose of myself in marriage, and would rather
not be knocked down by him or any other auctioneer to any bidder
whomsoever.'
Mr Pinch opened his eyes wider, and looked at the fire harder than he
had done yet.
'You may be sure,' said Martin, 'that this nettled him, and that he
began to be the very reverse of complimentary to myself. Interview
succeeded interview; words engendered words, as they always do; and the
upshot of it was, that I was to renounce her, or be renounced by him.
Now you must bear in mind, Pinch, that I am not only desperately fond
of her (for though she is poor, her beauty and intellect would reflect
great credit on anybody, I don't care of what pretensions who might
become her husband), but that a chief ingredient in my composition is a
most determined--'
'Obstinacy,' suggested Tom in perfect good faith. But the suggestion was
not so well received as he had expected; for the young man immediately
rejoined, with some irritation,
'What a fellow you are, Pinch!'
'I beg your pardon,' said Tom, 'I thought you wanted a word.'
'I didn't want that word,' he rejoined. 'I told you obstinacy was no
part of my character, did I not? I was going to say, if you had given
me leave, that a chief ingredient in my composition is a most determined
firmness.'
'Oh!' cried Tom, screwing up his mouth, and nodding. 'Yes, yes; I see!'
'And being firm,' pursued Martin, 'of course I was not going to yield to
him, or give way by so much as the thousandth part of an inch.'
'No, no,' said Tom.
'On the contrary, the more he urged, the more I was determined to oppose
him.'
'To be sure!' said Tom.
'Very well,' rejoined Martin, throwing himself back in his chair, with
a careless wave of both hands, as if the subject were quite settled, and
nothing more could be said about it--'There is an end of the matter, and
here am I!'
Mr Pinch sat staring at the fire for some minutes with a puzzled look,
such as he might have assumed if some uncommonly difficult conundrum had
been proposed, which he found it impossible to guess. At length he said:
'Pecksniff, of course, you had known before?'
'Only by name. No, I had never seen him, for my grandfather kept not
only himself but me, aloof from all his relations. But our separation
took place in a town in the adjoining country. From that place I came to
Salisbury, and there I saw Pecksniff's advertisement, which I answered,
having always had some natural taste, I believe, in the matters to which
it referred, and thinking it might suit me. As soon as I found it to be
his, I was doubly bent on coming to him if possible, on account of his
being--'
'Such an excellent man,' interposed Tom, rubbing his hands: 'so he is.
You were quite right.'
'Why, not so much on that account, if the truth must be spoken,'
returned Martin, 'as because my grandfather has an inveterate dislike to
him, and after the old man's arbitrary treatment of me, I had a natural
desire to run as directly counter to all his opinions as I could. Well!
As I said before, here I am. My engagement with the young lady I have
been telling you about is likely to be a tolerably long one; for neither
her prospects nor mine are very bright; and of course I shall not think
of marrying until I am well able to do so. It would never do, you know,
for me to be plunging myself into poverty and shabbiness and love in one
room up three pair of stairs, and all that sort of thing.'
'To say nothing of her,' remarked Tom Pinch, in a low voice.
'Exactly so,' rejoined Martin, rising to warm his back, and leaning
against the chimney-piece. 'To say nothing of her. At the same time,
of course it's not very hard upon her to be obliged to yield to the
necessity of the case; first, because she loves me very much; and
secondly, because I have sacrificed a great deal on her account, and
might have done much better, you know.'
It was a very long time before Tom said 'Certainly;' so long, that he
might have taken a nap in the interval, but he did say it at last.
'Now, there is one odd coincidence connected with this love-story,' said
Martin, 'which brings it to an end. You remember what you told me last
night as we were coming here, about your pretty visitor in the church?'
'Surely I do,' said Tom, rising from his stool, and seating himself in
the chair from which the other had lately risen, that he might see his
face. 'Undoubtedly.'
'That was she.'
'I knew what you were going to say,' cried Tom, looking fixedly at him,
and speaking very softly. 'You don't tell me so?'
'That was she,' repeated the young man. 'After what I have heard
from Pecksniff, I have no doubt that she came and went with my
grandfather.--Don't you drink too much of that sour wine, or you'll have
a fit of some sort, Pinch, I see.'
'It is not very wholesome, I am afraid,' said Tom, setting down the
empty glass he had for some time held. 'So that was she, was it?'
Martin nodded assent; and adding, with a restless impatience, that if
he had been a few days earlier he would have seen her; and that now she
might be, for anything he knew, hundreds of miles away; threw himself,
after a few turns across the room, into a chair, and chafed like a
spoilt child.
Tom Pinch's heart was very tender, and he could not bear to see the
most indifferent person in distress; still less one who had awakened
an interest in him, and who regarded him (either in fact, or as he
supposed) with kindness, and in a spirit of lenient construction.
Whatever his own thoughts had been a few moments before--and to judge
from his face they must have been pretty serious--he dismissed them
instantly, and gave his young friend the best counsel and comfort that
occurred to him.
'All will be well in time,' said Tom, 'I have no doubt; and some trial
and adversity just now will only serve to make you more attached to each
other in better days. I have always read that the truth is so, and I
have a feeling within me, which tells me how natural and right it is
that it should be. That never ran smooth yet,' said Tom, with a smile
which, despite the homeliness of his face, was pleasanter to see than
many a proud beauty's brightest glance; 'what never ran smooth yet, can
hardly be expected to change its character for us; so we must take it as
we find it, and fashion it into the very best shape we can, by patience
and good-humour. I have no power at all; I needn't tell you that; but I
have an excellent will; and if I could ever be of use to you, in any way
whatever, how very glad I should be!'
'Thank you,' said Martin, shaking his hand. 'You're a good fellow, upon
my word, and speak very kindly. Of course you know,' he added, after a
moment's pause, as he drew his chair towards the fire again, 'I should
not hesitate to avail myself of your services if you could help me at
all; but mercy on us!'--Here he rumpled his hair impatiently with his
hand, and looked at Tom as if he took it rather ill that he was not
somebody else--'you might as well be a toasting-fork or a frying-pan,
Pinch, for any help you can render me.'
'Except in the inclination,' said Tom, gently.
'Oh! to be sure. I meant that, of course. If inclination went for
anything, I shouldn't want help. I tell you what you may do, though, if
you will, and at the present moment too.'
'What is that?' demanded Tom.
'Read to me.'
'I shall be delighted,' cried Tom, catching up the candle with
enthusiasm. 'Excuse my leaving you in the dark a moment, and I'll fetch
a book directly. What will you like? Shakespeare?'
'Aye!' replied his friend, yawning and stretching himself. 'He'll do. I
am tired with the bustle of to-day, and the novelty of everything about
me; and in such a case, there's no greater luxury in the world, I think,
than being read to sleep. You won't mind my going to sleep, if I can?'
'Not at all!' cried Tom.
'Then begin as soon as you like. You needn't leave off when you see
me getting drowsy (unless you feel tired), for it's pleasant to wake
gradually to the sounds again. Did you ever try that?'
'No, I never tried that,' said Tom
'Well! You can, you know, one of these days when we're both in the right
humour. Don't mind leaving me in the dark. Look sharp!'
Mr Pinch lost no time in moving away; and in a minute or two returned
with one of the precious volumes from the shelf beside his bed. Martin
had in the meantime made himself as comfortable as circumstances would
permit, by constructing before the fire a temporary sofa of three chairs
with Mercy's stool for a pillow, and lying down at full-length upon it.
'Don't be too loud, please,' he said to Pinch.
'No, no,' said Tom.
'You're sure you're not cold'
'Not at all!' cried Tom.
'I am quite ready, then.'
Mr Pinch accordingly, after turning over the leaves of his book with as
much care as if they were living and highly cherished creatures, made
his own selection, and began to read. Before he had completed fifty
lines his friend was snoring.
'Poor fellow!' said Tom, softly, as he stretched out his head to peep
at him over the backs of the chairs. 'He is very young to have so much
trouble. How trustful and generous in him to bestow all this confidence
in me. And that was she, was it?'
But suddenly remembering their compact, he took up the poem at the place
where he had left off, and went on reading; always forgetting to snuff
the candle, until its wick looked like a mushroom. He gradually became
so much interested, that he quite forgot to replenish the fire; and was
only reminded of his neglect by Martin Chuzzlewit starting up after the
lapse of an hour or so, and crying with a shiver.
'Why, it's nearly out, I declare! No wonder I dreamed of being frozen.
Do call for some coals. What a fellow you are, Pinch!'
CHAPTER SEVEN
IN WHICH MR CHEVY SLYME ASSERTS THE INDEPENDENCE OF HIS SPIRIT, AND THE
BLUE DRAGON LOSES A LIMB
Martin began to work at the grammar-school next morning, with so much
vigour and expedition, that Mr Pinch had new reason to do homage to
the natural endowments of that young gentleman, and to acknowledge
his infinite superiority to himself. The new pupil received Tom's
compliments very graciously; and having by this time conceived a real
regard for him, in his own peculiar way, predicted that they would
always be the very best of friends, and that neither of them, he was
certain (but particularly Tom), would ever have reason to regret the day
on which they became acquainted. Mr Pinch was delighted to hear him say
this, and felt so much flattered by his kind assurances of friendship
and protection, that he was at a loss how to express the pleasure they
afforded him. And indeed it may be observed of this friendship, such as
it was, that it had within it more likely materials of endurance than
many a sworn brotherhood that has been rich in promise; for so long as
the one party found a pleasure in patronizing, and the other in
being patronised (which was in the very essence of their respective
characters), it was of all possible events among the least probable,
that the twin demons, Envy and Pride, would ever arise between them. So
in very many cases of friendship, or what passes for it, the old axiom
is reversed, and like clings to unlike more than to like.
They were both very busy on the afternoon succeeding the family's
departure--Martin with the grammar-school, and Tom in balancing certain
receipts of rents, and deducting Mr Pecksniff's commission from the
same; in which abstruse employment he was much distracted by a habit his
new friend had of whistling aloud while he was drawing--when they were
not a little startled by the unexpected obtrusion into that sanctuary of
genius, of a human head which, although a shaggy and somewhat alarming
head in appearance, smiled affably upon them from the doorway, in
a manner that was at once waggish, conciliatory, and expressive of
approbation.
'I am not industrious myself, gents both,' said the head, 'but I know
how to appreciate that quality in others. I wish I may turn grey
and ugly, if it isn't in my opinion, next to genius, one of the very
charmingest qualities of the human mind. Upon my soul, I am grateful
to my friend Pecksniff for helping me to the contemplation of such
a delicious picture as you present. You remind me of Whittington,
afterwards thrice Lord Mayor of London. I give you my unsullied word of
honour, that you very strongly remind me of that historical character.
You are a pair of Whittingtons, gents, without the cat; which is a most
agreeable and blessed exception to me, for I am not attached to the
feline species. My name is Tigg; how do you do?'
Martin looked to Mr Pinch for an explanation; and Tom, who had never in
his life set eyes on Mr Tigg before, looked to that gentleman himself.
'Chevy Slyme?' said Mr Tigg, interrogatively, and kissing his left hand
in token of friendship. 'You will understand me when I say that I am the
accredited agent of Chevy Slyme; that I am the ambassador from the court
of Chiv? Ha ha!'
'Heyday!' asked Martin, starting at the mention of a name he knew.
'Pray, what does he want with me?'
'If your name is Pinch'--Mr Tigg began.
'It is not' said Martin, checking himself. 'That is Mr Pinch.'
'If that is Mr Pinch,' cried Tigg, kissing his hand again, and beginning
to follow his head into the room, 'he will permit me to say that I
greatly esteem and respect his character, which has been most highly
commended to me by my friend Pecksniff; and that I deeply appreciate his
talent for the organ, notwithstanding that I do not, if I may use the
expression, grind myself. If that is Mr Pinch, I will venture to express
a hope that I see him well, and that he is suffering no inconvenience
from the easterly wind?'
'Thank you,' said Tom. 'I am very well.'
'That is a comfort,' Mr Tigg rejoined. 'Then,' he added, shielding his
lips with the palm of his hand, and applying them close to Mr Pinch's
ear, 'I have come for the letter.'
'For the letter,' said Tom, aloud. 'What letter?'
'The letter,' whispered Tigg in the same cautious manner as before,
'which my friend Pecksniff addressed to Chevy Slyme, Esquire, and left
with you.'
'He didn't leave any letter with me,' said Tom.
'Hush!' cried the other. 'It's all the same thing, though not so
delicately done by my friend Pecksniff as I could have wished. The
money.'
'The money!' cried Tom quite scared.
'Exactly so,' said Mr Tigg. With which he rapped Tom twice or thrice
upon the breast and nodded several times, as though he would say that he
saw they understood each other; that it was unnecessary to mention
the circumstance before a third person; and that he would take it as a
particular favour if Tom would slip the amount into his hand, as quietly
as possible.
Mr Pinch, however, was so very much astounded by this (to him)
inexplicable deportment, that he at once openly declared there must be
some mistake, and that he had been entrusted with no commission whatever
having any reference to Mr Tigg or to his friend, either. Mr Tigg
received this declaration with a grave request that Mr Pinch would have
the goodness to make it again; and on Tom's repeating it in a still more
emphatic and unmistakable manner, checked it off, sentence for sentence,
by nodding his head solemnly at the end of each. When it had come to
a close for the second time, Mr Tigg sat himself down in a chair and
addressed the young men as follows:
'Then I tell you what it is, gents both. There is at this present moment
in this very place, a perfect constellation of talent and genius, who is
involved, through what I cannot but designate as the culpable negligence
of my friend Pecksniff, in a situation as tremendous, perhaps, as the
social intercourse of the nineteenth century will readily admit
of. There is actually at this instant, at the Blue Dragon in this
village--an ale-house, observe; a common, paltry, low-minded,
clodhopping, pipe-smoking ale-house--an individual, of whom it may be
said, in the language of the Poet, that nobody but himself can in any
way come up to him; who is detained there for his bill. Ha! ha! For his
bill. I repeat it--for his bill. Now,' said Mr Tigg, 'we have heard
of Fox's Book of Martyrs, I believe, and we have heard of the Court of
Requests, and the Star Chamber; but I fear the contradiction of no man
alive or dead, when I assert that my friend Chevy Slyme being held
in pawn for a bill, beats any amount of cockfighting with which I am
acquainted.'
Martin and Mr Pinch looked, first at each other, and afterwards at Mr
Tigg, who with his arms folded on his breast surveyed them, half in
despondency and half in bitterness.
'Don't mistake me, gents both,' he said, stretching forth his right
hand. 'If it had been for anything but a bill, I could have borne it,
and could still have looked upon mankind with some feeling of respect;
but when such a man as my friend Slyme is detained for a score--a thing
in itself essentially mean; a low performance on a slate, or possibly
chalked upon the back of a door--I do feel that there is a screw of
such magnitude loose somewhere, that the whole framework of society
is shaken, and the very first principles of things can no longer be
trusted. In short, gents both,' said Mr Tigg with a passionate flourish
of his hands and head, 'when a man like Slyme is detained for such
a thing as a bill, I reject the superstitions of ages, and believe
nothing. I don't even believe that I DON'T believe, curse me if I do!'
'I am very sorry, I am sure,' said Tom after a pause, 'but Mr
Pecksniff said nothing to me about it, and I couldn't act without his
instructions. Wouldn't it be better, sir, if you were to go to--to
wherever you came from--yourself, and remit the money to your friend?'
'How can that be done, when I am detained also?' said Mr Tigg; 'and when
moreover, owing to the astounding, and I must add, guilty negligence of
my friend Pecksniff, I have no money for coach-hire?'
Tom thought of reminding the gentleman (who, no doubt, in his agitation
had forgotten it) that there was a post-office in the land; and that
possibly if he wrote to some friend or agent for a remittance it might
not be lost upon the road; or at all events that the chance, however
desperate, was worth trusting to. But, as his good-nature presently
suggested to him certain reasons for abstaining from this hint, he
paused again, and then asked:
'Did you say, sir, that you were detained also?'
'Come here,' said Mr Tigg, rising. 'You have no objection to my opening
this window for a moment?'
'Certainly not,' said Tom.
'Very good,' said Mr Tigg, lifting the sash. 'You see a fellow down
there in a red neckcloth and no waistcoat?'
'Of course I do,' cried Tom. 'That's Mark Tapley.'
'Mark Tapley is it?' said the gentleman. 'Then Mark Tapley had not only
the great politeness to follow me to this house, but is waiting now, to
see me home again. And for that attention, sir,' added Mr Tigg, stroking
his moustache, 'I can tell you, that Mark Tapley had better in his
infancy have been fed to suffocation by Mrs Tapley, than preserved to
this time.'
Mr Pinch was not so dismayed by this terrible threat, but that he had
voice enough to call to Mark to come in, and upstairs; a summons which
he so speedily obeyed, that almost as soon as Tom and Mr Tigg had drawn
in their heads and closed the window again, he, the denounced, appeared
before them.
'Come here, Mark!' said Mr Pinch. 'Good gracious me! what's the matter
between Mrs Lupin and this gentleman?'
'What gentleman, sir?' said Mark. 'I don't see no gentleman here sir,
excepting you and the new gentleman,' to whom he made a rough kind of
bow--'and there's nothing wrong between Mrs Lupin and either of you, Mr
Pinch, I am sure.'
'Nonsense, Mark!' cried Tom. 'You see Mr--'
'Tigg,' interposed that gentleman. 'Wait a bit. I shall crush him soon.
All in good time!'
'Oh HIM!' rejoined Mark, with an air of careless defiance. 'Yes, I see
HIM. I could see him a little better, if he'd shave himself, and get his
hair cut.'
Mr Tigg shook his head with a ferocious look, and smote himself once
upon the breast.
'It's no use,' said Mark. 'If you knock ever so much in that quarter,
you'll get no answer. I know better. There's nothing there but padding;
and a greasy sort it is.'
'Nay, Mark,' urged Mr Pinch, interposing to prevent hostilities, 'tell
me what I ask you. You're not out of temper, I hope?'
'Out of temper, sir!' cried Mark, with a grin; 'why no, sir. There's
a little credit--not much--in being jolly, when such fellows as him is
a-going about like roaring lions; if there is any breed of lions, at
least, as is all roar and mane. What is there between him and Mrs Lupin,
sir? Why, there's a score between him and Mrs Lupin. And I think Mrs
Lupin lets him and his friend off very easy in not charging 'em double
prices for being a disgrace to the Dragon. That's my opinion. I wouldn't
have any such Peter the Wild Boy as him in my house, sir, not if I was
paid race-week prices for it. He's enough to turn the very beer in
the casks sour with his looks; he is! So he would, if it had judgment
enough.'
'You're not answering my question, you know, Mark,' observed Mr Pinch.
'Well, sir,' said Mark, 'I don't know as there's much to answer further
than that. Him and his friend goes and stops at the Moon and Stars till
they've run a bill there; and then comes and stops with us and does the
same. The running of bills is common enough Mr Pinch; it an't that as
we object to; it's the ways of this chap. Nothing's good enough for him;
all the women is dying for him he thinks, and is overpaid if he winks at
'em; and all the men was made to be ordered about by him. This not being
aggravation enough, he says this morning to me, in his usual captivating
way, "We're going to-night, my man." "Are you, sir?" says I. "Perhaps
you'd like the bill got ready, sir?" "Oh no, my man," he says; "you
needn't mind that. I'll give Pecksniff orders to see to that." In reply
to which, the Dragon makes answer, "Thankee, sir, you're very kind to
honour us so far, but as we don't know any particular good of you, and
you don't travel with luggage, and Mr Pecksniff an't at home (which
perhaps you mayn't happen to be aware of, sir), we should prefer
something more satisfactory;" and that's where the matter stands. And I
ask,' said Mr Tapley, pointing, in conclusion, to Mr Tigg, with his hat,
'any lady or gentleman, possessing ordinary strength of mind, to say
whether he's a disagreeable-looking chap or not!'
'Let me inquire,' said Martin, interposing between this candid speech
and the delivery of some blighting anathema by Mr Tigg, 'what the amount
of this debt may be?'
'In point of money, sir, very little,' answered Mark. 'Only just turned
of three pounds. But it an't that; it's the--'
'Yes, yes, you told us so before,' said Martin. 'Pinch, a word with
you.'
'What is it?' asked Tom, retiring with him to a corner of the room.
'Why, simply--I am ashamed to say--that this Mr Slyme is a relation of
mine, of whom I never heard anything pleasant; and that I don't want him
here just now, and think he would be cheaply got rid of, perhaps, for
three or four pounds. You haven't enough money to pay this bill, I
suppose?'
Tom shook his head to an extent that left no doubt of his entire
sincerity.
'That's unfortunate, for I am poor too; and in case you had had it, I'd
have borrowed it of you. But if we told this landlady we would see her
paid, I suppose that would answer the same purpose?'
'Oh dear, yes!' said Tom. 'She knows me, bless you!'
'Then let us go down at once and tell her so; for the sooner we are rid
of their company the better. As you have conducted the conversation with
this gentleman hitherto, perhaps you'll tell him what we purpose doing;
will you?'
Mr Pinch, complying, at once imparted the intelligence to Mr Tigg, who
shook him warmly by the hand in return, assuring him that his faith in
anything and everything was again restored. It was not so much, he said,
for the temporary relief of this assistance that he prized it, as for
its vindication of the high principle that Nature's Nobs felt with
Nature's Nobs, and that true greatness of soul sympathized with true
greatness of soul, all the world over. It proved to him, he said, that
like him they admired genius, even when it was coupled with the alloy
occasionally visible in the metal of his friend Slyme; and on behalf
of that friend, he thanked them; as warmly and heartily as if the
cause were his own. Being cut short in these speeches by a general move
towards the stairs, he took possession at the street door of the lapel
of Mr Pinch's coat, as a security against further interruption; and
entertained that gentleman with some highly improving discourse until
they reached the Dragon, whither they were closely followed by Mark and
the new pupil.
The rosy hostess scarcely needed Mr Pinch's word as a preliminary to
the release of her two visitors, of whom she was glad to be rid on
any terms; indeed, their brief detention had originated mainly with
Mr Tapley, who entertained a constitutional dislike to gentleman
out-at-elbows who flourished on false pretences; and had conceived a
particular aversion to Mr Tigg and his friend, as choice specimens of
the species. The business in hand thus easily settled, Mr Pinch and
Martin would have withdrawn immediately, but for the urgent entreaties
of Mr Tigg that they would allow him the honour of presenting them
to his friend Slyme, which were so very difficult of resistance that,
yielding partly to these persuasions and partly to their own curiosity,
they suffered themselves to be ushered into the presence of that
distinguished gentleman.
He was brooding over the remains of yesterday's decanter of brandy, and
was engaged in the thoughtful occupation of making a chain of rings on
the top of the table with the wet foot of his drinking-glass. Wretched
and forlorn as he looked, Mr Slyme had once been in his way, the
choicest of swaggerers; putting forth his pretensions boldly, as a
man of infinite taste and most undoubted promise. The stock-in-trade
requisite to set up an amateur in this department of business is very
slight, and easily got together; a trick of the nose and a curl of the
lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer, being ample provision for
any exigency. But, in an evil hour, this off-shoot of the Chuzzlewit
trunk, being lazy, and ill qualified for any regular pursuit and having
dissipated such means as he ever possessed, had formally established
himself as a professor of Taste for a livelihood; and finding, too late,
that something more than his old amount of qualifications was necessary
to sustain him in this calling, had quickly fallen to his present level,
where he retained nothing of his old self but his boastfulness and his
bile, and seemed to have no existence separate or apart from his friend
Tigg. And now so abject and so pitiful was he--at once so maudlin,
insolent, beggarly, and proud--that even his friend and parasite,
standing erect beside him, swelled into a Man by contrast.
'Chiv,' said Mr Tigg, clapping him on the back, 'my friend Pecksniff not
being at home, I have arranged our trifling piece of business with Mr
Pinch and friend. Mr Pinch and friend, Mr Chevy Slyme! Chiv, Mr Pinch
and friend!'
'These are agreeable circumstances in which to be introduced to
strangers,' said Chevy Slyme, turning his bloodshot eyes towards Tom
Pinch. 'I am the most miserable man in the world, I believe!'
Tom begged he wouldn't mention it; and finding him in this condition,
retired, after an awkward pause, followed by Martin. But Mr Tigg so
urgently conjured them, by coughs and signs, to remain in the shadow of
the door, that they stopped there.
'I swear,' cried Mr Slyme, giving the table an imbecile blow with his
fist, and then feebly leaning his head upon his hand, while some drunken
drops oozed from his eyes, 'that I am the wretchedest creature on
record. Society is in a conspiracy against me. I'm the most literary
man alive. I'm full of scholarship. I'm full of genius; I'm full of
information; I'm full of novel views on every subject; yet look at my
condition! I'm at this moment obliged to two strangers for a tavern
bill!'
Mr Tigg replenished his friend's glass, pressed it into his hand, and
nodded an intimation to the visitors that they would see him in a better
aspect immediately.
'Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill, eh!' repeated Mr Slyme,
after a sulky application to his glass. 'Very pretty! And crowds of
impostors, the while, becoming famous; men who are no more on a level
with me than--Tigg, I take you to witness that I am the most persecuted
hound on the face of the earth.'
With a whine, not unlike the cry of the animal he named, in its lowest
state of humiliation, he raised his glass to his mouth again. He found
some encouragement in it; for when he set it down he laughed scornfully.
Upon that Mr Tigg gesticulated to the visitors once more, and with great
expression, implying that now the time was come when they would see Chiv
in his greatness.
'Ha, ha, ha,' laughed Mr Slyme. 'Obliged to two strangers for a tavern
bill! Yet I think I've a rich uncle, Tigg, who could buy up the uncles
of fifty strangers! Have I, or have I not? I come of a good family,
I believe! Do I, or do I not? I'm not a man of common capacity or
accomplishments, I think! Am I, or am I not?'
'You are the American aloe of the human race, my dear Chiv,' said Mr
Tigg, 'which only blooms once in a hundred years!'
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Mr Slyme again. 'Obliged to two strangers for
a tavern bill! I obliged to two architect's apprentices. Fellows who
measure earth with iron chains, and build houses like bricklayers. Give
me the names of those two apprentices. How dare they oblige me!'
Mr Tigg was quite lost in admiration of this noble trait in his friend's
character; as he made known to Mr Pinch in a neat little ballet of
action, spontaneously invented for the purpose.
'I'll let 'em know, and I'll let all men know,' cried Chevy Slyme,
'that I'm none of the mean, grovelling, tame characters they meet with
commonly. I have an independent spirit. I have a heart that swells in my
bosom. I have a soul that rises superior to base considerations.'
'Oh Chiv, Chiv,' murmured Mr Tigg, 'you have a nobly independent nature,
Chiv!'
'You go and do your duty, sir,' said Mr Slyme, angrily, 'and borrow
money for travelling expenses; and whoever you borrow it of, let 'em
know that I possess a haughty spirit, and a proud spirit, and have
infernally finely-touched chords in my nature, which won't brook
patronage. Do you hear? Tell 'em I hate 'em, and that that's the way
I preserve my self-respect; and tell 'em that no man ever respected
himself more than I do!'
He might have added that he hated two sorts of men; all those who did
him favours, and all those who were better off than himself; as in
either case their position was an insult to a man of his stupendous
merits. But he did not; for with the apt closing words above recited, Mr
Slyme; of too haughty a stomach to work, to beg, to borrow, or to steal;
yet mean enough to be worked or borrowed, begged or stolen for, by any
catspaw that would serve his turn; too insolent to lick the hand that
fed him in his need, yet cur enough to bite and tear it in the dark;
with these apt closing words Mr Slyme fell forward with his head upon
the table, and so declined into a sodden sleep.
'Was there ever,' cried Mr Tigg, joining the young men at the door,
and shutting it carefully behind him, 'such an independent spirit as is
possessed by that extraordinary creature? Was there ever such a Roman as
our friend Chiv? Was there ever a man of such a purely classical turn of
thought, and of such a toga-like simplicity of nature? Was there ever a
man with such a flow of eloquence? Might he not, gents both, I ask, have
sat upon a tripod in the ancient times, and prophesied to a perfectly
unlimited extent, if previously supplied with gin-and-water at the
public cost?'
Mr Pinch was about to contest this latter position with his usual
mildness, when, observing that his companion had already gone
downstairs, he prepared to follow him.
'You are not going, Mr Pinch?' said Tigg.
'Thank you,' answered Tom. 'Yes. Don't come down.'
'Do you know that I should like one little word in private with you Mr
Pinch?' said Tigg, following him. 'One minute of your company in the
skittle-ground would very much relieve my mind. Might I beseech that
favour?'
'Oh, certainly,' replied Tom, 'if you really wish it.' So he accompanied
Mr Tigg to the retreat in question; on arriving at which place that
gentleman took from his hat what seemed to be the fossil remains of an
antediluvian pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes therewith.
'You have not beheld me this day,' said Mr Tigg, 'in a favourable
light.'
'Don't mention that,' said Tom, 'I beg.'
'But you have NOT,' cried Tigg. 'I must persist in that opinion. If you
could have seen me, Mr Pinch, at the head of my regiment on the coast
of Africa, charging in the form of a hollow square, with the women and
children and the regimental plate-chest in the centre, you would not
have known me for the same man. You would have respected me, sir.'
Tom had certain ideas of his own upon the subject of glory; and
consequently he was not quite so much excited by this picture as Mr Tigg
could have desired.
'But no matter!' said that gentleman. 'The school-boy writing home to
his parents and describing the milk-and-water, said "This is indeed
weakness." I repeat that assertion in reference to myself at the present
moment; and I ask your pardon. Sir, you have seen my friend Slyme?'
'No doubt,' said Mr Pinch.
'Sir, you have been impressed by my friend Slyme?'
'Not very pleasantly, I must say,' answered Tom, after a little
hesitation.
'I am grieved but not surprised,' cried Mr Tigg, detaining him with both
hands, 'to hear that you have come to that conclusion; for it is my own.
But, Mr Pinch, though I am a rough and thoughtless man, I can honour
Mind. I honour Mind in following my friend. To you of all men, Mr Pinch,
I have a right to make appeal on Mind's behalf, when it has not the art
to push its fortune in the world. And so, sir--not for myself, who have
no claim upon you, but for my crushed, my sensitive and independent
friend, who has--I ask the loan of three half-crowns. I ask you for the
loan of three half-crowns, distinctly, and without a blush. I ask it,
almost as a right. And when I add that they will be returned by post,
this week, I feel that you will blame me for that sordid stipulation.'
Mr Pinch took from his pocket an old-fashioned red-leather purse with
a steel clasp, which had probably once belonged to his deceased
grandmother. It held one half-sovereign and no more. All Tom's worldly
wealth until next quarter-day.
'Stay!' cried Mr Tigg, who had watched this proceeding keenly. 'I was
just about to say, that for the convenience of posting you had better
make it gold. Thank you. A general direction, I suppose, to Mr Pinch at
Mr Pecksniff's--will that find you?'
'That'll find me,' said Tom. 'You had better put Esquire to Mr
Pecksniff's name, if you please. Direct to me, you know, at Seth
Pecksniff's, Esquire.'
'At Seth Pecksniff's, Esquire,' repeated Mr Tigg, taking an exact note
of it with a stump of pencil. 'We said this week, I believe?'
'Yes; or Monday will do,' observed Tom.
'No, no, I beg your pardon. Monday will NOT do,' said Mr Tigg. 'If we
stipulated for this week, Saturday is the latest day. Did we stipulate
for this week?'
'Since you are so particular about it,' said Tom, 'I think we did.'
Mr Tigg added this condition to his memorandum; read the entry over to
himself with a severe frown; and that the transaction might be the more
correct and business-like, appended his initials to the whole. That
done, he assured Mr Pinch that everything was now perfectly regular;
and, after squeezing his hand with great fervour, departed.
Tom entertained enough suspicion that Martin might possibly turn this
interview into a jest, to render him desirous to avoid the company of
that young gentleman for the present. With this view he took a few turns
up and down the skittle-ground, and did not re-enter the house until
Mr Tigg and his friend had quitted it, and the new pupil and Mark were
watching their departure from one of the windows.
'I was just a-saying, sir, that if one could live by it,' observed Mark,
pointing after their late guests, 'that would be the sort of service
for me. Waiting on such individuals as them would be better than
grave-digging, sir.'
'And staying here would be better than either, Mark,' replied Tom. 'So
take my advice, and continue to swim easily in smooth water.'
'It's too late to take it now, sir,' said Mark. 'I have broke it to her,
sir. I am off to-morrow morning.'
'Off!' cried Mr Pinch, 'where to?'
'I shall go up to London, sir.'
'What to be?' asked Mr Pinch.
'Well! I don't know yet, sir. Nothing turned up that day I opened my
mind to you, as was at all likely to suit me. All them trades I thought
of was a deal too jolly; there was no credit at all to be got in any
of 'em. I must look for a private service, I suppose, sir. I might be
brought out strong, perhaps, in a serious family, Mr Pinch.'
'Perhaps you might come out rather too strong for a serious family's
taste, Mark.'
'That's possible, sir. If I could get into a wicked family, I might
do myself justice; but the difficulty is to make sure of one's ground,
because a young man can't very well advertise that he wants a place, and
wages an't so much an object as a wicked sitivation; can he, sir?'
'Why, no,' said Mr Pinch, 'I don't think he can.'
'An envious family,' pursued Mark, with a thoughtful face; 'or a
quarrelsome family, or a malicious family, or even a good out-and-out
mean family, would open a field of action as I might do something in.
The man as would have suited me of all other men was that old gentleman
as was took ill here, for he really was a trying customer. Howsever, I
must wait and see what turns up, sir; and hope for the worst.'
'You are determined to go then?' said Mr Pinch.
'My box is gone already, sir, by the waggon, and I'm going to walk on
to-morrow morning, and get a lift by the day coach when it overtakes me.
So I wish you good-bye, Mr Pinch--and you too, sir--and all good luck
and happiness!'
They both returned his greeting laughingly, and walked home arm-in-arm.
Mr Pinch imparting to his new friend, as they went, such further
particulars of Mark Tapley's whimsical restlessness as the reader is
already acquainted with.
In the meantime Mark, having a shrewd notion that his mistress was
in very low spirits, and that he could not exactly answer for the
consequences of any lengthened TETE-A-TETE in the bar, kept himself
obstinately out of her way all the afternoon and evening. In this piece
of generalship he was very much assisted by the great influx of company
into the taproom; for the news of his intention having gone abroad,
there was a perfect throng there all the evening, and much drinking of
healths and clinking of mugs. At length the house was closed for the
night; and there being now no help for it, Mark put the best face he
could upon the matter, and walked doggedly to the bar-door.
'If I look at her,' said Mark to himself, 'I'm done. I feel that I'm
a-going fast.'
'You have come at last,' said Mrs Lupin.
Aye, Mark said: There he was.
'And you are determined to leave us, Mark?' cried Mrs Lupin.
'Why, yes; I am,' said Mark; keeping his eyes hard upon the floor.
'I thought,' pursued the landlady, with a most engaging hesitation,
'that you had been--fond--of the Dragon?'
'So I am,' said Mark.
'Then,' pursued the hostess--and it really was not an unnatural
inquiry--'why do you desert it?'
But as he gave no manner of answer to this question; not even on
its being repeated; Mrs Lupin put his money into his hand, and asked
him--not unkindly, quite the contrary--what he would take?
It is proverbial that there are certain things which flesh and blood
cannot bear. Such a question as this, propounded in such a manner, at
such a time, and by such a person, proved (at least, as far as, Mark's
flesh and blood were concerned) to be one of them. He looked up in spite
of himself directly; and having once looked up, there was no
looking down again; for of all the tight, plump, buxom, bright-eyed,
dimple-faced landladies that ever shone on earth, there stood before him
then, bodily in that bar, the very pink and pineapple.
'Why, I tell you what,' said Mark, throwing off all his constraint in an
instant and seizing the hostess round the waist--at which she was not at
all alarmed, for she knew what a good young man he was--'if I took what
I liked most, I should take you. If I only thought what was best for me,
I should take you. If I took what nineteen young fellows in twenty would
be glad to take, and would take at any price, I should take you. Yes,
I should,' cried Mr Tapley, shaking his head expressively enough, and
looking (in a momentary state of forgetfulness) rather hard at the
hostess's ripe lips. 'And no man wouldn't wonder if I did!'
Mrs Lupin said he amazed her. She was astonished how he could say such
things. She had never thought it of him.
'Why, I never thought if of myself till now!' said Mark, raising his
eyebrows with a look of the merriest possible surprise. 'I always
expected we should part, and never have no explanation; I meant to do it
when I come in here just now; but there's something about you, as makes
a man sensible. Then let us have a word or two together; letting it be
understood beforehand,' he added this in a grave tone, to prevent the
possibility of any mistake, 'that I'm not a-going to make no love, you
know.'
There was for just one second a shade, though not by any means a dark
one, on the landlady's open brow. But it passed off instantly, in a
laugh that came from her very heart.
'Oh, very good!' she said; 'if there is to be no love-making, you had
better take your arm away.'
'Lord, why should I!' cried Mark. 'It's quite innocent.'
'Of course it's innocent,' returned the hostess, 'or I shouldn't allow
it.'
'Very well!' said Mark. 'Then let it be.'
There was so much reason in this that the landlady laughed again,
suffered it to remain, and bade him say what he had to say, and be quick
about it. But he was an impudent fellow, she added.
'Ha ha! I almost think I am!' cried Mark, 'though I never thought so
before. Why, I can say anything to-night!'
'Say what you're going to say if you please, and be quick,' returned the
landlady, 'for I want to get to bed.'
'Why, then, my dear good soul,' said Mark, 'and a kinder woman than you
are never drawed breath--let me see the man as says she did!--what would
be the likely consequence of us two being--'
'Oh nonsense!' cried Mrs Lupin. 'Don't talk about that any more.'
'No, no, but it an't nonsense,' said Mark; 'and I wish you'd attend.
What would be the likely consequence of us two being married? If I can't
be content and comfortable in this here lively Dragon now, is it to be
looked for as I should be then? By no means. Very good. Then you, even
with your good humour, would be always on the fret and worrit, always
uncomfortable in your own mind, always a-thinking as you was getting too
old for my taste, always a-picturing me to yourself as being chained
up to the Dragon door, and wanting to break away. I don't know that it
would be so,' said Mark, 'but I don't know that it mightn't be. I am a
roving sort of chap, I know. I'm fond of change. I'm always a-thinking
that with my good health and spirits it would be more creditable in me
to be jolly where there's things a-going on to make one dismal. It may
be a mistake of mine you see, but nothing short of trying how it acts
will set it right. Then an't it best that I should go; particular when
your free way has helped me out to say all this, and we can part as
good friends as we have ever been since first I entered this here noble
Dragon, which,' said Mr Tapley in conclusion, 'has my good word and my
good wish to the day of my death!'
The hostess sat quite silent for a little time, but she very soon put
both her hands in Mark's and shook them heartily.
'For you are a good man,' she said; looking into his face with a smile,
which was rather serious for her. 'And I do believe have been a better
friend to me to-night than ever I have had in all my life.'
'Oh! as to that, you know,' said Mark, 'that's nonsense. But love my
heart alive!' he added, looking at her in a sort of rapture, 'if you ARE
that way disposed, what a lot of suitable husbands there is as you may
drive distracted!'
She laughed again at this compliment; and, once more shaking him by both
hands, and bidding him, if he should ever want a friend, to remember
her, turned gayly from the little bar and up the Dragon staircase.
'Humming a tune as she goes,' said Mark, listening, 'in case I should
think she's at all put out, and should be made down-hearted. Come,
here's some credit in being jolly, at last!'
With that piece of comfort, very ruefully uttered, he went, in anything
but a jolly manner, to bed.
He rose early next morning, and was a-foot soon after sunrise. But it
was of no use; the whole place was up to see Mark Tapley off; the boys,
the dogs, the children, the old men, the busy people and the idlers;
there they were, all calling out 'Good-b'ye, Mark,' after their own
manner, and all sorry he was going. Somehow he had a kind of sense that
his old mistress was peeping from her chamber-window, but he couldn't
make up his mind to look back.
'Good-b'ye one, good-b'ye all!' cried Mark, waving his hat on the top
of his walking-stick, as he strode at a quick pace up the little street.
'Hearty chaps them wheelwrights--hurrah! Here's the butcher's dog
a-coming out of the garden--down, old fellow! And Mr Pinch a-going to
his organ--good-b'ye, sir! And the terrier-bitch from over the way--hie,
then, lass! And children enough to hand down human natur to the latest
posterity--good-b'ye, boys and girls! There's some credit in it now. I'm
a-coming out strong at last. These are the circumstances that would try
a ordinary mind; but I'm uncommon jolly. Not quite as jolly as I could
wish to be, but very near. Good-b'ye! good-b'ye!'
CHAPTER EIGHT
ACCOMPANIES MR PECKSNIFF AND HIS CHARMING DAUGHTERS TO THE CITY OF
LONDON; AND RELATES WHAT FELL OUT UPON THEIR WAY THITHER
When Mr Pecksniff and the two young ladies got into the heavy coach at
the end of the lane, they found it empty, which was a great comfort;
particularly as the outside was quite full and the passengers looked
very frosty. For as Mr Pecksniff justly observed--when he and his
daughters had burrowed their feet deep in the straw, wrapped themselves
to the chin, and pulled up both windows--it is always satisfactory to
feel, in keen weather, that many other people are not as warm as
you are. And this, he said, was quite natural, and a very beautiful
arrangement; not confined to coaches, but extending itself into many
social ramifications. 'For' (he observed), 'if every one were warm and
well-fed, we should lose the satisfaction of admiring the fortitude with
which certain conditions of men bear cold and hunger. And if we were
no better off than anybody else, what would become of our sense of
gratitude; which,' said Mr Pecksniff with tears in his eyes, as he shook
his fist at a beggar who wanted to get up behind, 'is one of the holiest
feelings of our common nature.'
His children heard with becoming reverence these moral precepts from the
lips of their father, and signified their acquiescence in the same, by
smiles. That he might the better feed and cherish that sacred flame of
gratitude in his breast, Mr Pecksniff remarked that he would trouble
his eldest daughter, even in this early stage of their journey, for the
brandy-bottle. And from the narrow neck of that stone vessel he imbibed
a copious refreshment.
'What are we?' said Mr Pecksniff, 'but coaches? Some of us are slow
coaches'--
'Goodness, Pa!' cried Charity.
'Some of us, I say,' resumed her parent with increased emphasis, 'are
slow coaches; some of us are fast coaches. Our passions are the horses;
and rampant animals too--!'
'Really, Pa,' cried both the daughters at once. 'How very unpleasant.'
'And rampant animals too' repeated Mr Pecksniff with so much
determination, that he may be said to have exhibited, at the moment a
sort of moral rampancy himself;'--and Virtue is the drag. We start from
The Mother's Arms, and we run to The Dust Shovel.'
When he had said this, Mr Pecksniff, being exhausted, took some further
refreshment. When he had done that, he corked the bottle tight, with the
air of a man who had effectually corked the subject also; and went to
sleep for three stages.
The tendency of mankind when it falls asleep in coaches, is to wake up
cross; to find its legs in its way; and its corns an aggravation.
Mr Pecksniff not being exempt from the common lot of humanity found
himself, at the end of his nap, so decidedly the victim of these
infirmities, that he had an irresistible inclination to visit them upon
his daughters; which he had already begun to do in the shape of divers
random kicks, and other unexpected motions of his shoes, when the coach
stopped, and after a short delay the door was opened.
'Now mind,' said a thin sharp voice in the dark. 'I and my son go
inside, because the roof is full, but you agree only to charge us
outside prices. It's quite understood that we won't pay more. Is it?'
'All right, sir,' replied the guard.
'Is there anybody inside now?' inquired the voice.
'Three passengers,' returned the guard.
'Then I ask the three passengers to witness this bargain, if they will
be so good,' said the voice. 'My boy, I think we may safely get in.'
In pursuance of which opinion, two people took their seats in the
vehicle, which was solemnly licensed by Act of Parliament to carry any
six persons who could be got in at the door.
'That was lucky!' whispered the old man, when they moved on again. 'And
a great stroke of policy in you to observe it. He, he, he! We couldn't
have gone outside. I should have died of the rheumatism!'
Whether it occurred to the dutiful son that he had in some degree
over-reached himself by contributing to the prolongation of his father's
days; or whether the cold had effected his temper; is doubtful. But he
gave his father such a nudge in reply, that that good old gentleman
was taken with a cough which lasted for full five minutes without
intermission, and goaded Mr Pecksniff to that pitch of irritation, that
he said at last--and very suddenly:
'There is no room! There is really no room in this coach for any
gentleman with a cold in his head!'
'Mine,' said the old man, after a moment's pause, 'is upon my chest,
Pecksniff.'
The voice and manner, together, now that he spoke out; the composure of
the speaker; the presence of his son; and his knowledge of Mr Pecksniff;
afforded a clue to his identity which it was impossible to mistake.
'Hem! I thought,' said Mr Pecksniff, returning to his usual mildness,
'that I addressed a stranger. I find that I address a relative, Mr
Anthony Chuzzlewit and his son Mr Jonas--for they, my dear children,
are our travelling companions--will excuse me for an apparently harsh
remark. It is not MY desire to wound the feelings of any person with
whom I am connected in family bonds. I may be a Hypocrite,' said Mr
Pecksniff, cuttingly; 'but I am not a Brute.'
'Pooh, pooh!' said the old man. 'What signifies that word, Pecksniff?
Hypocrite! why, we are all hypocrites. We were all hypocrites t'other
day. I am sure I felt that to be agreed upon among us, or I shouldn't
have called you one. We should not have been there at all, if we had not
been hypocrites. The only difference between you and the rest was--shall
I tell you the difference between you and the rest now, Pecksniff?'
'If you please, my good sir; if you please.'
'Why, the annoying quality in YOU, is,' said the old man, 'that you
never have a confederate or partner in YOUR juggling; you would deceive
everybody, even those who practise the same art; and have a way with
you, as if you--he, he, he!--as if you really believed yourself. I'd
lay a handsome wager now,' said the old man, 'if I laid wagers, which
I don't and never did, that you keep up appearances by a tacit
understanding, even before your own daughters here. Now I, when I have
a business scheme in hand, tell Jonas what it is, and we discuss it
openly. You're not offended, Pecksniff?'
'Offended, my good sir!' cried that gentleman, as if he had received the
highest compliments that language could convey.
'Are you travelling to London, Mr Pecksniff?' asked the son.
'Yes, Mr Jonas, we are travelling to London. We shall have the pleasure
of your company all the way, I trust?'
'Oh! ecod, you had better ask father that,' said Jonas. 'I am not
a-going to commit myself.'
Mr Pecksniff was, as a matter of course, greatly entertained by this
retort. His mirth having subsided, Mr Jonas gave him to understand
that himself and parent were in fact travelling to their home in the
metropolis; and that, since the memorable day of the great family
gathering, they had been tarrying in that part of the country, watching
the sale of certain eligible investments, which they had had in their
copartnership eye when they came down; for it was their custom, Mr Jonas
said, whenever such a thing was practicable, to kill two birds with one
stone, and never to throw away sprats, but as bait for whales. When he
had communicated to Mr Pecksniff these pithy scraps of intelligence,
he said, 'That if it was all the same to him, he would turn him over
to father, and have a chat with the gals;' and in furtherance of
this polite scheme, he vacated his seat adjoining that gentleman, and
established himself in the opposite corner, next to the fair Miss Mercy.
The education of Mr Jonas had been conducted from his cradle on the
strictest principles of the main chance. The very first word he learnt
to spell was 'gain,' and the second (when he got into two syllables),
'money.' But for two results, which were not clearly foreseen perhaps by
his watchful parent in the beginning, his training may be said to have
been unexceptionable. One of these flaws was, that having been long
taught by his father to over-reach everybody, he had imperceptibly
acquired a love of over-reaching that venerable monitor himself.
The other, that from his early habits of considering everything as a
question of property, he had gradually come to look, with impatience,
on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate, which had no
right whatever to be going at large, but ought to be secured in that
particular description of iron safe which is commonly called a coffin,
and banked in the grave.
'Well, cousin!' said Mr Jonas--'Because we ARE cousins, you know, a few
times removed--so you're going to London?'
Miss Mercy replied in the affirmative, pinching her sister's arm at the
same time, and giggling excessively.
'Lots of beaux in London, cousin!' said Mr Jonas, slightly advancing his
elbow.
'Indeed, sir!' cried the young lady. 'They won't hurt us, sir, I dare
say.' And having given him this answer with great demureness she was so
overcome by her own humour, that she was fain to stifle her merriment in
her sister's shawl.
'Merry,' cried that more prudent damsel, 'really I am ashamed of you.
How can you go on so? You wild thing!' At which Miss Merry only laughed
the more, of course.
'I saw a wildness in her eye, t'other day,' said Mr Jonas, addressing
Charity. 'But you're the one to sit solemn! I say--You were regularly
prim, cousin!'
'Oh! The old-fashioned fright!' cried Merry, in a whisper. 'Cherry my
dear, upon my word you must sit next him. I shall die outright if he
talks to me any more; I shall, positively!' To prevent which fatal
consequence, the buoyant creature skipped out of her seat as she spoke,
and squeezed her sister into the place from which she had risen.
'Don't mind crowding me,' cried Mr Jonas. 'I like to be crowded by gals.
Come a little closer, cousin.'
'No, thank you, sir,' said Charity.
'There's that other one a-laughing again,' said Mr Jonas; 'she's
a-laughing at my father, I shouldn't wonder. If he puts on that old
flannel nightcap of his, I don't know what she'll do! Is that my father
a-snoring, Pecksniff?'
'Yes, Mr Jonas.'
'Tread upon his foot, will you be so good?' said the young gentleman.
'The foot next you's the gouty one.'
Mr Pecksniff hesitating to perform this friendly office, Mr Jonas did it
himself; at the same time crying:
'Come, wake up, father, or you'll be having the nightmare, and
screeching out, I know.--Do you ever have the nightmare, cousin?' he
asked his neighbour, with characteristic gallantry, as he dropped his
voice again.
'Sometimes,' answered Charity. 'Not often.'
'The other one,' said Mr Jonas, after a pause. 'Does SHE ever have the
nightmare?'
'I don't know,' replied Charity. 'You had better ask her.'
'She laughs so,' said Jonas; 'there's no talking to her. Only hark how
she's a-going on now! You're the sensible one, cousin!'
'Tut, tut!' cried Charity.
'Oh! But you are! You know you are!'
'Mercy is a little giddy,' said Miss Charity. But she'll sober down in
time.'
'It'll be a very long time, then, if she does at all,' rejoined her
cousin. 'Take a little more room.'
'I am afraid of crowding you,' said Charity. But she took it
notwithstanding; and after one or two remarks on the extreme heaviness
of the coach, and the number of places it stopped at, they fell into
a silence which remained unbroken by any member of the party until
supper-time.
Although Mr Jonas conducted Charity to the hotel and sat himself beside
her at the board, it was pretty clear that he had an eye to 'the other
one' also, for he often glanced across at Mercy, and seemed to draw
comparisons between the personal appearance of the two, which were not
unfavourable to the superior plumpness of the younger sister. He allowed
himself no great leisure for this kind of observation, however, being
busily engaged with the supper, which, as he whispered in his fair
companion's ear, was a contract business, and therefore the more she
ate, the better the bargain was. His father and Mr Pecksniff, probably
acting on the same wise principle, demolished everything that came
within their reach, and by that means acquired a greasy expression of
countenance, indicating contentment, if not repletion, which it was very
pleasant to contemplate.
When they could eat no more, Mr Pecksniff and Mr Jonas subscribed for
two sixpenny-worths of hot brandy-and-water, which the latter gentleman
considered a more politic order than one shillingsworth; there being
a chance of their getting more spirit out of the innkeeper under this
arrangement than if it were all in one glass. Having swallowed his share
of the enlivening fluid, Mr Pecksniff, under pretence of going to see if
the coach were ready, went secretly to the bar, and had his own little
bottle filled, in order that he might refresh himself at leisure in the
dark coach without being observed.
These arrangements concluded, and the coach being ready, they got into
their old places and jogged on again. But before he composed himself
for a nap, Mr Pecksniff delivered a kind of grace after meat, in these
words:
'The process of digestion, as I have been informed by anatomical
friends, is one of the most wonderful works of nature. I do not know
how it may be with others, but it is a great satisfaction to me to know,
when regaling on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion the most
beautiful machinery with which we have any acquaintance. I really feel
at such times as if I was doing a public service. When I have wound
myself up, if I may employ such a term,' said Mr Pecksniff with
exquisite tenderness, 'and know that I am Going, I feel that in the
lesson afforded by the works within me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind!'
As nothing could be added to this, nothing was said; and Mr Pecksniff,
exulting, it may be presumed, in his moral utility, went to sleep again.
The rest of the night wore away in the usual manner. Mr Pecksniff
and Old Anthony kept tumbling against each other and waking up much
terrified, or crushed their heads in opposite corners of the coach and
strangely tattooed the surface of their faces--Heaven knows how--in
their sleep. The coach stopped and went on, and went on and stopped,
times out of number. Passengers got up and passengers got down, and
fresh horses came and went and came again, with scarcely any interval
between each team as it seemed to those who were dozing, and with a gap
of a whole night between every one as it seemed to those who were broad
awake. At length they began to jolt and rumble over horribly uneven
stones, and Mr Pecksniff looking out of window said it was to-morrow
morning, and they were there.
Very soon afterwards the coach stopped at the office in the city; and
the street in which it was situated was already in a bustle, that fully
bore out Mr Pecksniff's words about its being morning, though for any
signs of day yet appearing in the sky it might have been midnight. There
was a dense fog too; as if it were a city in the clouds, which they had
been travelling to all night up a magic beanstalk; and there was a thick
crust upon the pavement like oilcake; which, one of the outsides (mad,
no doubt) said to another (his keeper, of course), was Snow.
Taking a confused leave of Anthony and his son, and leaving the luggage
of himself and daughters at the office to be called for afterwards, Mr
Pecksniff, with one of the young ladies under each arm, dived across the
street, and then across other streets, and so up the queerest courts,
and down the strangest alleys and under the blindest archways, in a kind
of frenzy; now skipping over a kennel, now running for his life from a
coach and horses; now thinking he had lost his way, now thinking he had
found it; now in a state of the highest confidence, now despondent to
the last degree, but always in a great perspiration and flurry; until at
length they stopped in a kind of paved yard near the Monument. That is
to say, Mr Pecksniff told them so; for as to anything they could see
of the Monument, or anything else but the buildings close at hand, they
might as well have been playing blindman's buff at Salisbury.
Mr Pecksniff looked about him for a moment, and then knocked at the
door of a very dingy edifice, even among the choice collection of dingy
edifices at hand; on the front of which was a little oval board like
a tea-tray, with this inscription--'Commercial Boarding-House: M.
Todgers.'
It seemed that M. Todgers was not up yet, for Mr Pecksniff knocked twice
and rang thrice, without making any impression on anything but a dog
over the way. At last a chain and some bolts were withdrawn with a rusty
noise, as if the weather had made the very fastenings hoarse, and a
small boy with a large red head, and no nose to speak of, and a very
dirty Wellington boot on his left arm, appeared; who (being surprised)
rubbed the nose just mentioned with the back of a shoe-brush, and said
nothing.
'Still a-bed my man?' asked Mr Pecksniff.
'Still a-bed!' replied the boy. 'I wish they wos still a-bed. They're
very noisy a-bed; all calling for their boots at once. I thought you
was the Paper, and wondered why you didn't shove yourself through the
grating as usual. What do you want?'
Considering his years, which were tender, the youth may be said to have
preferred this question sternly, and in something of a defiant manner.
But Mr Pecksniff, without taking umbrage at his bearing put a card
in his hand, and bade him take that upstairs, and show them in the
meanwhile into a room where there was a fire.
'Or if there's one in the eating parlour,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I can
find it myself.' So he led his daughters, without waiting for any
further introduction, into a room on the ground-floor, where a
table-cloth (rather a tight and scanty fit in reference to the table it
covered) was already spread for breakfast; displaying a mighty dish of
pink boiled beef; an instance of that particular style of loaf which
is known to housekeepers as a slack-baked, crummy quartern; a liberal
provision of cups and saucers; and the usual appendages.
Inside the fender were some half-dozen pairs of shoes and boots, of
various sizes, just cleaned and turned with the soles upwards to dry;
and a pair of short black gaiters, on one of which was chalked--in
sport, it would appear, by some gentleman who had slipped down for the
purpose, pending his toilet, and gone up again--'Jinkins's Particular,'
while the other exhibited a sketch in profile, claiming to be the
portrait of Jinkins himself.
M. Todgers's Commercial Boarding-House was a house of that sort which is
likely to be dark at any time; but that morning it was especially dark.
There was an odd smell in the passage, as if the concentrated essence of
all the dinners that had been cooked in the kitchen since the house was
built, lingered at the top of the kitchen stairs to that hour, and like
the Black Friar in Don Juan, 'wouldn't be driven away.' In particular,
there was a sensation of cabbage; as if all the greens that had ever
been boiled there, were evergreens, and flourished in immortal strength.
The parlour was wainscoted, and communicated to strangers a magnetic
and instinctive consciousness of rats and mice. The staircase was very
gloomy and very broad, with balustrades so thick and heavy that they
would have served for a bridge. In a sombre corner on the first landing,
stood a gruff old giant of a clock, with a preposterous coronet of three
brass balls on his head; whom few had ever seen--none ever looked in the
face--and who seemed to continue his heavy tick for no other reason than
to warn heedless people from running into him accidentally. It had not
been papered or painted, hadn't Todgers's, within the memory of man. It
was very black, begrimed, and mouldy. And, at the top of the staircase,
was an old, disjointed, rickety, ill-favoured skylight, patched
and mended in all kinds of ways, which looked distrustfully down at
everything that passed below, and covered Todgers's up as if it were a
sort of human cucumber-frame, and only people of a peculiar growth were
reared there.
Mr Pecksniff and his fair daughters had not stood warming themselves at
the fire ten minutes, when the sound of feet was heard upon the stairs,
and the presiding deity of the establishment came hurrying in.
M. Todgers was a lady, rather a bony and hard-featured lady, with a row
of curls in front of her head, shaped like little barrels of beer;
and on the top of it something made of net--you couldn't call it a cap
exactly--which looked like a black cobweb. She had a little basket on
her arm, and in it a bunch of keys that jingled as she came. In her
other hand she bore a flaming tallow candle, which, after surveying Mr
Pecksniff for one instant by its light, she put down upon the table, to
the end that she might receive him with the greater cordiality.
'Mr Pecksniff!' cried Mrs Todgers. 'Welcome to London! Who would have
thought of such a visit as this, after so--dear, dear!--so many years!
How do you DO, Mr Pecksniff?'
'As well as ever; and as glad to see you, as ever;' Mr Pecksniff made
response. 'Why, you are younger than you used to be!'
'YOU are, I am sure!' said Mrs Todgers. 'You're not a bit changed.'
'What do you say to this?' cried Mr Pecksniff, stretching out his hand
towards the young ladies. 'Does this make me no older?'
'Not your daughters!' exclaimed the lady, raising her hands and clasping
them. 'Oh, no, Mr Pecksniff! Your second, and her bridesmaid!'
Mr Pecksniff smiled complacently; shook his head; and said, 'My
daughters, Mrs Todgers. Merely my daughters.'
'Ah!' sighed the good lady, 'I must believe you, for now I look at 'em
I think I should have known 'em anywhere. My dear Miss Pecksniffs, how
happy your Pa has made me!'
She hugged them both; and being by this time overpowered by her feelings
or the inclemency of the morning, jerked a little pocket handkerchief
out of the little basket, and applied the same to her face.
'Now, my good madam,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I know the rules of your
establishment, and that you only receive gentlemen boarders. But
it occurred to me, when I left home, that perhaps you would give my
daughters house room, and make an exception in their favour.'
'Perhaps?' cried Mrs Todgers ecstatically. 'Perhaps?'
'I may say then, that I was sure you would,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'I
know that you have a little room of your own, and that they can be
comfortable there, without appearing at the general table.'
'Dear girls!' said Mrs Todgers. 'I must take that liberty once more.'
Mrs Todgers meant by this that she must embrace them once more, which
she accordingly did with great ardour. But the truth was that the house
being full with the exception of one bed, which would now be occupied
by Mr Pecksniff, she wanted time for consideration; and so much time too
(for it was a knotty point how to dispose of them), that even when
this second embrace was over, she stood for some moments gazing at the
sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation shining out
of the other.
'I think I know how to arrange it,' said Mrs Todgers, at length. 'A sofa
bedstead in the little third room which opens from my own parlour.--Oh,
you dear girls!'
Thereupon she embraced them once more, observing that she could not
decide which was most like their poor mother (which was highly probable,
seeing that she had never beheld that lady), but that she rather thought
the youngest was; and then she said that as the gentlemen would be down
directly, and the ladies were fatigued with travelling, would they step
into her room at once?
It was on the same floor; being, in fact, the back parlour; and had,
as Mrs Todgers said, the great advantage (in London) of not being
overlooked; as they would see when the fog cleared off. Nor was this
a vainglorious boast, for it commanded at a perspective of two feet,
a brown wall with a black cistern on the top. The sleeping apartment
designed for the young ladies was approached from this chamber by a
mightily convenient little door, which would only open when fallen
against by a strong person. It commanded from a similar point of sight
another angle of the wall, and another side of the cistern. 'Not the
damp side,' said Mrs Todgers. 'THAT is Mr Jinkins's.'
In the first of these sanctuaries a fire was speedily kindled by the
youthful porter, who, whistling at his work in the absence of Mrs
Todgers (not to mention his sketching figures on his corduroys with
burnt firewood), and being afterwards taken by that lady in the fact,
was dismissed with a box on his ears. Having prepared breakfast for the
young ladies with her own hands, she withdrew to preside in the other
room; where the joke at Mr Jinkins's expense seemed to be proceeding
rather noisily.
'I won't ask you yet, my dears,' said Mr Pecksniff, looking in at the
door, 'how you like London. Shall I?'
'We haven't seen much of it, Pa!' cried Merry.
'Nothing, I hope,' said Cherry. (Both very miserably.)
'Indeed,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'that's true. We have our pleasure, and our
business too, before us. All in good time. All in good time!'
Whether Mr Pecksniff's business in London was as strictly professional
as he had given his new pupil to understand, we shall see, to adopt that
worthy man's phraseology, 'all in good time.'
CHAPTER NINE
TOWN AND TODGER'S
Surely there never was, in any other borough, city, or hamlet in the
world, such a singular sort of a place as Todgers's. And surely London,
to judge from that part of it which hemmed Todgers's round and hustled
it, and crushed it, and stuck its brick-and-mortar elbows into it, and
kept the air from it, and stood perpetually between it and the
light, was worthy of Todgers's, and qualified to be on terms of close
relationship and alliance with hundreds and thousands of the odd family
to which Todgers's belonged.
You couldn't walk about Todgers's neighbourhood, as you could in any
other neighbourhood. You groped your way for an hour through lanes and
byways, and court-yards, and passages; and you never once emerged upon
anything that might be reasonably called a street. A kind of resigned
distraction came over the stranger as he trod those devious mazes, and,
giving himself up for lost, went in and out and round about and quietly
turned back again when he came to a dead wall or was stopped by an
iron railing, and felt that the means of escape might possibly present
themselves in their own good time, but that to anticipate them was
hopeless. Instances were known of people who, being asked to dine at
Todgers's, had travelled round and round for a weary time, with its very
chimney-pots in view; and finding it, at last, impossible of attainment,
had gone home again with a gentle melancholy on their spirits,
tranquil and uncomplaining. Nobody had ever found Todgers's on a verbal
direction, though given within a few minutes' walk of it. Cautious
emigrants from Scotland or the North of England had been known to reach
it safely, by impressing a charity-boy, town-bred, and bringing him
along with them; or by clinging tenaciously to the postman; but these
were rare exceptions, and only went to prove the rule that Todgers's was
in a labyrinth, whereof the mystery was known but to a chosen few.
Several fruit-brokers had their marts near Todgers's; and one of the
first impressions wrought upon the stranger's senses was of oranges--of
damaged oranges--with blue and green bruises on them, festering in
boxes, or mouldering away in cellars. All day long, a stream of porters
from the wharves beside the river, each bearing on his back a bursting
chest of oranges, poured slowly through the narrow passages; while
underneath the archway by the public-house, the knots of those who
rested and regaled within, were piled from morning until night. Strange
solitary pumps were found near Todgers's hiding themselves for the most
part in blind alleys, and keeping company with fire-ladders. There were
churches also by dozens, with many a ghostly little churchyard, all
overgrown with such straggling vegetation as springs up spontaneously
from damp, and graves, and rubbish. In some of these dingy
resting-places which bore much the same analogy to green churchyards,
as the pots of earth for mignonette and wall-flower in the windows
overlooking them did to rustic gardens, there were trees; tall trees;
still putting forth their leaves in each succeeding year, with such a
languishing remembrance of their kind (so one might fancy, looking on
their sickly boughs) as birds in cages have of theirs. Here, paralysed
old watchmen guarded the bodies of the dead at night, year after year,
until at last they joined that solemn brotherhood; and, saving that they
slept below the ground a sounder sleep than even they had ever known
above it, and were shut up in another kind of box, their condition can
hardly be said to have undergone any material change when they, in turn,
were watched themselves.
Among the narrow thoroughfares at hand, there lingered, here and there,
an ancient doorway of carved oak, from which, of old, the sounds of
revelry and feasting often came; but now these mansions, only used
for storehouses, were dark and dull, and, being filled with wool, and
cotton, and the like--such heavy merchandise as stifles sound and stops
the throat of echo--had an air of palpable deadness about them which,
added to their silence and desertion, made them very grim. In like
manner, there were gloomy courtyards in these parts, into which few but
belated wayfarers ever strayed, and where vast bags and packs of goods,
upward or downward bound, were for ever dangling between heaven and
earth from lofty cranes There were more trucks near Todgers's than
you would suppose whole city could ever need; not active trucks, but
a vagabond race, for ever lounging in the narrow lanes before
their masters' doors and stopping up the pass; so that when a stray
hackney-coach or lumbering waggon came that way, they were the cause of
such an uproar as enlivened the whole neighbourhood, and made the bells
in the next churchtower vibrate again. In the throats and maws of dark
no-thoroughfares near Todgers's, individual wine-merchants and wholesale
dealers in grocery-ware had perfect little towns of their own; and, deep
among the foundations of these buildings, the ground was undermined and
burrowed out into stables, where cart-horses, troubled by rats, might be
heard on a quiet Sunday rattling their halters, as disturbed spirits in
tales of haunted houses are said to clank their chains.
To tell of half the queer old taverns that had a drowsy and secret
existence near Todgers's, would fill a goodly book; while a second
volume no less capacious might be devoted to an account of the quaint
old guests who frequented their dimly lighted parlours. These were, in
general, ancient inhabitants of that region; born, and bred there from
boyhood, who had long since become wheezy and asthmatical, and short of
breath, except in the article of story-telling; in which respect they
were still marvellously long-winded. These gentry were much opposed to
steam and all new-fangled ways, and held ballooning to be sinful, and
deplored the degeneracy of the times; which that particular member
of each little club who kept the keys of the nearest church,
professionally, always attributed to the prevalence of dissent and
irreligion; though the major part of the company inclined to the belief
that virtue went out with hair-powder, and that Old England's greatness
had decayed amain with barbers.
As to Todgers's itself--speaking of it only as a house in that
neighbourhood, and making no reference to its merits as a commercial
boarding establishment--it was worthy to stand where it did. There was
one staircase-window in it, at the side of the house, on the ground
floor; which tradition said had not been opened for a hundred years at
least, and which, abutting on an always dirty lane, was so begrimed and
coated with a century's mud, that no one pane of glass could possibly
fall out, though all were cracked and broken twenty times. But the grand
mystery of Todgers's was the cellarage, approachable only by a little
back door and a rusty grating; which cellarage within the memory of man
had had no connection with the house, but had always been the freehold
property of somebody else, and was reported to be full of wealth; though
in what shape--whether in silver, brass, or gold, or butts of wine,
or casks of gun-powder--was matter of profound uncertainty and supreme
indifference to Todgers's and all its inmates.
The top of the house was worthy of notice. There was a sort of terrace
on the roof, with posts and fragments of rotten lines, once intended to
dry clothes upon; and there were two or three tea-chests out there,
full of earth, with forgotten plants in them, like old walking-sticks.
Whoever climbed to this observatory, was stunned at first from having
knocked his head against the little door in coming out; and after that,
was for the moment choked from having looked perforce, straight down the
kitchen chimney; but these two stages over, there were things to gaze
at from the top of Todgers's, well worth your seeing too. For first
and foremost, if the day were bright, you observed upon the house-tops,
stretching far away, a long dark path; the shadow of the Monument; and
turning round, the tall original was close beside you, with every hair
erect upon his golden head, as if the doings of the city frightened him.
Then there were steeples, towers, belfries, shining vanes, and masts of
ships; a very forest. Gables, housetops, garret-windows, wilderness upon
wilderness. Smoke and noise enough for all the world at once.
After the first glance, there were slight features in the midst of this
crowd of objects, which sprung out from the mass without any reason, as
it were, and took hold of the attention whether the spectator would or
no. Thus, the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack of buildings
seemed to be turning gravely to each other every now and then, and
whispering the result of their separate observation of what was going
on below. Others, of a crook-backed shape, appeared to be maliciously
holding themselves askew, that they might shut the prospect out and
baffle Todgers's. The man who was mending a pen at an upper window over
the way, became of paramount importance in the scene, and made a blank
in it, ridiculously disproportionate in its extent, when he retired. The
gambols of a piece of cloth upon the dyer's pole had far more interest
for the moment than all the changing motion of the crowd. Yet even while
the looker-on felt angry with himself for this, and wondered how it was,
the tumult swelled into a roar; the hosts of objects seemed to thicken
and expand a hundredfold, and after gazing round him, quite scared, he
turned into Todgers's again, much more rapidly than he came out; and ten
to one he told M. Todgers afterwards that if he hadn't done so, he would
certainly have come into the street by the shortest cut; that is to say,
head-foremost.
So said the two Miss Pecksniffs, when they retired with Mrs Todgers from
this place of espial, leaving the youthful porter to close the door
and follow them downstairs; who, being of a playful temperament, and
contemplating with a delight peculiar to his sex and time of life, any
chance of dashing himself into small fragments, lingered behind to walk
upon the parapet.
It being the second day of their stay in London, the Miss Pecksniffs
and Mrs Todgers were by this time highly confidential, insomuch that the
last-named lady had already communicated the particulars of three early
disappointments of a tender nature; and had furthermore possessed her
young friends with a general summary of the life, conduct, and character
of Mr Todgers. Who, it seemed, had cut his matrimonial career rather
short, by unlawfully running away from his happiness, and establishing
himself in foreign countries as a bachelor.
'Your pa was once a little particular in his attentions, my dears,' said
Mrs Todgers, 'but to be your ma was too much happiness denied me. You'd
hardly know who this was done for, perhaps?'
She called their attention to an oval miniature, like a little blister,
which was tacked up over the kettle-holder, and in which there was a
dreamy shadowing forth of her own visage.
'It's a speaking likeness!' cried the two Miss Pecksniffs.
'It was considered so once,' said Mrs Todgers, warming herself in a
gentlemanly manner at the fire; 'but I hardly thought you would have
known it, my loves.'
They would have known it anywhere. If they could have met with it in
the street, or seen it in a shop window, they would have cried 'Good
gracious! Mrs Todgers!'
'Presiding over an establishment like this, makes sad havoc with the
features, my dear Miss Pecksniffs,' said Mrs Todgers. 'The gravy alone,
is enough to add twenty years to one's age, I do assure you.'
'Lor'!' cried the two Miss Pecksniffs.
'The anxiety of that one item, my dears,' said Mrs Todgers, 'keeps the
mind continually upon the stretch. There is no such passion in human
nature, as the passion for gravy among commercial gentlemen. It's
nothing to say a joint won't yield--a whole animal wouldn't yield--the
amount of gravy they expect each day at dinner. And what I have
undergone in consequence,' cried Mrs Todgers, raising her eyes and
shaking her head, 'no one would believe!'
'Just like Mr Pinch, Merry!' said Charity. 'We have always noticed it in
him, you remember?'
'Yes, my dear,' giggled Merry, 'but we have never given it him, you
know.'
'You, my dears, having to deal with your pa's pupils who can't help
themselves, are able to take your own way,' said Mrs Todgers; 'but in
a commercial establishment, where any gentleman may say any Saturday
evening, "Mrs Todgers, this day week we part, in consequence of the
cheese," it is not so easy to preserve a pleasant understanding. Your pa
was kind enough,' added the good lady, 'to invite me to take a ride with
you to-day; and I think he mentioned that you were going to call upon
Miss Pinch. Any relation to the gentleman you were speaking of just now,
Miss Pecksniff?'
'For goodness sake, Mrs Todgers,' interposed the lively Merry, 'don't
call him a gentleman. My dear Cherry, Pinch a gentleman! The idea!'
'What a wicked girl you are!' cried Mrs Todgers, embracing her with
great affection. 'You are quite a quiz, I do declare! My dear Miss
Pecksniff, what a happiness your sister's spirits must be to your pa and
self!'
'He's the most hideous, goggle-eyed creature, Mrs Todgers, in
existence,' resumed Merry: 'quite an ogre. The ugliest, awkwardest
frightfullest being, you can imagine. This is his sister, so I leave you
to suppose what SHE is. I shall be obliged to laugh outright, I know
I shall!' cried the charming girl, 'I never shall be able to keep my
countenance. The notion of a Miss Pinch presuming to exist at all is
sufficient to kill one, but to see her--oh my stars!'
Mrs Todgers laughed immensely at the dear love's humour, and declared
she was quite afraid of her, that she was. She was so very severe.
'Who is severe?' cried a voice at the door. 'There is no such thing as
severity in our family, I hope!' And then Mr Pecksniff peeped smilingly
into the room, and said, 'May I come in, Mrs Todgers?'
Mrs Todgers almost screamed, for the little door of communication
between that room and the inner one being wide open, there was a full
disclosure of the sofa bedstead in all its monstrous impropriety. But
she had the presence of mind to close this portal in the twinkling of an
eye; and having done so, said, though not without confusion, 'Oh yes, Mr
Pecksniff, you can come in, if you please.'
'How are we to-day,' said Mr Pecksniff, jocosely, 'and what are our
plans? Are we ready to go and see Tom Pinch's sister? Ha, ha, ha! Poor
Thomas Pinch!'
'Are we ready,' returned Mrs Todgers, nodding her head with mysterious
intelligence, 'to send a favourable reply to Mr Jinkins's round-robin?
That's the first question, Mr Pecksniff.'
'Why Mr Jinkins's robin, my dear madam?' asked Mr Pecksniff, putting one
arm round Mercy, and the other round Mrs Todgers, whom he seemed, in the
abstraction of the moment, to mistake for Charity. 'Why Mr Jinkins's?'
'Because he began to get it up, and indeed always takes the lead in the
house,' said Mrs Todgers, playfully. 'That's why, sir.'
'Jinkins is a man of superior talents,' observed Mr Pecksniff. 'I have
conceived a great regard for Jinkins. I take Jinkins's desire to pay
polite attention to my daughters, as an additional proof of the friendly
feeling of Jinkins, Mrs Todgers.'
'Well now,' returned that lady, 'having said so much, you must say the
rest, Mr Pecksniff; so tell the dear young ladies all about it.'
With these words she gently eluded Mr Pecksniff's grasp, and took Miss
Charity into her own embrace; though whether she was impelled to this
proceeding solely by the irrepressible affection she had conceived for
that young lady, or whether it had any reference to a lowering, not to
say distinctly spiteful expression which had been visible in her face
for some moments, has never been exactly ascertained. Be this as it may,
Mr Pecksniff went on to inform his daughters of the purport and history
of the round-robin aforesaid, which was in brief, that the commercial
gentlemen who helped to make up the sum and substance of that noun of
multitude signifying many, called Todgers's, desired the honour of their
presence at the general table, so long as they remained in the house,
and besought that they would grace the board at dinner-time next
day, the same being Sunday. He further said, that Mrs Todgers being a
consenting party to this invitation, he was willing, for his part, to
accept it; and so left them that he might write his gracious answer, the
while they armed themselves with their best bonnets for the utter defeat
and overthrow of Miss Pinch.
Tom Pinch's sister was governess in a family, a lofty family; perhaps
the wealthiest brass and copper founders' family known to mankind.
They lived at Camberwell; in a house so big and fierce, that its mere
outside, like the outside of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar
minds and made bold persons quail. There was a great front gate; with a
great bell, whose handle was in itself a note of admiration; and a
great lodge; which being close to the house, rather spoilt the look-out
certainly but made the look-in tremendous. At this entry, a great porter
kept constant watch and ward; and when he gave the visitor high leave
to pass, he rang a second great bell, responsive to whose note a great
footman appeared in due time at the great halldoor, with such great
tags upon his liveried shoulder that he was perpetually entangling and
hooking himself among the chairs and tables, and led a life of torment
which could scarcely have been surpassed, if he had been a blue-bottle
in a world of cobwebs.
To this mansion Mr Pecksniff, accompanied by his daughters and Mrs
Todgers, drove gallantly in a one-horse fly. The foregoing ceremonies
having been all performed, they were ushered into the house; and so, by
degrees, they got at last into a small room with books in it, where Mr
Pinch's sister was at that moment instructing her eldest pupil; to wit,
a premature little woman of thirteen years old, who had already arrived
at such a pitch of whalebone and education that she had nothing girlish
about her, which was a source of great rejoicing to all her relations
and friends.
'Visitors for Miss Pinch!' said the footman. He must have been
an ingenious young man, for he said it very cleverly; with a nice
discrimination between the cold respect with which he would have
announced visitors to the family, and the warm personal interest with
which he would have announced visitors to the cook.
'Visitors for Miss Pinch!'
Miss Pinch rose hastily; with such tokens of agitation as plainly
declared that her list of callers was not numerous. At the same time,
the little pupil became alarmingly upright, and prepared herself to take
mental notes of all that might be said and done. For the lady of the
establishment was curious in the natural history and habits of the
animal called Governess, and encouraged her daughters to report thereon
whenever occasion served; which was, in reference to all parties
concerned, very laudable, improving, and pleasant.
It is a melancholy fact; but it must be related, that Mr Pinch's sister
was not at all ugly. On the contrary, she had a good face; a very mild
and prepossessing face; and a pretty little figure--slight and short,
but remarkable for its neatness. There was something of her brother,
much of him indeed, in a certain gentleness of manner, and in her look
of timid trustfulness; but she was so far from being a fright, or
a dowdy, or a horror, or anything else, predicted by the two Miss
Pecksniffs, that those young ladies naturally regarded her with great
indignation, feeling that this was by no means what they had come to
see.
Miss Mercy, as having the larger share of gaiety, bore up the best
against this disappointment, and carried it off, in outward show at
least, with a titter; but her sister, not caring to hide her disdain,
expressed it pretty openly in her looks. As to Mrs Todgers, she leaned
on Mr Pecksniff's arm and preserved a kind of genteel grimness, suitable
to any state of mind, and involving any shade of opinion.
'Don't be alarmed, Miss Pinch,' said Mr Pecksniff, taking her hand
condescendingly in one of his, and patting it with the other. 'I have
called to see you, in pursuance of a promise given to your brother,
Thomas Pinch. My name--compose yourself, Miss Pinch--is Pecksniff.'
The good man emphasised these words as though he would have said, 'You
see in me, young person, the benefactor of your race; the patron of your
house; the preserver of your brother, who is fed with manna daily from
my table; and in right of whom there is a considerable balance in my
favour at present standing in the books beyond the sky. But I have no
pride, for I can afford to do without it!'
The poor girl felt it all as if it had been Gospel truth. Her brother
writing in the fullness of his simple heart, had often told her so, and
how much more! As Mr Pecksniff ceased to speak, she hung her head, and
dropped a tear upon his hand.
'Oh very well, Miss Pinch!' thought the sharp pupil, 'crying before
strangers, as if you didn't like the situation!'
'Thomas is well,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'and sends his love and this
letter. I cannot say, poor fellow, that he will ever be distinguished in
our profession; but he has the will to do well, which is the next thing
to having the power; and, therefore, we must bear with him. Eh?'
'I know he has the will, sir,' said Tom Pinch's sister, 'and I know how
kindly and considerately you cherish it, for which neither he nor I can
ever be grateful enough, as we very often say in writing to each
other. The young ladies too,' she added, glancing gratefully at his two
daughters, 'I know how much we owe to them.'
'My dears,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning to them with a smile: 'Thomas's
sister is saying something you will be glad to hear, I think.'
'We can't take any merit to ourselves, papa!' cried Cherry, as they
both apprised Tom Pinch's sister, with a curtsey, that they would
feel obliged if she would keep her distance. 'Mr Pinch's being so well
provided for is owing to you alone, and we can only say how glad we are
to hear that he is as grateful as he ought to be.'
'Oh very well, Miss Pinch!' thought the pupil again. 'Got a grateful
brother, living on other people's kindness!'
'It was very kind of you,' said Tom Pinch's sister, with Tom's own
simplicity and Tom's own smile, 'to come here; very kind indeed; though
how great a kindness you have done me in gratifying my wish to see you,
and to thank you with my own lips, you, who make so light of benefits
conferred, can scarcely think.'
'Very grateful; very pleasant; very proper,' murmured Mr Pecksniff.
'It makes me happy too,' said Ruth Pinch, who now that her first
surprise was over, had a chatty, cheerful way with her, and a
single-hearted desire to look upon the best side of everything, which
was the very moral and image of Tom; 'very happy to think that you will
be able to tell him how more than comfortably I am situated here, and
how unnecessary it is that he should ever waste a regret on my being
cast upon my own resources. Dear me! So long as I heard that he was
happy, and he heard that I was,' said Tom's sister, 'we could both bear,
without one impatient or complaining thought, a great deal more than
ever we have had to endure, I am very certain.' And if ever the plain
truth were spoken on this occasionally false earth, Tom's sister spoke
it when she said that.
'Ah!' cried Mr Pecksniff whose eyes had in the meantime wandered to the
pupil; 'certainly. And how do YOU do, my very interesting child?'
'Quite well, I thank you, sir,' replied that frosty innocent.
'A sweet face this, my dears,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning to his
daughters. 'A charming manner!'
Both young ladies had been in ecstasies with the scion of a wealthy
house (through whom the nearest road and shortest cut to her parents
might be supposed to lie) from the first. Mrs Todgers vowed that
anything one quarter so angelic she had never seen. 'She wanted but
a pair of wings, a dear,' said that good woman, 'to be a young
syrup'--meaning, possibly, young sylph, or seraph.
'If you will give that to your distinguished parents, my amiable little
friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, producing one of his professional cards,
'and will say that I and my daughters--'
'And Mrs Todgers, pa,' said Merry.
'And Mrs Todgers, of London,' added Mr Pecksniff; 'that I, and my
daughters, and Mrs Todgers, of London, did not intrude upon them, as our
object simply was to take some notice of Miss Pinch, whose brother is a
young man in my employment; but that I could not leave this very chaste
mansion, without adding my humble tribute, as an Architect, to
the correctness and elegance of the owner's taste, and to his just
appreciation of that beautiful art to the cultivation of which I have
devoted a life, and to the promotion of whose glory and advancement I
have sacrified a--a fortune--I shall be very much obliged to you.'
'Missis's compliments to Miss Pinch,' said the footman, suddenly
appearing, and speaking in exactly the same key as before, 'and begs to
know wot my young lady is a-learning of just now.'
'Oh!' said Mr Pecksniff, 'Here is the young man. HE will take the
card. With my compliments, if you please, young man. My dears, we are
interrupting the studies. Let us go.'
Some confusion was occasioned for an instant by Mrs Todgers's
unstrapping her little flat hand-basket, and hurriedly entrusting the
'young man' with one of her own cards, which, in addition to
certain detailed information relative to the terms of the commercial
establishment, bore a foot-note to the effect that M. T. took that
opportunity of thanking those gentlemen who had honoured her with their
favours, and begged they would have the goodness, if satisfied with
the table, to recommend her to their friends. But Mr Pecksniff, with
admirable presence of mind, recovered this document, and buttoned it up
in his own pocket.
Then he said to Miss Pinch--with more condescension and kindness than
ever, for it was desirable the footman should expressly understand that
they were not friends of hers, but patrons:
'Good morning. Good-bye. God bless you! You may depend upon my continued
protection of your brother Thomas. Keep your mind quite at ease, Miss
Pinch!'
'Thank you,' said Tom's sister heartily; 'a thousand times.'
'Not at all,' he retorted, patting her gently on the head. 'Don't
mention it. You will make me angry if you do. My sweet child'--to the
pupil--'farewell! That fairy creature,' said Mr Pecksniff, looking in
his pensive mood hard at the footman, as if he meant him, 'has shed
a vision on my path, refulgent in its nature, and not easily to be
obliterated. My dears, are you ready?'
They were not quite ready yet, for they were still caressing the pupil.
But they tore themselves away at length; and sweeping past Miss Pinch
with each a haughty inclination of the head and a curtsey strangled in
its birth, flounced into the passage.
The young man had rather a long job in showing them out; for Mr
Pecksniff's delight in the tastefulness of the house was such that he
could not help often stopping (particularly when they were near the
parlour door) and giving it expression, in a loud voice and very learned
terms. Indeed, he delivered, between the study and the hall, a
familiar exposition of the whole science of architecture as applied to
dwelling-houses, and was yet in the freshness of his eloquence when they
reached the garden.
'If you look,' said Mr Pecksniff, backing from the steps, with his head
on one side and his eyes half-shut that he might the better take in
the proportions of the exterior: 'If you look, my dears, at the cornice
which supports the roof, and observe the airiness of its construction,
especially where it sweeps the southern angle of the building, you will
feel with me--How do you do, sir? I hope you're well?'
Interrupting himself with these words, he very politely bowed to a
middle-aged gentleman at an upper window, to whom he spoke--not because
the gentleman could hear him (for he certainly could not), but as an
appropriate accompaniment to his salutation.
'I have no doubt, my dears,' said Mr Pecksniff, feigning to point out
other beauties with his hand, 'that this is the proprietor. I should be
glad to know him. It might lead to something. Is he looking this way,
Charity?'
'He is opening the window pa!'
'Ha, ha!' cried Mr Pecksniff softly. 'All right! He has found I'm
professional. He heard me inside just now, I have no doubt. Don't look!
With regard to the fluted pillars in the portico, my dears--'
'Hallo!' cried the gentleman.
'Sir, your servant!' said Mr Pecksniff, taking off his hat. 'I am proud
to make your acquaintance.'
'Come off the grass, will you!' roared the gentleman.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, doubtful of his having
heard aright. 'Did you--?'
'Come off the grass!' repeated the gentleman, warmly.
'We are unwilling to intrude, sir,' Mr Pecksniff smilingly began.
'But you ARE intruding,' returned the other, 'unwarrantably intruding.
Trespassing. You see a gravel walk, don't you? What do you think it's
meant for? Open the gate there! Show that party out!'
With that he clapped down the window again, and disappeared.
Mr Pecksniff put on his hat, and walked with great deliberation and in
profound silence to the fly, gazing at the clouds as he went, with
great interest. After helping his daughters and Mrs Todgers into that
conveyance, he stood looking at it for some moments, as if he were not
quite certain whether it was a carriage or a temple; but having settled
this point in his mind, he got into his place, spread his hands out on
his knees, and smiled upon the three beholders.
But his daughters, less tranquil-minded, burst into a torrent of
indignation. This came, they said, of cherishing such creatures as the
Pinches. This came of lowering themselves to their level. This came of
putting themselves in the humiliating position of seeming to know such
bold, audacious, cunning, dreadful girls as that. They had expected
this. They had predicted it to Mrs Todgers, as she (Todgers) could
depone, that very morning. To this, they added, that the owner of the
house, supposing them to be Miss Pinch's friends, had acted, in
their opinion, quite correctly, and had done no more than, under such
circumstances, might reasonably have been expected. To that they added
(with a trifling inconsistency), that he was a brute and a bear; and
then they merged into a flood of tears, which swept away all wandering
epithets before it.
Perhaps Miss Pinch was scarcely so much to blame in the matter as the
Seraph, who, immediately on the withdrawal of the visitors, had hastened
to report them at head-quarters, with a full account of their having
presumptuously charged her with the delivery of a message afterwards
consigned to the footman; which outrage, taken in conjunction with Mr
Pecksniff's unobtrusive remarks on the establishment, might possibly
have had some share in their dismissal. Poor Miss Pinch, however, had to
bear the brunt of it with both parties; being so severely taken to task
by the Seraph's mother for having such vulgar acquaintances, that
she was fain to retire to her own room in tears, which her natural
cheerfulness and submission, and the delight of having seen Mr
Pecksniff, and having received a letter from her brother, were at first
insufficient to repress.
As to Mr Pecksniff, he told them in the fly, that a good action was its
own reward; and rather gave them to understand, that if he could have
been kicked in such a cause, he would have liked it all the better. But
this was no comfort to the young ladies, who scolded violently the whole
way back, and even exhibited, more than once, a keen desire to attack
the devoted Mrs Todgers; on whose personal appearance, but particularly
on whose offending card and hand-basket, they were secretly inclined to
lay the blame of half their failure.
Todgers's was in a great bustle that evening, partly owing to some
additional domestic preparations for the morrow, and partly to the
excitement always inseparable in that house from Saturday night, when
every gentleman's linen arrived at a different hour in its own little
bundle, with his private account pinned on the outside. There was always
a great clinking of pattens downstairs, too, until midnight or so, on
Saturdays; together with a frequent gleaming of mysterious lights in
the area; much working at the pump; and a constant jangling of the iron
handle of the pail. Shrill altercations from time to time arose between
Mrs Todgers and unknown females in remote back kitchens; and sounds were
occasionally heard, indicative of small articles of iron mongery and
hardware being thrown at the boy. It was the custom of that youth on
Saturdays, to roll up his shirt sleeves to his shoulders, and pervade
all parts of the house in an apron of coarse green baize; moreover, he
was more strongly tempted on Saturdays than on other days (it being a
busy time), to make excursive bolts into the neighbouring alleys when he
answered the door, and there to play at leap-frog and other sports with
vagrant lads, until pursued and brought back by the hair of his head or
the lobe of his ear; thus he was quite a conspicuous feature among the
peculiar incidents of the last day in the week at Todgers's.
He was especially so on this particular Saturday evening, and honoured
the Miss Pecksniffs with a deal of notice; seldom passing the door
of Mrs Todgers's private room, where they sat alone before the fire,
working by the light of a solitary candle, without putting in his head
and greeting them with some such compliments as, 'There you are agin!'
'An't it nice?'--and similar humorous attentions.
'I say,' he whispered, stopping in one of his journeys to and fro,
'young ladies, there's soup to-morrow. She's a-making it now. An't she
a-putting in the water? Oh! not at all neither!'
In the course of answering another knock, he thrust in his head again.
'I say! There's fowls to-morrow. Not skinny ones. Oh no!'
Presently he called through the key-hole:
'There's a fish to-morrow. Just come. Don't eat none of him!' And, with
this special warning, vanished again.
By-and-bye, he returned to lay the cloth for supper; it having been
arranged between Mrs Todgers and the young ladies, that they should
partake of an exclusive veal-cutlet together in the privacy of that
apartment. He entertained them on this occasion by thrusting the
lighted candle into his mouth, and exhibiting his face in a state of
transparency; after the performance of which feat, he went on with his
professional duties; brightening every knife as he laid it on the table,
by breathing on the blade and afterwards polishing the same on the apron
already mentioned. When he had completed his preparations, he grinned
at the sisters, and expressed his belief that the approaching collation
would be of 'rather a spicy sort.'
'Will it be long, before it's ready, Bailey?' asked Mercy.
'No,' said Bailey, 'it IS cooked. When I come up, she was dodging among
the tender pieces with a fork, and eating of 'em.'
But he had scarcely achieved the utterance of these words, when he
received a manual compliment on the head, which sent him staggering
against the wall; and Mrs Todgers, dish in hand, stood indignantly
before him.
'Oh you little villain!' said that lady. 'Oh you bad, false boy!'
'No worse than yerself,' retorted Bailey, guarding his head, on a
principle invented by Mr Thomas Cribb. 'Ah! Come now! Do that again,
will yer?'
'He's the most dreadful child,' said Mrs Todgers, setting down the dish,
'I ever had to deal with. The gentlemen spoil him to that extent, and
teach him such things, that I'm afraid nothing but hanging will ever do
him any good.'
'Won't it!' cried Bailey. 'Oh! Yes! Wot do you go a-lowerin the
table-beer for then, and destroying my constitooshun?'
'Go downstairs, you vicious boy,' said Mrs Todgers, holding the door
open. 'Do you hear me? Go along!'
After two or three dexterous feints, he went, and was seen no more that
night, save once, when he brought up some tumblers and hot water, and
much disturbed the two Miss Pecksniffs by squinting hideously behind
the back of the unconscious Mrs Todgers. Having done this justice to his
wounded feelings, he retired underground; where, in company with a swarm
of black beetles and a kitchen candle, he employed his faculties in
cleaning boots and brushing clothes until the night was far advanced.
Benjamin was supposed to be the real name of this young retainer but he
was known by a great variety of names. Benjamin, for instance, had been
converted into Uncle Ben, and that again had been corrupted into Uncle;
which, by an easy transition, had again passed into Barnwell, in memory
of the celebrated relative in that degree who was shot by his nephew
George, while meditating in his garden at Camberwell. The gentlemen at
Todgers's had a merry habit, too, of bestowing upon him, for the time
being, the name of any notorious malefactor or minister; and sometimes
when current events were flat they even sought the pages of history for
these distinctions; as Mr Pitt, Young Brownrigg, and the like. At the
period of which we write, he was generally known among the gentlemen as
Bailey junior; a name bestowed upon him in contradistinction, perhaps,
to Old Bailey; and possibly as involving the recollection of an
unfortunate lady of the same name, who perished by her own hand early in
life, and has been immortalised in a ballad.
The usual Sunday dinner-hour at Todgers's was two o'clock--a suitable
time, it was considered for all parties; convenient to Mrs Todgers, on
account of the bakers; and convenient to the gentlemen with reference
to their afternoon engagements. But on the Sunday which was to introduce
the two Miss Pecksniffs to a full knowledge of Todgers's and its
society, the dinner was postponed until five, in order that everything
might be as genteel as the occasion demanded.
When the hour drew nigh, Bailey junior, testifying great excitement,
appeared in a complete suit of cast-off clothes several sizes too large
for him, and in particular, mounted a clean shirt of such extraordinary
magnitude, that one of the gentlemen (remarkable for his ready wit)
called him 'collars' on the spot. At about a quarter before five, a
deputation, consisting of Mr Jinkins, and another gentleman, whose
name was Gander, knocked at the door of Mrs Todgers's room, and, being
formally introduced to the two Miss Pecksniffs by their parent who was
in waiting, besought the honour of conducting them upstairs.
The drawing-room at Todgers's was out of the common style; so much so
indeed, that you would hardly have taken it to be a drawingroom, unless
you were told so by somebody who was in the secret. It was floor-clothed
all over; and the ceiling, including a great beam in the middle,
was papered. Besides the three little windows, with seats in them,
commanding the opposite archway, there was another window looking point
blank, without any compromise at all about it into Jinkins's bedroom;
and high up, all along one side of the wall was a strip of panes of
glass, two-deep, giving light to the staircase. There were the oddest
closets possible, with little casements in them like eight-day clocks,
lurking in the wainscot and taking the shape of the stairs; and the very
door itself (which was painted black) had two great glass eyes in its
forehead, with an inquisitive green pupil in the middle of each.
Here the gentlemen were all assembled. There was a general cry of 'Hear,
hear!' and 'Bravo Jink!' when Mr Jinkins appeared with Charity on his
arm; which became quite rapturous as Mr Gander followed, escorting
Mercy, and Mr Pecksniff brought up the rear with Mrs Todgers.
Then the presentations took place. They included a gentleman of a
sporting turn, who propounded questions on jockey subjects to the
editors of Sunday papers, which were regarded by his friends as rather
stiff things to answer; and they included a gentleman of a theatrical
turn, who had once entertained serious thoughts of 'coming out,' but
had been kept in by the wickedness of human nature; and they included
a gentleman of a debating turn, who was strong at speech-making; and a
gentleman of a literary turn, who wrote squibs upon the rest, and
knew the weak side of everybody's character but his own. There was a
gentleman of a vocal turn, and a gentleman of a smoking turn, and a
gentleman of a convivial turn; some of the gentlemen had a turn for
whist, and a large proportion of the gentlemen had a strong turn for
billiards and betting. They had all, it may be presumed, a turn for
business; being all commercially employed in one way or other; and
had, every one in his own way, a decided turn for pleasure to boot. Mr
Jinkins was of a fashionable turn; being a regular frequenter of the
Parks on Sundays, and knowing a great many carriages by sight. He spoke
mysteriously, too, of splendid women, and was suspected of having once
committed himself with a Countess. Mr Gander was of a witty turn being
indeed the gentleman who had originated the sally about 'collars;' which
sparkling pleasantry was now retailed from mouth to mouth, under the
title of Gander's Last, and was received in all parts of the room with
great applause. Mr Jinkins it may be added, was much the oldest of
the party; being a fish-salesman's book-keeper, aged forty. He was the
oldest boarder also; and in right of his double seniority, took the lead
in the house, as Mrs Todgers had already said.
There was considerable delay in the production of dinner, and poor Mrs
Todgers, being reproached in confidence by Jinkins, slipped in and out,
at least twenty times to see about it; always coming back as though she
had no such thing upon her mind, and hadn't been out at all. But there
was no hitch in the conversation nevertheless; for one gentleman, who
travelled in the perfumery line, exhibited an interesting nick-nack,
in the way of a remarkable cake of shaving soap which he had lately
met with in Germany; and the gentleman of a literary turn repeated (by
desire) some sarcastic stanzas he had recently produced on the freezing
of the tank at the back of the house. These amusements, with the
miscellaneous conversation arising out of them, passed the time
splendidly, until dinner was announced by Bailey junior in these terms:
'The wittles is up!'
On which notice they immediately descended to the banquet-hall; some of
the more facetious spirits in the rear taking down gentlemen as if they
were ladies, in imitation of the fortunate possessors of the two Miss
Pecksniffs.
Mr Pecksniff said grace--a short and pious grace, involving a blessing
on the appetites of those present, and committing all persons who had
nothing to eat, to the care of Providence; whose business (so said the
grace, in effect) it clearly was, to look after them. This done, they
fell to with less ceremony than appetite; the table groaning beneath the
weight, not only of the delicacies whereof the Miss Pecksniffs had been
previously forewarned, but of boiled beef, roast veal, bacon, pies
and abundance of such heavy vegetables as are favourably known to
housekeepers for their satisfying qualities. Besides which, there were
bottles of stout, bottles of wine, bottles of ale, and divers other
strong drinks, native and foreign.
All this was highly agreeable to the two Miss Pecksniffs, who were in
immense request; sitting one on either hand of Mr Jinkins at the bottom
of the table; and who were called upon to take wine with some new
admirer every minute. They had hardly ever felt so pleasant, and so full
of conversation, in their lives; Mercy, in particular, was uncommonly
brilliant, and said so many good things in the way of lively repartee
that she was looked upon as a prodigy. 'In short,' as that young lady
observed, 'they felt now, indeed, that they were in London, and for the
first time too.'
Their young friend Bailey sympathized in these feelings to the
fullest extent, and, abating nothing of his patronage, gave them every
encouragement in his power; favouring them, when the general attention
was diverted from his proceedings, with many nods and winks and other
tokens of recognition, and occasionally touching his nose with a
corkscrew, as if to express the Bacchanalian character of the meeting.
In truth, perhaps even the spirits of the two Miss Pecksniffs, and the
hungry watchfulness of Mrs Todgers, were less worthy of note than the
proceedings of this remarkable boy, whom nothing disconcerted or put out
of his way. If any piece of crockery, a dish or otherwise, chanced to
slip through his hands (which happened once or twice), he let it go with
perfect good breeding, and never added to the painful emotions of the
company by exhibiting the least regret. Nor did he, by hurrying to and
fro, disturb the repose of the assembly, as many well-trained servants
do; on the contrary, feeling the hopelessness of waiting upon so large a
party, he left the gentlemen to help themselves to what they wanted, and
seldom stirred from behind Mr Jinkins's chair, where, with his hands
in his pockets, and his legs planted pretty wide apart, he led the
laughter, and enjoyed the conversation.
The dessert was splendid. No waiting either. The pudding-plates had been
washed in a little tub outside the door while cheese was on, and though
they were moist and warm with friction, still there they were again,
up to the mark, and true to time. Quarts of almonds; dozens of oranges;
pounds of raisins; stacks of biffins; soup-plates full of nuts.--Oh,
Todgers's could do it when it chose! mind that.
Then more wine came on; red wines and white wines; and a large china
bowl of punch, brewed by the gentleman of a convivial turn, who adjured
the Miss Pecksniffs not to be despondent on account of its dimensions,
as there were materials in the house for the decoction of half a dozen
more of the same size. Good gracious, how they laughed! How they coughed
when they sipped it, because it was so strong; and how they laughed
again when somebody vowed that but for its colour it might have been
mistaken, in regard of its innocuous qualities, for new milk! What a
shout of 'No!' burst from the gentlemen when they pathetically implored
Mr Jinkins to suffer them to qualify it with hot water; and how
blushingly, by little and little, did each of them drink her whole
glassful, down to its very dregs!
Now comes the trying time. The sun, as Mr Jinkins says (gentlemanly
creature, Jinkins--never at a loss!), is about to leave the firmament.
'Miss Pecksniff!' says Mrs Todgers, softly, 'will you--?' 'Oh dear, no
more, Mrs Todgers.' Mrs Todgers rises; the two Miss Pecksniffs rise; all
rise. Miss Mercy Pecksniff looks downward for her scarf. Where is it?
Dear me, where CAN it be? Sweet girl, she has it on; not on her fair
neck, but loose upon her flowing figure. A dozen hands assist her. She
is all confusion. The youngest gentleman in company thirsts to murder
Jinkins. She skips and joins her sister at the door. Her sister has her
arm about the waist of Mrs Todgers. She winds her arm around her sister.
Diana, what a picture! The last things visible are a shape and a skip.
'Gentlemen, let us drink the ladies!'
The enthusiasm is tremendous. The gentleman of a debating turn rises in
the midst, and suddenly lets loose a tide of eloquence which bears down
everything before it. He is reminded of a toast--a toast to which they
will respond. There is an individual present; he has him in his eye; to
whom they owe a debt of gratitude. He repeats it--a debt of gratitude.
Their rugged natures have been softened and ameliorated that day, by
the society of lovely woman. There is a gentleman in company whom two
accomplished and delightful females regard with veneration, as the
fountain of their existence. Yes, when yet the two Miss Pecksniffs
lisped in language scarce intelligible, they called that individual
'Father!' There is great applause. He gives them 'Mr Pecksniff, and God
bless him!' They all shake hands with Mr Pecksniff, as they drink the
toast. The youngest gentleman in company does so with a thrill; for he
feels that a mysterious influence pervades the man who claims that being
in the pink scarf for his daughter.
What saith Mr Pecksniff in reply? Or rather let the question be, What
leaves he unsaid? Nothing. More punch is called for, and produced, and
drunk. Enthusiasm mounts still higher. Every man comes out freely in
his own character. The gentleman of a theatrical turn recites. The vocal
gentleman regales them with a song. Gander leaves the Gander of all
former feasts whole leagues behind. HE rises to propose a toast. It is,
The Father of Todgers's. It is their common friend Jink--it is old
Jink, if he may call him by that familiar and endearing appellation. The
youngest gentleman in company utters a frantic negative. He won't
have it--he can't bear it--it mustn't be. But his depth of feeling is
misunderstood. He is supposed to be a little elevated; and nobody heeds
him.
Mr Jinkins thanks them from his heart. It is, by many degrees, the
proudest day in his humble career. When he looks around him on the
present occasion, he feels that he wants words in which to express
his gratitude. One thing he will say. He hopes it has been shown that
Todgers's can be true to itself; and that, an opportunity arising, it
can come out quite as strong as its neighbours--perhaps stronger. He
reminds them, amidst thunders of encouragement, that they have heard of
a somewhat similar establishment in Cannon Street; and that they have
heard it praised. He wishes to draw no invidious comparisons; he would
be the last man to do it; but when that Cannon Street establishment
shall be able to produce such a combination of wit and beauty as has
graced that board that day, and shall be able to serve up (all things
considered) such a dinner as that of which they have just partaken, he
will be happy to talk to it. Until then, gentlemen, he will stick to
Todgers's.
More punch, more enthusiasm, more speeches. Everybody's health is drunk,
saving the youngest gentleman's in company. He sits apart, with his
elbow on the back of a vacant chair, and glares disdainfully at Jinkins.
Gander, in a convulsing speech, gives them the health of Bailey junior;
hiccups are heard; and a glass is broken. Mr Jinkins feels that it is
time to join the ladies. He proposes, as a final sentiment, Mrs Todgers.
She is worthy to be remembered separately. Hear, hear. So she is; no
doubt of it. They all find fault with her at other times; but every man
feels now, that he could die in her defence.
They go upstairs, where they are not expected so soon; for Mrs Todgers
is asleep, Miss Charity is adjusting her hair, and Mercy, who has made
a sofa of one of the window-seats is in a gracefully recumbent attitude.
She is rising hastily, when Mr Jinkins implores her, for all their
sakes, not to stir; she looks too graceful and too lovely, he remarks,
to be disturbed. She laughs, and yields, and fans herself, and drops
her fan, and there is a rush to pick it up. Being now installed, by one
consent, as the beauty of the party, she is cruel and capricious, and
sends gentlemen on messages to other gentlemen, and forgets all about
them before they can return with the answer, and invents a thousand
tortures, rending their hearts to pieces. Bailey brings up the tea and
coffee. There is a small cluster of admirers round Charity; but they
are only those who cannot get near her sister. The youngest gentleman
in company is pale, but collected, and still sits apart; for his spirit
loves to hold communion with itself, and his soul recoils from noisy
revellers. She has a consciousness of his presence and adoration.
He sees it flashing sometimes in the corner of her eye. Have a care,
Jinkins, ere you provoke a desperate man to frenzy!
Mr Pecksniff had followed his younger friends upstairs, and taken a
chair at the side of Mrs Todgers. He had also spilt a cup of coffee over
his legs without appearing to be aware of the circumstance; nor did he
seem to know that there was muffin on his knee.
'And how have they used you downstairs, sir?' asked the hostess.
'Their conduct has been such, my dear madam,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'as I
can never think of without emotion, or remember without a tear. Oh, Mrs
Todgers!'
'My goodness!' exclaimed that lady. 'How low you are in your spirits,
sir!'
'I am a man, my dear madam,' said Mr Pecksniff, shedding tears and
speaking with an imperfect articulation, 'but I am also a father. I
am also a widower. My feelings, Mrs Todgers, will not consent to be
entirely smothered, like the young children in the Tower. They are grown
up, and the more I press the bolster on them, the more they look round
the corner of it.'
He suddenly became conscious of the bit of muffin, and stared at it
intently; shaking his head the while, in a forlorn and imbecile manner,
as if he regarded it as his evil genius, and mildly reproached it.
'She was beautiful, Mrs Todgers,' he said, turning his glazed eye
again upon her, without the least preliminary notice. 'She had a small
property.'
'So I have heard,' cried Mrs Todgers with great sympathy.
'Those are her daughters,' said Mr Pecksniff, pointing out the young
ladies, with increased emotion.
Mrs Todgers had no doubt about it.
'Mercy and Charity,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'Charity and Mercy. Not unholy
names, I hope?'
'Mr Pecksniff!' cried Mrs Todgers. 'What a ghastly smile! Are you ill,
sir?'
He pressed his hand upon her arm, and answered in a solemn manner, and a
faint voice, 'Chronic.'
'Cholic?' cried the frightened Mrs Todgers.
'Chron-ic,' he repeated with some difficulty. 'Chron-ic. A chronic
disorder. I have been its victim from childhood. It is carrying me to my
grave.'
'Heaven forbid!' cried Mrs Todgers.
'Yes, it is,' said Mr Pecksniff, reckless with despair. 'I am rather
glad of it, upon the whole. You are like her, Mrs Todgers.'
'Don't squeeze me so tight, pray, Mr Pecksniff. If any of the gentlemen
should notice us.'
'For her sake,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Permit me--in honour of her memory.
For the sake of a voice from the tomb. You are VERY like her Mrs
Todgers! What a world this is!'
'Ah! Indeed you may say that!' cried Mrs Todgers.
'I'm afraid it is a vain and thoughtless world,' said Mr Pecksniff,
overflowing with despondency. 'These young people about us. Oh! what
sense have they of their responsibilities? None. Give me your other
hand, Mrs Todgers.'
The lady hesitated, and said 'she didn't like.'
'Has a voice from the grave no influence?' said Mr Pecksniff, with,
dismal tenderness. 'This is irreligious! My dear creature.'
'Hush!' urged Mrs Todgers. 'Really you mustn't.'
'It's not me,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Don't suppose it's me; it's the
voice; it's her voice.'
Mrs Pecksniff deceased, must have had an unusually thick and husky voice
for a lady, and rather a stuttering voice, and to say the truth somewhat
of a drunken voice, if it had ever borne much resemblance to that in
which Mr Pecksniff spoke just then. But perhaps this was delusion on his
part.
'It has been a day of enjoyment, Mrs Todgers, but still it has been a
day of torture. It has reminded me of my loneliness. What am I in the
world?'
'An excellent gentleman, Mr Pecksniff,' said Mrs Todgers.
'There is consolation in that too,' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Am I?'
'There is no better man living,' said Mrs Todgers, 'I am sure.'
Mr Pecksniff smiled through his tears, and slightly shook his head. 'You
are very good,' he said, 'thank you. It is a great happiness to me, Mrs
Todgers, to make young people happy. The happiness of my pupils is my
chief object. I dote upon 'em. They dote upon me too--sometimes.'
'Always,' said Mrs Todgers.
'When they say they haven't improved, ma'am,' whispered Mr Pecksniff,
looking at her with profound mystery, and motioning to her to advance
her ear a little closer to his mouth. 'When they say they haven't
improved, ma'am, and the premium was too high, they lie! I shouldn't
wish it to be mentioned; you will understand me; but I say to you as to
an old friend, they lie.'
'Base wretches they must be!' said Mrs Todgers.
'Madam,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'you are right. I respect you for that
observation. A word in your ear. To Parents and Guardians. This is in
confidence, Mrs Todgers?'
'The strictest, of course!' cried that lady.
'To Parents and Guardians,' repeated Mr Pecksniff. 'An eligible
opportunity now offers, which unites the advantages of the best
practical architectural education with the comforts of a home, and the
constant association with some, who, however humble their sphere and
limited their capacity--observe!--are not unmindful of their moral
responsibilities.'
Mrs Todgers looked a little puzzled to know what this might mean, as
well she might; for it was, as the reader may perchance remember, Mr
Pecksniff's usual form of advertisement when he wanted a pupil; and
seemed to have no particular reference, at present, to anything. But Mr
Pecksniff held up his finger as a caution to her not to interrupt him.
'Do you know any parent or guardian, Mrs Todgers,' said Mr Pecksniff,
'who desires to avail himself of such an opportunity for a young
gentleman? An orphan would be preferred. Do you know of any orphan with
three or four hundred pound?'
Mrs Todgers reflected, and shook her head.
'When you hear of an orphan with three or four hundred pound,' said Mr
Pecksniff, 'let that dear orphan's friends apply, by letter post-paid,
to S. P., Post Office, Salisbury. I don't know who he is exactly. Don't
be alarmed, Mrs Todgers,' said Mr Pecksniff, falling heavily against
her; 'Chronic--chronic! Let's have a little drop of something to drink.'
'Bless my life, Miss Pecksniffs!' cried Mrs Todgers, aloud, 'your dear
pa's took very poorly!'
Mr Pecksniff straightened himself by a surprising effort, as every
one turned hastily towards him; and standing on his feet, regarded the
assembly with a look of ineffable wisdom. Gradually it gave place to
a smile; a feeble, helpless, melancholy smile; bland, almost to
sickliness. 'Do not repine, my friends,' said Mr Pecksniff, tenderly.
'Do not weep for me. It is chronic.' And with these words, after making
a futile attempt to pull off his shoes, he fell into the fireplace.
The youngest gentleman in company had him out in a second. Yes, before a
hair upon his head was singed, he had him on the hearth-rug--her father!
She was almost beside herself. So was her sister. Jinkins consoled them
both. They all consoled them. Everybody had something to say, except the
youngest gentleman in company, who with a noble self-devotion did the
heavy work, and held up Mr Pecksniff's head without being taken notice
of by anybody. At last they gathered round, and agreed to carry him
upstairs to bed. The youngest gentleman in company was rebuked by
Jinkins for tearing Mr Pecksniff's coat! Ha, ha! But no matter.
They carried him upstairs, and crushed the youngest gentleman at every
step. His bedroom was at the top of the house, and it was a long way;
but they got him there in course of time. He asked them frequently
on the road for a little drop of something to drink. It seemed an
idiosyncrasy. The youngest gentleman in company proposed a draught of
water. Mr Pecksniff called him opprobious names for the suggestion.
Jinkins and Gander took the rest upon themselves, and made him as
comfortable as they could, on the outside of his bed; and when he seemed
disposed to sleep, they left him. But before they had all gained the
bottom of the staircase, a vision of Mr Pecksniff, strangely attired,
was seen to flutter on the top landing. He desired to collect their
sentiments, it seemed, upon the nature of human life.
'My friends,' cried Mr Pecksniff, looking over the banisters, 'let us
improve our minds by mutual inquiry and discussion. Let us be moral. Let
us contemplate existence. Where is Jinkins?'
'Here,' cried that gentleman. 'Go to bed again'
'To bed!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Bed! 'Tis the voice of the sluggard, I
hear him complain, you have woke me too soon, I must slumber again. If
any young orphan will repeat the remainder of that simple piece from
Doctor Watts's collection, an eligible opportunity now offers.'
Nobody volunteered.
'This is very soothing,' said Mr Pecksniff, after a pause. 'Extremely
so. Cool and refreshing; particularly to the legs! The legs of the
human subject, my friends, are a beautiful production. Compare them with
wooden legs, and observe the difference between the anatomy of nature
and the anatomy of art. Do you know,' said Mr Pecksniff, leaning over
the banisters, with an odd recollection of his familiar manner among
new pupils at home, 'that I should very much like to see Mrs Todgers's
notion of a wooden leg, if perfectly agreeable to herself!'
As it appeared impossible to entertain any reasonable hopes of him after
this speech, Mr Jinkins and Mr Gander went upstairs again, and once more
got him into bed. But they had not descended to the second floor before
he was out again; nor, when they had repeated the process, had they
descended the first flight, before he was out again. In a word, as often
as he was shut up in his own room, he darted out afresh, charged
with some new moral sentiment, which he continually repeated over the
banisters, with extraordinary relish, and an irrepressible desire for
the improvement of his fellow creatures that nothing could subdue.
Under these circumstances, when they had got him into bed for the
thirtieth time or so, Mr Jinkins held him, while his companion went
downstairs in search of Bailey junior, with whom he presently returned.
That youth having been apprised of the service required of him, was in
great spirits, and brought up a stool, a candle, and his supper; to the
end that he might keep watch outside the bedroom door with tolerable
comfort.
When he had completed his arrangements, they locked Mr Pecksniff in,
and left the key on the outside; charging the young page to listen
attentively for symptoms of an apoplectic nature, with which the patient
might be troubled, and, in case of any such presenting themselves, to
summon them without delay. To which Mr Bailey modestly replied that
'he hoped he knowed wot o'clock it wos in gineral, and didn't date his
letters to his friends from Todgers's for nothing.'
CHAPTER TEN
CONTAINING STRANGE MATTER, ON WHICH MANY EVENTS IN THIS HISTORY MAY, FOR
THEIR GOOD OR EVIL INFLUENCE, CHIEFLY DEPEND
But Mr Pecksniff came to town on business. Had he forgotten that? Was he
always taking his pleasure with Todgers's jovial brood, unmindful of the
serious demands, whatever they might be, upon his calm consideration?
No.
Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to
wait for time and tide. That tide which, taken at the flood, would lead
Seth Pecksniff on to fortune, was marked down in the table, and about to
flow. No idle Pecksniff lingered far inland, unmindful of the changes
of the stream; but there, upon the water's edge, over his shoes already,
stood the worthy creature, prepared to wallow in the very mud, so that
it slid towards the quarter of his hope.
The trustfulness of his two fair daughters was beautiful indeed. They
had that firm reliance on their parent's nature, which taught them to
feel certain that in all he did he had his purpose straight and full
before him. And that its noble end and object was himself, which almost
of necessity included them, they knew. The devotion of these maids was
perfect.
Their filial confidence was rendered the more touching, by their having
no knowledge of their parent's real designs, in the present instance.
All that they knew of his proceedings was, that every morning, after
the early breakfast, he repaired to the post office and inquired for
letters. That task performed, his business for the day was over; and he
again relaxed, until the rising of another sun proclaimed the advent of
another post.
This went on for four or five days. At length, one morning, Mr Pecksniff
returned with a breathless rapidity, strange to observe in him, at other
times so calm; and, seeking immediate speech with his daughters, shut
himself up with them in private conference for two whole hours. Of all
that passed in this period, only the following words of Mr Pecksniff's
utterance are known:
'How he has come to change so very much (if it should turn out as I
expect, that he has), we needn't stop to inquire. My dears, I have my
thoughts upon the subject, but I will not impart them. It is enough
that we will not be proud, resentful, or unforgiving. If he wants our
friendship he shall have it. We know our duty, I hope!'
That same day at noon, an old gentleman alighted from a hackney-coach at
the post-office, and, giving his name, inquired for a letter addressed
to himself, and directed to be left till called for. It had been lying
there some days. The superscription was in Mr Pecksniff's hand, and it
was sealed with Mr Pecksniff's seal.
It was very short, containing indeed nothing more than an address
'with Mr Pecksniff's respectful, and (not withstanding what has
passed) sincerely affectionate regards.' The old gentleman tore off the
direction--scattering the rest in fragments to the winds--and giving
it to the coachman, bade him drive as near that place as he could. In
pursuance of these instructions he was driven to the Monument; where he
again alighted, and dismissed the vehicle, and walked towards Todgers's.
Though the face, and form, and gait of this old man, and even his
grip of the stout stick on which he leaned, were all expressive of a
resolution not easily shaken, and a purpose (it matters little whether
right or wrong, just now) such as in other days might have survived
the rack, and had its strongest life in weakest death; still there were
grains of hesitation in his mind, which made him now avoid the house he
sought, and loiter to and fro in a gleam of sunlight, that brightened
the little churchyard hard by. There may have been, in the presence of
those idle heaps of dust among the busiest stir of life, something to
increase his wavering; but there he walked, awakening the echoes as he
paced up and down, until the church clock, striking the quarters for
the second time since he had been there, roused him from his meditation.
Shaking off his incertitude as the air parted with the sound of the
bells, he walked rapidly to the house, and knocked at the door.
Mr Pecksniff was seated in the landlady's little room, and his visitor
found him reading--by an accident; he apologised for it--an excellent
theological work. There were cake and wine upon a little table--by
another accident, for which he also apologised. Indeed he said, he
had given his visitor up, and was about to partake of that simple
refreshment with his children, when he knocked at the door.
'Your daughters are well?' said old Martin, laying down his hat and
stick.
Mr Pecksniff endeavoured to conceal his agitation as a father when he
answered Yes, they were. They were good girls, he said, very good. He
would not venture to recommend Mr Chuzzlewit to take the easy-chair,
or to keep out of the draught from the door. If he made any such
suggestion, he would expose himself, he feared, to most unjust
suspicion. He would, therefore, content himself with remarking that
there was an easy-chair in the room, and that the door was far from
being air-tight. This latter imperfection, he might perhaps venture to
add, was not uncommonly to be met with in old houses.
The old man sat down in the easy-chair, and after a few moments'
silence, said:
'In the first place, let me thank you for coming to London so promptly,
at my almost unexplained request; I need scarcely add, at my cost.'
'At YOUR cost, my good sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff, in a tone of great
surprise.
'It is not,' said Martin, waving his hand impatiently, 'my habit to put
my--well! my relatives--to any personal expense to gratify my caprices.'
'Caprices, my good sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff
'That is scarcely the proper word either, in this instance,' said the
old man. 'No. You are right.'
Mr Pecksniff was inwardly very much relieved to hear it, though he
didn't at all know why.
'You are right,' repeated Martin. 'It is not a caprice. It is built up
on reason, proof, and cool comparison. Caprices never are. Moreover, I
am not a capricious man. I never was.'
'Most assuredly not,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'How do you know?' returned the other quickly. 'You are to begin to know
it now. You are to test and prove it, in time to come. You and yours are
to find that I can be constant, and am not to be diverted from my end.
Do you hear?'
'Perfectly,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'I very much regret,' Martin resumed, looking steadily at him, and
speaking in a slow and measured tone; 'I very much regret that you and
I held such a conversation together, as that which passed between us at
our last meeting. I very much regret that I laid open to you what were
then my thoughts of you, so freely as I did. The intentions that I bear
towards you now are of another kind; deserted by all in whom I have ever
trusted; hoodwinked and beset by all who should help and sustain me;
I fly to you for refuge. I confide in you to be my ally; to attach
yourself to me by ties of Interest and Expectation'--he laid great
stress upon these words, though Mr Pecksniff particularly begged him
not to mention it; 'and to help me to visit the consequences of the very
worst species of meanness, dissimulation, and subtlety, on the right
heads.'
'My noble sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff, catching at his outstretched hand.
'And YOU regret the having harboured unjust thoughts of me! YOU with
those grey hairs!'
'Regrets,' said Martin, 'are the natural property of grey hairs; and
I enjoy, in common with all other men, at least my share of such
inheritance. And so enough of that. I regret having been severed from
you so long. If I had known you sooner, and sooner used you as you well
deserve, I might have been a happier man.'
Mr Pecksniff looked up to the ceiling, and clasped his hands in rapture.
'Your daughters,' said Martin, after a short silence. 'I don't know
them. Are they like you?'
'In the nose of my eldest and the chin of my youngest, Mr Chuzzlewit,'
returned the widower, 'their sainted parent (not myself, their mother)
lives again.'
'I don't mean in person,' said the old man. 'Morally, morally.'
''Tis not for me to say,' retorted Mr Pecksniff with a gentle smile. 'I
have done my best, sir.'
'I could wish to see them,' said Martin; 'are they near at hand?'
They were, very near; for they had in fact been listening at the
door from the beginning of this conversation until now, when they
precipitately retired. Having wiped the signs of weakness from his eyes,
and so given them time to get upstairs, Mr Pecksniff opened the door,
and mildly cried in the passage,
'My own darlings, where are you?'
'Here, my dear pa!' replied the distant voice of Charity.
'Come down into the back parlour, if you please, my love,' said Mr
Pecksniff, 'and bring your sister with you.'
'Yes, my dear pa,' cried Merry; and down they came directly (being all
obedience), singing as they came.
Nothing could exceed the astonishment of the two Miss Pecksniffs when
they found a stranger with their dear papa. Nothing could surpass their
mute amazement when he said, 'My children, Mr Chuzzlewit!' But when he
told them that Mr Chuzzlewit and he were friends, and that Mr Chuzzlewit
had said such kind and tender words as pierced his very heart, the two
Miss Pecksniffs cried with one accord, 'Thank Heaven for this!' and
fell upon the old man's neck. And when they had embraced him with
such fervour of affection that no words can describe it, they grouped
themselves about his chair, and hung over him, as figuring to themselves
no earthly joy like that of ministering to his wants, and crowding into
the remainder of his life, the love they would have diffused over their
whole existence, from infancy, if he--dear obdurate!--had but consented
to receive the precious offering.
The old man looked attentively from one to the other, and then at Mr
Pecksniff, several times.
'What,' he asked of Mr Pecksniff, happening to catch his eye in its
descent; for until now it had been piously upraised, with something of
that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a domestic
bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric storm:
'What are their names?'
Mr Pecksniff told him, and added, rather hastily; his caluminators
would have said, with a view to any testamentary thoughts that might be
flitting through old Martin's mind; 'Perhaps, my dears, you had better
write them down. Your humble autographs are of no value in themselves,
but affection may prize them.'
'Affection,' said the old man, 'will expend itself on the living
originals. Do not trouble yourselves, my girls, I shall not so easily
forget you, Charity and Mercy, as to need such tokens of remembrance.
Cousin!'
'Sir!' said Mr Pecksniff, with alacrity.
'Do you never sit down?'
'Why--yes--occasionally, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, who had been standing
all this time.
'Will you do so now?'
'Can you ask me,' returned Mr Pecksniff, slipping into a chair
immediately, 'whether I will do anything that you desire?'
'You talk confidently,' said Martin, 'and you mean well; but I fear you
don't know what an old man's humours are. You don't know what it is to
be required to court his likings and dislikings; to adapt yourself to
his prejudices; to do his bidding, be it what it may; to bear with his
distrusts and jealousies; and always still be zealous in his service.
When I remember how numerous these failings are in me, and judge of
their occasional enormity by the injurious thoughts I lately entertained
of you, I hardly dare to claim you for my friend.'
'My worthy sir,' returned his relative, 'how CAN you talk in such a
painful strain! What was more natural than that you should make one
slight mistake, when in all other respects you were so very correct, and
have had such reason--such very sad and undeniable reason--to judge of
every one about you in the worst light!'
'True,' replied the other. 'You are very lenient with me.'
'We always said, my girls and I,' cried Mr Pecksniff with increasing
obsequiousness, 'that while we mourned the heaviness of our misfortune
in being confounded with the base and mercenary, still we could not
wonder at it. My dears, you remember?'
Oh vividly! A thousand times!
'We uttered no complaint,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Occasionally we had the
presumption to console ourselves with the remark that Truth would in
the end prevail, and Virtue be triumphant; but not often. My loves, you
recollect?'
Recollect! Could he doubt it! Dearest pa, what strange unnecessary
questions!
'And when I saw you,' resumed Mr Pecksniff, with still greater
deference, 'in the little, unassuming village where we take the liberty
of dwelling, I said you were mistaken in me, my dear sir; that was all,
I think?'
'No--not all,' said Martin, who had been sitting with his hand upon his
brow for some time past, and now looked up again; 'you said much more,
which, added to other circumstances that have come to my knowledge,
opened my eyes. You spoke to me, disinterestedly, on behalf of--I
needn't name him. You know whom I mean.'
Trouble was expressed in Mr Pecksniff's visage, as he pressed his hot
hands together, and replied, with humility, 'Quite disinterestedly, sir,
I assure you.'
'I know it,' said old Martin, in his quiet way. 'I am sure of it. I said
so. It was disinterested too, in you, to draw that herd of harpies
off from me, and be their victim yourself; most other men would have
suffered them to display themselves in all their rapacity, and would
have striven to rise, by contrast, in my estimation. You felt for me,
and drew them off, for which I owe you many thanks. Although I left the
place, I know what passed behind my back, you see!'
'You amaze me, sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff; which was true enough.
'My knowledge of your proceedings,' said the old man, does not stop at
this. You have a new inmate in your house.'
'Yes, sir,' rejoined the architect, 'I have.'
'He must quit it' said Martin.
'For--for yours?' asked Mr Pecksniff, with a quavering mildness.
'For any shelter he can find,' the old man answered. 'He has deceived
you.'
'I hope not' said Mr Pecksniff, eagerly. 'I trust not. I have been
extremely well disposed towards that young man. I hope it cannot be
shown that he has forfeited all claim to my protection. Deceit--deceit,
my dear Mr Chuzzlewit, would be final. I should hold myself bound, on
proof of deceit, to renounce him instantly.'
The old man glanced at both his fair supporters, but especially at
Miss Mercy, whom, indeed, he looked full in the face, with a greater
demonstration of interest than had yet appeared in his features. His
gaze again encountered Mr Pecksniff, as he said, composedly:
'Of course you know that he has made his matrimonial choice?'
'Oh dear!' cried Mr Pecksniff, rubbing his hair up very stiff upon
his head, and staring wildly at his daughters. 'This is becoming
tremendous!'
'You know the fact?' repeated Martin
'Surely not without his grandfather's consent and approbation my dear
sir!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Don't tell me that. For the honour of human
nature, say you're not about to tell me that!'
'I thought he had suppressed it,' said the old man.
The indignation felt by Mr Pecksniff at this terrible disclosure, was
only to be equalled by the kindling anger of his daughters. What! Had
they taken to their hearth and home a secretly contracted serpent; a
crocodile, who had made a furtive offer of his hand; an imposition on
society; a bankrupt bachelor with no effects, trading with the spinster
world on false pretences! And oh, to think that he should have disobeyed
and practised on that sweet, that venerable gentleman, whose name
he bore; that kind and tender guardian; his more than father--to say
nothing at all of mother--horrible, horrible! To turn him out with
ignominy would be treatment much too good. Was there nothing else that
could be done to him? Had he incurred no legal pains and penalties?
Could it be that the statutes of the land were so remiss as to have
affixed no punishment to such delinquency? Monster; how basely had they
been deceived!
'I am glad to find you second me so warmly,' said the old man holding up
his hand to stay the torrent of their wrath. 'I will not deny that it
is a pleasure to me to find you so full of zeal. We will consider that
topic as disposed of.'
'No, my dear sir,' cried Mr Pecksniff, 'not as disposed of, until I have
purged my house of this pollution.'
'That will follow,' said the old man, 'in its own time. I look upon that
as done.'
'You are very good, sir,' answered Mr Pecksniff, shaking his hand. 'You
do me honour. You MAY look upon it as done, I assure you.'
'There is another topic,' said Martin, 'on which I hope you will assist
me. You remember Mary, cousin?'
'The young lady that I mentioned to you, my dears, as having interested
me so very much,' remarked Mr Pecksniff. 'Excuse my interrupting you,
sir.'
'I told you her history?' said the old man.
'Which I also mentioned, you will recollect, my dears,' cried Mr
Pecksniff. 'Silly girls, Mr Chuzzlewit--quite moved by it, they were!'
'Why, look now!' said Martin, evidently pleased; 'I feared I should have
had to urge her case upon you, and ask you to regard her favourably for
my sake. But I find you have no jealousies! Well! You have no cause
for any, to be sure. She has nothing to gain from me, my dears, and she
knows it.'
The two Miss Pecksniffs murmured their approval of this wise
arrangement, and their cordial sympathy with its interesting object.
'If I could have anticipated what has come to pass between us four,'
said the old man thoughfully; 'but it is too late to think of that. You
would receive her courteously, young ladies, and be kind to her, if need
were?'
Where was the orphan whom the two Miss Pecksniffs would not have
cherished in their sisterly bosom! But when that orphan was commended to
their care by one on whom the dammed-up love of years was gushing forth,
what exhaustless stores of pure affection yearned to expend themselves
upon her!
An interval ensued, during which Mr Chuzzlewit, in an absent frame of
mind, sat gazing at the ground, without uttering a word; and as it was
plain that he had no desire to be interrupted in his meditations, Mr
Pecksniff and his daughters were profoundly silent also. During the
whole of the foregoing dialogue, he had borne his part with a cold,
passionless promptitude, as though he had learned and painfully
rehearsed it all a hundred times. Even when his expressions were warmest
and his language most encouraging, he had retained the same manner,
without the least abatement. But now there was a keener brightness in
his eye, and more expression in his voice, as he said, awakening from
his thoughtful mood:
'You know what will be said of this? Have you reflected?'
'Said of what, my dear sir?' Mr Pecksniff asked.
'Of this new understanding between us.'
Mr Pecksniff looked benevolently sagacious, and at the same time far
above all earthly misconstruction, as he shook his head, and observed
that a great many things would be said of it, no doubt.
'A great many,' rejoined the old man. 'Some will say that I dote in my
old age; that illness has shaken me; that I have lost all strength of
mind, and have grown childish. You can bear that?'
Mr Pecksniff answered that it would be dreadfully hard to bear, but he
thought he could, if he made a great effort.
'Others will say--I speak of disappointed, angry people only--that you
have lied and fawned, and wormed yourself through dirty ways into my
favour; by such concessions and such crooked deeds, such meannesses and
vile endurances, as nothing could repay; no, not the legacy of half the
world we live in. You can bear that?'
Mr Pecksniff made reply that this would be also very hard to bear, as
reflecting, in some degree, on the discernment of Mr Chuzzlewit. Still
he had a modest confidence that he could sustain the calumny, with the
help of a good conscience, and that gentleman's friendship.
'With the great mass of slanderers,' said old Martin, leaning back in
his chair, 'the tale, as I clearly foresee, will run thus: That to mark
my contempt for the rabble whom I despised, I chose from among them the
very worst, and made him do my will, and pampered and enriched him at
the cost of all the rest. That, after casting about for the means of a
punishment which should rankle in the bosoms of these kites the most,
and strike into their gall, I devised this scheme at a time when the
last link in the chain of grateful love and duty, that held me to
my race, was roughly snapped asunder; roughly, for I loved him well;
roughly, for I had ever put my trust in his affection; roughly, for that
he broke it when I loved him most--God help me!--and he without a pang
could throw me off, while I clung about his heart! Now,' said the old
man, dismissing this passionate outburst as suddenly as he had yielded
to it, 'is your mind made up to bear this likewise? Lay your account
with having it to bear, and put no trust in being set right by me.'
'My dear Mr Chuzzlewit,' cried Pecksniff in an ecstasy, 'for such a man
as you have shown yourself to be this day; for a man so injured, yet so
very humane; for a man so--I am at a loss what precise term to use--yet
at the same time so remarkably--I don't know how to express my meaning;
for such a man as I have described, I hope it is no presumption to say
that I, and I am sure I may add my children also (my dears, we perfectly
agree in this, I think?), would bear anything whatever!'
'Enough,' said Martin. 'You can charge no consequences on me. When do
you retire home?'
'Whenever you please, my dear sir. To-night if you desire it.'
'I desire nothing,' returned the old man, 'that is unreasonable. Such a
request would be. Will you be ready to return at the end of this week?'
The very time of all others that Mr Pecksniff would have suggested if
it had been left to him to make his own choice. As to his daughters--the
words, 'Let us be at home on Saturday, dear pa,' were actually upon
their lips.
'Your expenses, cousin,' said Martin, taking a folded slip of paper from
his pocketbook, 'may possibly exceed that amount. If so, let me know the
balance that I owe you, when we next meet. It would be useless if I told
you where I live just now; indeed, I have no fixed abode. When I have,
you shall know it. You and your daughters may expect to see me
before long; in the meantime I need not tell you that we keep our own
confidence. What you will do when you get home is understood between us.
Give me no account of it at any time; and never refer to it in any way.
I ask that as a favour. I am commonly a man of few words, cousin; and
all that need be said just now is said, I think.'
'One glass of wine--one morsel of this homely cake?' cried Mr Pecksniff,
venturing to detain him. 'My dears--!'
The sisters flew to wait upon him.
'Poor girls!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'You will excuse their agitation, my
dear sir. They are made up of feeling. A bad commodity to go through the
world with, Mr Chuzzlewit! My youngest daughter is almost as much of a
woman as my eldest, is she not, sir?'
'Which IS the youngest?' asked the old man.
'Mercy, by five years,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'We sometimes venture to
consider her rather a fine figure, sir. Speaking as an artist, I
may perhaps be permitted to suggest that its outline is graceful and
correct. I am naturally,' said Mr Pecksniff, drying his hands upon his
handkerchief, and looking anxiously in his cousin's face at almost every
word, 'proud, if I may use the expression, to have a daughter who is
constructed on the best models.'
'She seems to have a lively disposition,' observed Martin.
'Dear me!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'That is quite remarkable. You have
defined her character, my dear sir, as correctly as if you had known her
from her birth. She HAS a lively disposition. I assure you, my dear sir,
that in our unpretending home her gaiety is delightful.'
'No doubt,' returned the old man.
'Charity, upon the other hand,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'is remarkable for
strong sense, and for rather a deep tone of sentiment, if the partiality
of a father may be excused in saying so. A wonderful affection between
them, my dear sir! Allow me to drink your health. Bless you!'
'I little thought,' retorted Martin, 'but a month ago, that I should be
breaking bread and pouring wine with you. I drink to you.'
Not at all abashed by the extraordinary abruptness with which these
latter words were spoken, Mr Pecksniff thanked him devoutly.
'Now let me go,' said Martin, putting down the wine when he had merely
touched it with his lips. 'My dears, good morning!'
But this distant form of farewell was by no means tender enough for the
yearnings of the young ladies, who again embraced him with all their
hearts--with all their arms at any rate--to which parting caresses their
new-found friend submitted with a better grace than might have been
expected from one who, not a moment before, had pledged their parent in
such a very uncomfortable manner. These endearments terminated, he took
a hasty leave of Mr Pecksniff and withdrew, followed to the door by both
father and daughters, who stood there kissing their hands and beaming
with affection until he disappeared; though, by the way, he never once
looked back, after he had crossed the threshold.
When they returned into the house, and were again alone in Mrs Todgers's
room, the two young ladies exhibited an unusual amount of gaiety;
insomuch that they clapped their hands, and laughed, and looked with
roguish aspects and a bantering air upon their dear papa. This conduct
was so very unaccountable, that Mr Pecksniff (being singularly grave
himself) could scarcely choose but ask them what it meant; and took them
to task, in his gentle manner, for yielding to such light emotions.
'If it was possible to divine any cause for this merriment, even the
most remote,' he said, 'I should not reprove you. But when you can have
none whatever--oh, really, really!'
This admonition had so little effect on Mercy, that she was obliged to
hold her handkerchief before her rosy lips, and to throw herself back in
her chair, with every demonstration of extreme amusement; which want
of duty so offended Mr Pecksniff that he reproved her in set terms,
and gave her his parental advice to correct herself in solitude and
contemplation. But at that juncture they were disturbed by the sound of
voices in dispute; and as it proceeded from the next room, the subject
matter of the altercation quickly reached their ears.
'I don't care that! Mrs Todgers,' said the young gentleman who had been
the youngest gentleman in company on the day of the festival; 'I don't
care THAT, ma'am,' said he, snapping his fingers, 'for Jinkins. Don't
suppose I do.'
'I am quite certain you don't, sir,' replied Mrs Todgers. 'You have
too independent a spirit, I know, to yield to anybody. And quite right.
There is no reason why you should give way to any gentleman. Everybody
must be well aware of that.'
'I should think no more of admitting daylight into the fellow,' said the
youngest gentleman, in a desperate voice, 'than if he was a bulldog.'
Mrs Todgers did not stop to inquire whether, as a matter of principle,
there was any particular reason for admitting daylight even into a
bulldog, otherwise than by the natural channel of his eyes, but she
seemed to wring her hands, and she moaned.
'Let him be careful,' said the youngest gentleman. 'I give him warning.
No man shall step between me and the current of my vengeance. I know
a Cove--' he used that familiar epithet in his agitation but corrected
himself by adding, 'a gentleman of property, I mean--who practices with
a pair of pistols (fellows too) of his own. If I am driven to borrow
'em, and to send at friend to Jinkins, a tragedy will get into the
papers. That's all.'
Again Mrs Todgers moaned.
'I have borne this long enough,' said the youngest gentleman but now
my soul rebels against it, and I won't stand it any longer. I left home
originally, because I had that within me which wouldn't be domineered
over by a sister; and do you think I'm going to be put down by HIM? No.'
'It is very wrong in Mr Jinkins; I know it is perfectly inexcusable in
Mr Jinkins, if he intends it,' observed Mrs Todgers
'If he intends it!' cried the youngest gentleman. 'Don't he interrupt
and contradict me on every occasion? Does he ever fail to interpose
himself between me and anything or anybody that he sees I have set my
mind upon? Does he make a point of always pretending to forget me,
when he's pouring out the beer? Does he make bragging remarks about his
razors, and insulting allusions to people who have no necessity to shave
more than once a week? But let him look out! He'll find himself shaved,
pretty close, before long, and so I tell him.'
The young gentleman was mistaken in this closing sentence, inasmuch as
he never told it to Jinkins, but always to Mrs Todgers.
'However,' he said, 'these are not proper subjects for ladies' ears.
All I've got to say to you, Mrs Todgers, is, a week's notice from next
Saturday. The same house can't contain that miscreant and me any longer.
If we get over the intermediate time without bloodshed, you may think
yourself pretty fortunate. I don't myself expect we shall.'
'Dear, dear!' cried Mrs Todgers, 'what would I have given to have
prevented this? To lose you, sir, would be like losing the house's
right-hand. So popular as you are among the gentlemen; so generally
looked up to; and so much liked! I do hope you'll think better of it; if
on nobody else's account, on mine.'
'There's Jinkins,' said the youngest gentleman, moodily. 'Your
favourite. He'll console you, and the gentlemen too, for the loss of
twenty such as me. I'm not understood in this house. I never have been.'
'Don't run away with that opinion, sir!' cried Mrs Todgers, with a show
of honest indignation. 'Don't make such a charge as that against the
establishment, I must beg of you. It is not so bad as that comes to,
sir. Make any remark you please against the gentlemen, or against me;
but don't say you're not understood in this house.'
'I'm not treated as if I was,' said the youngest gentleman.
'There you make a great mistake, sir,' returned Mrs Todgers, in the same
strain. 'As many of the gentlemen and I have often said, you are too
sensitive. That's where it is. You are of too susceptible a nature; it's
in your spirit.'
The young gentleman coughed.
'And as,' said Mrs Todgers, 'as to Mr Jinkins, I must beg of you, if we
ARE to part, to understand that I don't abet Mr Jinkins by any means.
Far from it. I could wish that Mr Jinkins would take a lower tone in
this establishment, and would not be the means of raising differences
between me and gentlemen that I can much less bear to part with than I
could with Mr Jinkins. Mr Jinkins is not such a boarder, sir,' added Mrs
Todgers, 'that all considerations of private feeling and respect give
way before him. Quite the contrary, I assure you.'
The young gentleman was so much mollified by these and similar speeches
on the part of Mrs Todgers, that he and that lady gradually changed
positions; so that she became the injured party, and he was understood
to be the injurer; but in a complimentary, not in an offensive sense;
his cruel conduct being attributable to his exalted nature, and to that
alone. So, in the end, the young gentleman withdrew his notice, and
assured Mrs Todgers of his unalterable regard; and having done so, went
back to business.
'Goodness me, Miss Pecksniffs!' cried that lady, as she came into the
back room, and sat wearily down, with her basket on her knees, and her
hands folded upon it, 'what a trial of temper it is to keep a house like
this! You must have heard most of what has just passed. Now did you ever
hear the like?'
'Never!' said the two Miss Pecksniffs.
'Of all the ridiculous young fellows that ever I had to deal with,'
resumed Mrs Todgers, 'that is the most ridiculous and unreasonable. Mr
Jinkins is hard upon him sometimes, but not half as hard as he deserves.
To mention such a gentleman as Mr Jinkins in the same breath with
HIM--you know it's too much! And yet he's as jealous of him, bless you,
as if he was his equal.'
The young ladies were greatly entertained by Mrs Todgers's account,
no less than with certain anecdotes illustrative of the youngest
gentleman's character, which she went on to tell them. But Mr Pecksniff
looked quite stern and angry; and when she had concluded, said in a
solemn voice:
'Pray, Mrs Todgers, if I may inquire, what does that young gentleman
contribute towards the support of these premises?'
'Why, sir, for what HE has, he pays about eighteen shillings a week!'
said Mrs Todgers.
'Eighteen shillings a week!' repeated Mr Pecksniff.
'Taking one week with another; as near that as possible,' said Mrs
Todgers.
Mr Pecksniff rose from his chair, folded his arms, looked at her, and
shook his head.
'And do you mean to say, ma'am--is it possible, Mrs Todgers--that for
such a miserable consideration as eighteen shillings a week, a female of
your understanding can so far demean herself as to wear a double face,
even for an instant?'
'I am forced to keep things on the square if I can, sir,' faltered
Mrs Todgers. 'I must preserve peace among them, and keep my connection
together, if possible, Mr Pecksniff. The profit is very small.'
'The profit!' cried that gentleman, laying great stress upon the word.
'The profit, Mrs Todgers! You amaze me!'
He was so severe, that Mrs Todgers shed tears.
'The profit!' repeated Mr pecksniff. 'The profit of dissimulation! To
worship the golden calf of Baal, for eighteen shillings a week!'
'Don't in your own goodness be too hard upon me, Mr Pecksniff,' cried
Mrs Todgers, taking out her handkerchief.
'Oh Calf, Calf!' cried Mr Pecksniff mournfully. 'Oh, Baal, Baal! oh my
friend, Mrs Todgers! To barter away that precious jewel, self-esteem,
and cringe to any mortal creature--for eighteen shillings a week!'
He was so subdued and overcome by the reflection, that he immediately
took down his hat from its peg in the passage, and went out for a walk,
to compose his feelings. Anybody passing him in the street might have
known him for a good man at first sight; for his whole figure teemed
with a consciousness of the moral homily he had read to Mrs Todgers.
Eighteen shillings a week! Just, most just, thy censure, upright
Pecksniff! Had it been for the sake of a ribbon, star, or garter;
sleeves of lawn, a great man's smile, a seat in parliament, a tap upon
the shoulder from a courtly sword; a place, a party, or a thriving lie,
or eighteen thousand pounds, or even eighteen hundred;--but to worship
the golden calf for eighteen shillings a week! oh pitiful, pitiful!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEREIN A CERTAIN GENTLEMAN BECOMES PARTICULAR IN HIS ATTENTIONS TO A
CERTAIN LADY; AND MORE COMING EVENTS THAN ONE, CAST THEIR SHADOWS BEFORE
The family were within two or three days of their departure from Mrs
Todgers's, and the commercial gentlemen were to a man despondent and
not to be comforted, because of the approaching separation, when Bailey
junior, at the jocund time of noon, presented himself before Miss
Charity Pecksniff, then sitting with her sister in the banquet chamber,
hemming six new pocket-handkerchiefs for Mr Jinkins; and having
expressed a hope, preliminary and pious, that he might be blest, gave
her in his pleasant way to understand that a visitor attended to pay
his respects to her, and was at that moment waiting in the drawing-room.
Perhaps this last announcement showed in a more striking point of view
than many lengthened speeches could have done, the trustfulness and
faith of Bailey's nature; since he had, in fact, last seen the visitor
on the door-mat, where, after signifying to him that he would do well to
go upstairs, he had left him to the guidance of his own sagacity. Hence
it was at least an even chance that the visitor was then wandering on
the roof of the house, or vainly seeking to extricate himself from the
maze of bedrooms; Todgers's being precisely that kind of establishment
in which an unpiloted stranger is pretty sure to find himself in some
place where he least expects and least desires to be.
'A gentleman for me!' cried Charity, pausing in her work; 'my gracious,
Bailey!'
'Ah!' said Bailey. 'It IS my gracious, an't it? Wouldn't I be gracious
neither, not if I wos him!'
The remark was rendered somewhat obscure in itself, by reason (as the
reader may have observed) of a redundancy of negatives; but accompanied
by action expressive of a faithful couple walking arm-in-arm towards
a parochial church, mutually exchanging looks of love, it clearly
signified this youth's conviction that the caller's purpose was of an
amorous tendency. Miss Charity affected to reprove so great a liberty;
but she could not help smiling. He was a strange boy, to be sure. There
was always some ground of probability and likelihood mingled with his
absurd behaviour. That was the best of it!
'But I don't know any gentlemen, Bailey,' said Miss Pecksniff. 'I think
you must have made a mistake.'
Mr Bailey smiled at the extreme wildness of such a supposition, and
regarded the young ladies with unimpaired affability.
'My dear Merry,' said Charity, 'who CAN it be? Isn't it odd? I have a
great mind not to go to him really. So very strange, you know!'
The younger sister plainly considered that this appeal had its origin in
the pride of being called upon and asked for; and that it was intended
as an assertion of superiority, and a retaliation upon her for having
captured the commercial gentlemen. Therefore, she replied, with great
affection and politeness, that it was, no doubt, very strange indeed;
and that she was totally at a loss to conceive what the ridiculous
person unknown could mean by it.
'Quite impossible to divine!' said Charity, with some sharpness, 'though
still, at the same time, you needn't be angry, my dear.'
'Thank you,' retorted Merry, singing at her needle. 'I am quite aware of
that, my love.'
'I am afraid your head is turned, you silly thing,' said Cherry.
'Do you know, my dear,' said Merry, with engaging candour, 'that I have
been afraid of that, myself, all along! So much incense and nonsense,
and all the rest of it, is enough to turn a stronger head than mine.
What a relief it must be to you, my dear, to be so very comfortable in
that respect, and not to be worried by those odious men! How do you do
it, Cherry?'
This artless inquiry might have led to turbulent results, but for the
strong emotions of delight evinced by Bailey junior, whose relish in the
turn the conversation had lately taken was so acute, that it impelled
and forced him to the instantaneous performance of a dancing step,
extremely difficult in its nature, and only to be achieved in a
moment of ecstasy, which is commonly called The Frog's Hornpipe. A
manifestation so lively, brought to their immediate recollection the
great virtuous precept, 'Keep up appearances whatever you do,' in which
they had been educated. They forbore at once, and jointly signified to
Mr Bailey that if he should presume to practice that figure any more in
their presence, they would instantly acquaint Mrs Todgers with the fact,
and would demand his condign punishment, at the hands of that lady. The
young gentleman having expressed the bitterness of his contrition by
affecting to wipe away scalding tears with his apron, and afterwards
feigning to wring a vast amount of water from that garment, held the
door open while Miss Charity passed out; and so that damsel went in
state upstairs to receive her mysterious adorer.
By some strange occurrence of favourable circumstances he had found out
the drawing-room, and was sitting there alone.
'Ah, cousin!' he said. 'Here I am, you see. You thought I was lost, I'll
be bound. Well! how do you find yourself by this time?'
Miss Charity replied that she was quite well, and gave Mr Jonas
Chuzzlewit her hand.
'That's right,' said Mr Jonas, 'and you've got over the fatigues of the
journey have you? I say. How's the other one?'
'My sister is very well, I believe,' returned the young lady. 'I have
not heard her complain of any indisposition, sir. Perhaps you would like
to see her, and ask her yourself?'
'No, no cousin!' said Mr Jonas, sitting down beside her on the
window-seat. 'Don't be in a hurry. There's no occasion for that, you
know. What a cruel girl you are!'
'It's impossible for YOU to know,' said Cherry, 'whether I am or not.'
'Well, perhaps it is,' said Mr Jonas. 'I say--Did you think I was lost?
You haven't told me that.'
'I didn't think at all about it,' answered Cherry.
'Didn't you though?' said Jonas, pondering upon this strange reply. 'Did
the other one?'
'I am sure it's impossible for me to say what my sister may, or may not
have thought on such a subject,' cried Cherry. 'She never said anything
to me about it, one way or other.'
'Didn't she laugh about it?' inquired Jonas.
'No. She didn't even laugh about it,' answered Charity.
'She's a terrible one to laugh, an't she?' said Jonas, lowering his
voice.
'She is very lively,' said Cherry.
'Liveliness is a pleasant thing--when it don't lead to spending money.
An't it?' asked Mr Jonas.
'Very much so, indeed,' said Cherry, with a demureness of manner that
gave a very disinterested character to her assent.
'Such liveliness as yours I mean, you know,' observed Mr Jonas, as he
nudged her with his elbow. 'I should have come to see you before, but I
didn't know where you was. How quick you hurried off, that morning!'
'I was amenable to my papa's directions,' said Miss Charity.
'I wish he had given me his direction,' returned her cousin, 'and then
I should have found you out before. Why, I shouldn't have found you even
now, if I hadn't met him in the street this morning. What a sleek, sly
chap he is! Just like a tomcat, an't he?'
'I must trouble you to have the goodness to speak more respectfully of
my papa, Mr Jonas,' said Charity. 'I can't allow such a tone as that,
even in jest.'
'Ecod, you may say what you like of MY father, then, and so I give you
leave,' said Jonas. 'I think it's liquid aggravation that circulates
through his veins, and not regular blood. How old should you think my
father was, cousin?'
'Old, no doubt,' replied Miss Charity; 'but a fine old gentleman.'
'A fine old gentleman!' repeated Jonas, giving the crown of his hat an
angry knock. 'Ah! It's time he was thinking of being drawn out a little
finer too. Why, he's eighty!'
'Is he, indeed?' said the young lady.
'And ecod,' cried Jonas, 'now he's gone so far without giving in, I
don't see much to prevent his being ninety; no, nor even a hundred. Why,
a man with any feeling ought to be ashamed of being eighty, let alone
more. Where's his religion, I should like to know, when he goes flying
in the face of the Bible like that? Threescore-and-ten's the mark, and
no man with a conscience, and a proper sense of what's expected of him,
has any business to live longer.'
Is any one surprised at Mr Jonas making such a reference to such a
book for such a purpose? Does any one doubt the old saw, that the Devil
(being a layman) quotes Scripture for his own ends? If he will take the
trouble to look about him, he may find a greater number of confirmations
of the fact in the occurrences of any single day, than the steam-gun can
discharge balls in a minute.
'But there's enough of my father,' said Jonas; 'it's of no use to go
putting one's self out of the way by talking about HIM. I called to ask
you to come and take a walk, cousin, and see some of the sights; and
to come to our house afterwards, and have a bit of something. Pecksniff
will most likely look in in the evening, he says, and bring you home.
See, here's his writing; I made him put it down this morning when he
told me he shouldn't be back before I came here; in case you wouldn't
believe me. There's nothing like proof, is there? Ha, ha! I say--you'll
bring the other one, you know!'
Miss Charity cast her eyes upon her father's autograph, which merely
said--'Go, my children, with your cousin. Let there be union among us
when it is possible;' and after enough of hesitation to impart a proper
value to her consent, withdrew to prepare her sister and herself for the
excursion. She soon returned, accompanied by Miss Mercy, who was by
no means pleased to leave the brilliant triumphs of Todgers's for the
society of Mr Jonas and his respected father.
'Aha!' cried Jonas. 'There you are, are you?'
'Yes, fright,' said Mercy, 'here I am; and I would much rather be
anywhere else, I assure you.'
'You don't mean that,' cried Mr Jonas. 'You can't, you know. It isn't
possible.'
'You can have what opinion you like, fright,' retorted Mercy. 'I am
content to keep mine; and mine is that you are a very unpleasant,
odious, disagreeable person.' Here she laughed heartily, and seemed to
enjoy herself very much.
'Oh, you're a sharp gal!' said Mr Jonas. 'She's a regular teaser, an't
she, cousin?'
Miss Charity replied in effect, that she was unable to say what the
habits and propensities of a regular teaser might be; and that even if
she possessed such information, it would ill become her to admit the
existence of any creature with such an unceremonious name in her family;
far less in the person of a beloved sister; 'whatever,' added Cherry
with an angry glance, 'whatever her real nature may be.'
'Well, my dear,' said Merry, 'the only observation I have to make is,
that if we don't go out at once, I shall certainly take my bonnet off
again, and stay at home.'
This threat had the desired effect of preventing any farther
altercation, for Mr Jonas immediately proposed an adjournment, and
the same being carried unanimously, they departed from the house
straightway. On the doorstep, Mr Jonas gave an arm to each cousin;
which act of gallantry being observed by Bailey junior, from the garret
window, was by him saluted with a loud and violent fit of coughing, to
which paroxysm he was still the victim when they turned the corner.
Mr Jonas inquired in the first instance if they were good walkers and
being answered, 'Yes,' submitted their pedestrian powers to a pretty
severe test; for he showed them as many sights, in the way of bridges,
churches, streets, outsides of theatres, and other free spectacles,
in that one forenoon, as most people see in a twelvemonth. It was
observable in this gentleman, that he had an insurmountable distaste to
the insides of buildings, and that he was perfectly acquainted with
the merits of all shows, in respect of which there was any charge for
admission, which it seemed were every one detestable, and of the very
lowest grade of merit. He was so thoroughly possessed with this opinion,
that when Miss Charity happened to mention the circumstance of their
having been twice or thrice to the theatre with Mr Jinkins and party, he
inquired, as a matter of course, 'where the orders came from?' and being
told that Mr Jinkins and party paid, was beyond description entertained,
observing that 'they must be nice flats, certainly;' and often in the
course of the walk, bursting out again into a perfect convulsion of
laughter at the surpassing silliness of those gentlemen, and (doubtless)
at his own superior wisdom.
When they had been out for some hours and were thoroughly fatigued, it
being by that time twilight, Mr Jonas intimated that he would show them
one of the best pieces of fun with which he was acquainted. This joke
was of a practical kind, and its humour lay in taking a hackney-coach
to the extreme limits of possibility for a shilling. Happily it brought
them to the place where Mr Jonas dwelt, or the young ladies might have
rather missed the point and cream of the jest.
The old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son, Manchester
Warehousemen, and so forth, had its place of business in a very narrow
street somewhere behind the Post Office; where every house was in the
brightest summer morning very gloomy; and where light porters watered
the pavement, each before his own employer's premises, in fantastic
patterns, in the dog-days; and where spruce gentlemen with their hands
in the pockets of symmetrical trousers, were always to be seen in
warm weather, contemplating their undeniable boots in dusty warehouse
doorways; which appeared to be the hardest work they did, except now and
then carrying pens behind their ears. A dim, dirty, smoky, tumble-down,
rotten old house it was, as anybody would desire to see; but there the
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son transacted all their business and
their pleasure too, such as it was; for neither the young man nor the
old had any other residence, or any care or thought beyond its narrow
limits.
Business, as may be readily supposed, was the main thing in this
establishment; insomuch indeed that it shouldered comfort out of
doors, and jostled the domestic arrangements at every turn. Thus in the
miserable bedrooms there were files of moth-eaten letters hanging up
against the walls; and linen rollers, and fragments of old patterns,
and odds and ends of spoiled goods, strewed upon the ground; while the
meagre bedsteads, washing-stands, and scraps of carpet, were huddled
away into corners as objects of secondary consideration, not to be
thought of but as disagreeable necessities, furnishing no profit, and
intruding on the one affair of life. The single sitting-room was on
the same principle, a chaos of boxes and old papers, and had more
counting-house stools in it than chairs; not to mention a great monster
of a desk straddling over the middle of the floor, and an iron safe
sunk into the wall above the fireplace. The solitary little table for
purposes of refection and social enjoyment, bore as fair a proportion
to the desk and other business furniture, as the graces and harmless
relaxations of life had ever done, in the persons of the old man and his
son, to their pursuit of wealth. It was meanly laid out now for dinner;
and in a chair before the fire sat Anthony himself, who rose to greet
his son and his fair cousins as they entered.
An ancient proverb warns us that we should not expect to find old heads
upon young shoulders; to which it may be added that we seldom meet with
that unnatural combination, but we feel a strong desire to knock them
off; merely from an inherent love we have of seeing things in their
right places. It is not improbable that many men, in no wise choleric
by nature, felt this impulse rising up within them, when they first made
the acquaintance of Mr Jonas; but if they had known him more intimately
in his own house, and had sat with him at his own board, it would
assuredly have been paramount to all other considerations.
'Well, ghost!' said Mr Jonas, dutifully addressing his parent by that
title. 'Is dinner nearly ready?'
'I should think it was,' rejoined the old man.
'What's the good of that?' rejoined the son. 'I should think it was. I
want to know.'
'Ah! I don't know for certain,' said Anthony.
'You don't know for certain,' rejoined his son in a lower tone. 'No. You
don't know anything for certain, YOU don't. Give me your candle here. I
want it for the gals.'
Anthony handed him a battered old office candlestick, with which Mr
Jonas preceded the young ladies to the nearest bedroom, where he left
them to take off their shawls and bonnets; and returning, occupied
himself in opening a bottle of wine, sharpening the carving-knife, and
muttering compliments to his father, until they and the dinner appeared
together. The repast consisted of a hot leg of mutton with greens and
potatoes; and the dishes having been set upon the table by a slipshod
old woman, they were left to enjoy it after their own manner.
'Bachelor's Hall, you know, cousin,' said Mr Jonas to Charity. 'I
say--the other one will be having a laugh at this when she gets home,
won't she? Here; you sit on the right side of me, and I'll have her upon
the left. Other one, will you come here?'
'You're such a fright,' replied Mercy, 'that I know I shall have no
appetite if I sit so near you; but I suppose I must.'
'An't she lively?' whispered Mr Jonas to the elder sister, with his
favourite elbow emphasis.
'Oh I really don't know!' replied Miss Pecksniff, tartly. 'I am tired of
being asked such ridiculous questions.'
'What's that precious old father of mine about now?' said Mr Jonas,
seeing that his parent was travelling up and down the room instead of
taking his seat at table. 'What are you looking for?'
'I've lost my glasses, Jonas,' said old Anthony.
'Sit down without your glasses, can't you?' returned his son. 'You don't
eat or drink out of 'em, I think; and where's that sleepy-headed old
Chuffey got to! Now, stupid. Oh! you know your name, do you?'
It would seem that he didn't, for he didn't come until the father
called. As he spoke, the door of a small glass office, which was
partitioned off from the rest of the room, was slowly opened, and a
little blear-eyed, weazen-faced, ancient man came creeping out. He was
of a remote fashion, and dusty, like the rest of the furniture; he was
dressed in a decayed suit of black; with breeches garnished at the knees
with rusty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of shoestrings; on the
lower portion of his spindle legs were dingy worsted stockings of the
same colour. He looked as if he had been put away and forgotten half a
century before, and somebody had just found him in a lumber-closet.
Such as he was, he came slowly creeping on towards the table, until at
last he crept into the vacant chair, from which, as his dim faculties
became conscious of the presence of strangers, and those strangers
ladies, he rose again, apparently intending to make a bow. But he sat
down once more without having made it, and breathing on his shrivelled
hands to warm them, remained with his poor blue nose immovable above his
plate, looking at nothing, with eyes that saw nothing, and a face that
meant nothing. Take him in that state, and he was an embodiment of
nothing. Nothing else.
'Our clerk,' said Mr Jonas, as host and master of the ceremonies: 'Old
Chuffey.'
'Is he deaf?' inquired one of the young ladies.
'No, I don't know that he is. He an't deaf, is he, father?'
'I never heard him say he was,' replied the old man.
'Blind?' inquired the young ladies.
'N--no. I never understood that he was at all blind,' said Jonas,
carelessly. 'You don't consider him so, do you, father?'
'Certainly not,' replied Anthony.
'What is he, then?'
'Why, I'll tell you what he is,' said Mr Jonas, apart to the young
ladies, 'he's precious old, for one thing; and I an't best pleased with
him for that, for I think my father must have caught it of him. He's a
strange old chap, for another,' he added in a louder voice, 'and don't
understand any one hardly, but HIM!' He pointed to his honoured parent
with the carving-fork, in order that they might know whom he meant.
'How very strange!' cried the sisters.
'Why, you see,' said Mr Jonas, 'he's been addling his old brains with
figures and book-keeping all his life; and twenty years ago or so he
went and took a fever. All the time he was out of his head (which was
three weeks) he never left off casting up; and he got to so many million
at last that I don't believe he's ever been quite right since. We don't
do much business now though, and he an't a bad clerk.'
'A very good one,' said Anthony.
'Well! He an't a dear one at all events,' observed Jonas; 'and he earns
his salt, which is enough for our look-out. I was telling you that he
hardly understands any one except my father; he always understands him,
though, and wakes up quite wonderful. He's been used to his ways so
long, you see! Why, I've seen him play whist, with my father for a
partner; and a good rubber too; when he had no more notion what sort of
people he was playing against, than you have.'
'Has he no appetite?' asked Merry.
'Oh, yes,' said Jonas, plying his own knife and fork very fast. 'He
eats--when he's helped. But he don't care whether he waits a minute or
an hour, as long as father's here; so when I'm at all sharp set, as I am
to-day, I come to him after I've taken the edge off my own hunger, you
know. Now, Chuffey, stupid, are you ready?'
Chuffey remained immovable.
'Always a perverse old file, he was,' said Mr Jonas, coolly helping
himself to another slice. 'Ask him, father.'
'Are you ready for your dinner, Chuffey?' asked the old man
'Yes, yes,' said Chuffey, lighting up into a sentient human creature at
the first sound of the voice, so that it was at once a curious and quite
a moving sight to see him. 'Yes, yes. Quite ready, Mr Chuzzlewit. Quite
ready, sir. All ready, all ready, all ready.' With that he stopped,
smilingly, and listened for some further address; but being spoken to
no more, the light forsook his face by little and little, until he was
nothing again.
'He'll be very disagreeable, mind,' said Jonas, addressing his cousins
as he handed the old man's portion to his father. 'He always chokes
himself when it an't broth. Look at him, now! Did you ever see a horse
with such a wall-eyed expression as he's got? If it hadn't been for the
joke of it I wouldn't have let him come in to-day; but I thought he'd
amuse you.'
The poor old subject of this humane speech was, happily for himself, as
unconscious of its purport as of most other remarks that were made in
his presence. But the mutton being tough, and his gums weak, he quickly
verified the statement relative to his choking propensities, and
underwent so much in his attempts to dine, that Mr Jonas was infinitely
amused; protesting that he had seldom seen him better company in all
his life, and that he was enough to make a man split his sides with
laughing. Indeed, he went so far as to assure the sisters, that in this
point of view he considered Chuffey superior to his own father; which,
as he significantly added, was saying a great deal.
It was strange enough that Anthony Chuzzlewit, himself so old a man,
should take a pleasure in these gibings of his estimable son at the
expense of the poor shadow at their table. But he did, unquestionably;
though not so much--to do him justice--with reference to their ancient
clerk, as in exultation at the sharpness of Jonas. For the same reason
that young man's coarse allusions, even to himself, filled him with a
stealthy glee; causing him to rub his hands and chuckle covertly, as if
he said in his sleeve, 'I taught him. I trained him. This is the heir of
my bringing-up. Sly, cunning, and covetous, he'll not squander my money.
I worked for this; I hoped for this; it has been the great end and aim
of my life.'
What a noble end and aim it was to contemplate in the attainment truly!
But there be some who manufacture idols after the fashion of themselves,
and fail to worship them when they are made; charging their deformity on
outraged nature. Anthony was better than these at any rate.
Chuffey boggled over his plate so long, that Mr Jonas, losing patience,
took it from him at last with his own hands, and requested his father
to signify to that venerable person that he had better 'peg away at his
bread;' which Anthony did.
'Aye, aye!' cried the old man, brightening up as before, when this was
communicated to him in the same voice, 'quite right, quite right. He's
your own son, Mr Chuzzlewit! Bless him for a sharp lad! Bless him, bless
him!'
Mr Jonas considered this so particularly childish (perhaps with some
reason), that he only laughed the more, and told his cousins that he was
afraid one of these fine days, Chuffey would be the death of him. The
cloth was then removed, and the bottle of wine set upon the table, from
which Mr Jonas filled the young ladies' glasses, calling on them not to
spare it, as they might be certain there was plenty more where that came
from. But he added with some haste after this sally that it was only his
joke, and they wouldn't suppose him to be in earnest, he was sure.
'I shall drink,' said Anthony, 'to Pecksniff. Your father, my dears. A
clever man, Pecksniff. A wary man! A hypocrite, though, eh? A hypocrite,
girls, eh? Ha, ha, ha! Well, so he is. Now, among friends, he is. I
don't think the worse of him for that, unless it is that he overdoes it.
You may overdo anything, my darlings. You may overdo even hypocrisy. Ask
Jonas!'
'You can't overdo taking care of yourself,' observed that hopeful
gentleman with his mouth full.
'Do you hear that, my dears?' cried Anthony, quite enraptured. 'Wisdom,
wisdom! A good exception, Jonas. No. It's not easy to overdo that.'
'Except,' whispered Mr Jonas to his favourite cousin, 'except when one
lives too long. Ha, ha! Tell the other one that--I say!'
'Good gracious me!' said Cherry, in a petulant manner. 'You can tell her
yourself, if you wish, can't you?'
'She seems to make such game of one,' replied Mr Jonas.
'Then why need you trouble yourself about her?' said Charity. 'I am sure
she doesn't trouble herself much about you.'
'Don't she though?' asked Jonas.
'Good gracious me, need I tell you that she don't?' returned the young
lady.
Mr Jonas made no verbal rejoinder, but he glanced at Mercy with an odd
expression in his face; and said THAT wouldn't break his heart, she
might depend upon it. Then he looked on Charity with even greater favour
than before, and besought her, as his polite manner was, to 'come a
little closer.'
'There's another thing that's not easily overdone, father,' remarked
Jonas, after a short silence.
'What's that?' asked the father; grinning already in anticipation.
'A bargain,' said the son. 'Here's the rule for bargains--"Do other men,
for they would do you." That's the true business precept. All others are
counterfeits.'
The delighted father applauded this sentiment to the echo; and was so
much tickled by it, that he was at the pains of imparting the same to
his ancient clerk, who rubbed his hands, nodded his palsied head, winked
his watery eyes, and cried in his whistling tones, 'Good! good! Your own
son, Mr Chuzzlewit' with every feeble demonstration of delight that he
was capable of making. But this old man's enthusiasm had the redeeming
quality of being felt in sympathy with the only creature to whom he was
linked by ties of long association, and by his present helplessness. And
if there had been anybody there, who cared to think about it, some dregs
of a better nature unawakened, might perhaps have been descried through
that very medium, melancholy though it was, yet lingering at the bottom
of the worn-out cask called Chuffey.
As matters stood, nobody thought or said anything upon the subject; so
Chuffey fell back into a dark corner on one side of the fireplace, where
he always spent his evenings, and was neither seen nor heard again that
night; save once, when a cup of tea was given him, in which he was seen
to soak his bread mechanically. There was no reason to suppose that he
went to sleep at these seasons, or that he heard, or saw, or felt, or
thought. He remained, as it were, frozen up--if any term expressive of
such a vigorous process can be applied to him--until he was again thawed
for the moment by a word or touch from Anthony.
Miss Charity made tea by desire of Mr Jonas, and felt and looked so
like the lady of the house that she was in the prettiest confusion
imaginable; the more so from Mr Jonas sitting close beside her, and
whispering a variety of admiring expressions in her ear. Miss Mercy, for
her part, felt the entertainment of the evening to be so distinctly
and exclusively theirs, that she silently deplored the commercial
gentlemen--at that moment, no doubt, wearying for her return--and yawned
over yesterday's newspaper. As to Anthony, he went to sleep outright, so
Jonas and Cherry had a clear stage to themselves as long as they chose
to keep possession of it.
When the tea-tray was taken away, as it was at last, Mr Jonas produced a
dirty pack of cards, and entertained the sisters with divers small feats
of dexterity: whereof the main purpose of every one was, that you were
to decoy somebody into laying a wager with you that you couldn't do it;
and were then immediately to win and pocket his money. Mr Jonas
informed them that these accomplishments were in high vogue in the most
intellectual circles, and that large amounts were constantly changing
hands on such hazards. And it may be remarked that he fully believed
this; for there is a simplicity of cunning no less than a simplicity
of innocence; and in all matters where a lively faith in knavery and
meanness was required as the ground-work of belief, Mr Jonas was one of
the most credulous of men. His ignorance, which was stupendous, may be
taken into account, if the reader pleases, separately.
This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the
first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue
of debauched vices--open-handedness--to be a notable vagabond. But there
his griping and penurious habits stepped in; and as one poison will
sometimes neutralise another, when wholesome remedies would not avail,
so he was restrained by a bad passion from quaffing his full measure of
evil, when virtue might have sought to hold him back in vain.
By the time he had unfolded all the peddling schemes he knew upon the
cards, it was growing late in the evening; and Mr Pecksniff not making
his appearance, the young ladies expressed a wish to return home. But
this, Mr Jonas, in his gallantry, would by no means allow, until they
had partaken of some bread and cheese and porter; and even then he was
excessively unwilling to allow them to depart; often beseeching Miss
Charity to come a little closer, or to stop a little longer, and
preferring many other complimentary petitions of that nature in his own
hospitable and earnest way. When all his efforts to detain them were
fruitless, he put on his hat and greatcoat preparatory to escorting them
to Todgers's; remarking that he knew they would rather walk thither than
ride; and that for his part he was quite of their opinion.
'Good night,' said Anthony. 'Good night; remember me to--ha, ha, ha!--to
Pecksniff. Take care of your cousin, my dears; beware of Jonas; he's a
dangerous fellow. Don't quarrel for him, in any case!'
'Oh, the creature!' cried Mercy. 'The idea of quarrelling for HIM! You
may take him, Cherry, my love, all to yourself. I make you a present of
my share.'
'What! I'm a sour grape, am I, cousin?' said Jonas.
Miss Charity was more entertained by this repartee than one would have
supposed likely, considering its advanced age and simple character. But
in her sisterly affection she took Mr Jonas to task for leaning so very
hard upon a broken reed, and said that he must not be so cruel to poor
Merry any more, or she (Charity) would positively be obliged to hate
him. Mercy, who really had her share of good humour, only retorted with
a laugh; and they walked home in consequence without any angry passages
of words upon the way. Mr Jonas being in the middle, and having a cousin
on each arm, sometimes squeezed the wrong one; so tightly too, as to
cause her not a little inconvenience; but as he talked to Charity in
whispers the whole time, and paid her great attention, no doubt this was
an accidental circumstance. When they arrived at Todgers's, and the door
was opened, Mercy broke hastily from them, and ran upstairs; but Charity
and Jonas lingered on the steps talking together for more than five
minutes; so, as Mrs Todgers observed next morning, to a third party, 'It
was pretty clear what was going on THERE, and she was glad of it, for it
really was high time that Miss Pecksniff thought of settling.'
And now the day was coming on, when that bright vision which had burst
on Todgers's so suddenly, and made a sunshine in the shady breast of
Jinkins, was to be seen no more; when it was to be packed, like a brown
paper parcel, or a fish-basket, or an oyster barrel or a fat gentleman,
or any other dull reality of life, in a stagecoach and carried down into
the country.
'Never, my dear Miss Pecksniffs,' said Mrs Todgers, when they retired
to rest on the last night of their stay, 'never have I seen an
establishment so perfectly broken-hearted as mine is at this present
moment of time. I don't believe the gentlemen will be the gentlemen they
were, or anything like it--no, not for weeks to come. You have a great
deal to answer for, both of you.'
They modestly disclaimed any wilful agency in this disastrous state of
things, and regretted it very much.
'Your pious pa, too,' said Mrs Todgers. 'There's a loss! My dear Miss
Pecksniffs, your pa is a perfect missionary of peace and love.'
Entertaining an uncertainty as to the particular kind of love supposed
to be comprised in Mr Pecksniff's mission, the young ladies received the
compliment rather coldly.
'If I dared,' said Mrs Todgers, perceiving this, 'to violate a
confidence which has been reposed in me, and to tell you why I must beg
of you to leave the little door between your room and mine open tonight,
I think you would be interested. But I mustn't do it, for I promised Mr
Jinkins faithfully, that I would be as silent as the tomb.'
'Dear Mrs Todgers! What can you mean?'
'Why, then, my sweet Miss Pecksniffs,' said the lady of the house; 'my
own loves, if you will allow me the privilege of taking that freedom on
the eve of our separation, Mr Jinkins and the gentlemen have made up
a little musical party among themselves, and DO intend, in the dead of
this night, to perform a serenade upon the stairs outside the door. I
could have wished, I own,' said Mrs Todgers, with her usual foresight,
'that it had been fixed to take place an hour or two earlier; because
when gentlemen sit up late they drink, and when they drink they're not
so musical, perhaps, as when they don't. But this is the arrangement;
and I know you will be gratified, my dear Miss Pecksniffs, by such a
mark of their attention.'
The young ladies were at first so much excited by the news, that they
vowed they couldn't think of going to bed until the serenade was over.
But half an hour of cool waiting so altered their opinion that they not
only went to bed, but fell asleep; and were, moreover, not ecstatically
charmed to be awakened some time afterwards by certain dulcet strains
breaking in upon the silent watches of the night.
It was very affecting--very. Nothing more dismal could have been desired
by the most fastidious taste. The gentleman of a vocal turn was head
mute, or chief mourner; Jinkins took the bass; and the rest took
anything they could get. The youngest gentleman blew his melancholy into
a flute. He didn't blow much out of it, but that was all the better.
If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs Todgers had perished by spontaneous
combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would
have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in
that one chorus, 'Go where glory waits thee!' It was a requiem, a dirge,
a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is
sorrowful and hideous in sound. The flute of the youngest gentleman was
wild and fitful. It came and went in gusts, like the wind. For a long
time together he seemed to have left off, and when it was quite settled
by Mrs Todgers and the young ladies that, overcome by his feelings, he
had retired in tears, he unexpectedly turned up again at the very top of
the tune, gasping for breath. He was a tremendous performer. There was
no knowing where to have him; and exactly when you thought he was doing
nothing at all, then was he doing the very thing that ought to astonish
you most.
There were several of these concerted pieces; perhaps two or three too
many, though that, as Mrs Todgers said, was a fault on the right side.
But even then, even at that solemn moment, when the thrilling sounds may
be presumed to have penetrated into the very depths of his nature, if he
had any depths, Jinkins couldn't leave the youngest gentleman alone. He
asked him distinctly, before the second song began--as a personal favour
too, mark the villain in that--not to play. Yes; he said so; not to
play. The breathing of the youngest gentleman was heard through the
key-hole of the door. He DIDN'T play. What vent was a flute for the
passions swelling up within his breast? A trombone would have been a
world too mild.
The serenade approached its close. Its crowning interest was at hand.
The gentleman of a literary turn had written a song on the departure of
the ladies, and adapted it to an old tune. They all joined, except
the youngest gentleman in company, who, for the reasons aforesaid,
maintained a fearful silence. The song (which was of a classical nature)
invoked the oracle of Apollo, and demanded to know what would become
of Todgers's when CHARITY and MERCY were banished from its walls. The
oracle delivered no opinion particularly worth remembering, according
to the not infrequent practice of oracles from the earliest ages down to
the present time. In the absence of enlightenment on that subject, the
strain deserted it, and went on to show that the Miss Pecksniffs were
nearly related to Rule Britannia, and that if Great Britain hadn't been
an island, there could have been no Miss Pecksniffs. And being now on a
nautical tack, it closed with this verse:
'All hail to the vessel of Pecksniff the sire!
And favouring breezes to fan;
While Tritons flock round it, and proudly admire
The architect, artist, and man!'
As they presented this beautiful picture to the imagination, the
gentlemen gradually withdrew to bed to give the music the effect of
distance; and so it died away, and Todgers's was left to its repose.
Mr Bailey reserved his vocal offering until the morning, when he put
his head into the room as the young ladies were kneeling before their
trunks, packing up, and treated them to an imitation of the voice of
a young dog in trying circumstances; when that animal is supposed by
persons of a lively fancy, to relieve his feelings by calling for pen
and ink.
'Well, young ladies,' said the youth, 'so you're a-going home, are you,
worse luck?'
'Yes, Bailey, we're going home,' returned Mercy.
'An't you a-going to leave none of 'em a lock of your hair?' inquired
the youth. 'It's real, an't it?'
They laughed at this, and told him of course it was.
'Oh, is it of course, though?' said Bailey. 'I know better than that.
Hers an't. Why, I see it hanging up once, on that nail by the winder.
Besides, I have gone behind her at dinner-time and pulled it; and she
never know'd. I say, young ladies, I'm a-going to leave. I an't a-going
to stand being called names by her, no longer.'
Miss Mercy inquired what his plans for the future might be; in reply to
whom Mr Bailey intimated that he thought of going either into top-boots,
or into the army.
'Into the army!' cried the young ladies, with a laugh.
'Ah!' said Bailey, 'why not? There's a many drummers in the Tower. I'm
acquainted with 'em. Don't their country set a valley on 'em, mind you!
Not at all!'
'You'll be shot, I see,' observed Mercy.
'Well!' cried Mr Bailey, 'wot if I am? There's something gamey in it,
young ladies, an't there? I'd sooner be hit with a cannon-ball than a
rolling-pin, and she's always a-catching up something of that sort, and
throwing it at me, when the gentlemans' appetites is good. Wot,' said
Mr Bailey, stung by the recollection of his wrongs, 'wot, if they DO
consume the per-vishuns. It an't MY fault, is it?'
'Surely no one says it is,' said Mercy.
'Don't they though?' retorted the youth. 'No. Yes. Ah! oh! No one mayn't
say it is! but some one knows it is. But I an't a-going to have every
rise in prices wisited on me. I an't a-going to be killed because
the markets is dear. I won't stop. And therefore,' added Mr Bailey,
relenting into a smile, 'wotever you mean to give me, you'd better give
me all at once, becos if ever you come back agin, I shan't be here; and
as to the other boy, HE won't deserve nothing, I know.'
The young ladies, on behalf of Mr Pecksniff and themselves, acted
on this thoughtful advice; and in consideration of their private
friendship, presented Mr Bailey with a gratuity so liberal that he could
hardly do enough to show his gratitude; which found but an imperfect
vent, during the remainder of the day, in divers secret slaps upon his
pocket, and other such facetious pantomime. Nor was it confined to these
ebullitions; for besides crushing a bandbox, with a bonnet in it, he
seriously damaged Mr Pecksniff's luggage, by ardently hauling it down
from the top of the house; and in short evinced, by every means in his
power, a lively sense of the favours he had received from that gentleman
and his family.
Mr Pecksniff and Mr Jinkins came home to dinner arm-in-arm; for the
latter gentleman had made half-holiday on purpose; thus gaining an
immense advantage over the youngest gentleman and the rest, whose time,
as it perversely chanced, was all bespoke, until the evening. The bottle
of wine was Mr Pecksniff's treat, and they were very sociable indeed;
though full of lamentations on the necessity of parting. While they were
in the midst of their enjoyment, old Anthony and his son were announced;
much to the surprise of Mr Pecksniff, and greatly to the discomfiture of
Jinkins.
'Come to say good-bye, you see,' said Anthony, in a low voice, to Mr
Pecksniff, as they took their seats apart at the table, while the rest
conversed among themselves. 'Where's the use of a division between
you and me? We are the two halves of a pair of scissors, when apart,
Pecksniff; but together we are something. Eh?'
'Unanimity, my good sir,' rejoined Mr Pecksniff, 'is always delightful.'
'I don't know about that,' said the old man, 'for there are some people
I would rather differ from than agree with. But you know my opinion of
you.'
Mr Pecksniff, still having 'hypocrite' in his mind, only replied by a
motion of his head, which was something between an affirmative bow, and
a negative shake.
'Complimentary,' said Anthony. 'Complimentary, upon my word. It was an
involuntary tribute to your abilities, even at the time; and it was not
a time to suggest compliments either. But we agreed in the coach, you
know, that we quite understood each other.'
'Oh, quite!' assented Mr Pecksniff, in a manner which implied that he
himself was misunderstood most cruelly, but would not complain.
Anthony glanced at his son as he sat beside Miss Charity, and then at Mr
Pecksniff, and then at his son again, very many times. It happened that
Mr Pecksniff's glances took a similar direction; but when he became
aware of it, he first cast down his eyes, and then closed them; as if he
were determined that the old man should read nothing there.
'Jonas is a shrewd lad,' said the old man.
'He appears,' rejoined Mr Pecksniff in his most candid manner, 'to be
very shrewd.'
'And careful,' said the old man.
'And careful, I have no doubt,' returned Mr Pecksniff.
'Look ye!' said Anthony in his ear. 'I think he is sweet upon you
daughter.'
'Tut, my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, with his eyes still closed;
'young people--young people--a kind of cousins, too--no more sweetness
than is in that, sir.'
'Why, there is very little sweetness in that, according to our
experience,' returned Anthony. 'Isn't there a trifle more here?'
'Impossible to say,' rejoined Mr Pecksniff. 'Quite impossible! You
surprise me.'
'Yes, I know that,' said the old man, drily. 'It may last; I mean the
sweetness, not the surprise; and it may die off. Supposing it should
last, perhaps (you having feathered your nest pretty well, and I having
done the same), we might have a mutual interest in the matter.'
Mr Pecksniff, smiling gently, was about to speak, but Anthony stopped
him.
'I know what you are going to say. It's quite unnecessary. You have
never thought of this for a moment; and in a point so nearly affecting
the happiness of your dear child, you couldn't, as a tender father,
express an opinion; and so forth. Yes, quite right. And like you! But it
seems to me, my dear Pecksniff,' added Anthony, laying his hand upon
his sleeve, 'that if you and I kept up the joke of pretending not to see
this, one of us might possibly be placed in a position of disadvantage;
and as I am very unwilling to be that party myself, you will excuse my
taking the liberty of putting the matter beyond a doubt thus early; and
having it distinctly understood, as it is now, that we do see it, and do
know it. Thank you for your attention. We are now upon an equal footing;
which is agreeable to us both, I am sure.'
He rose as he spoke; and giving Mr Pecksniff a nod of intelligence,
moved away from him to where the young people were sitting; leaving that
good man somewhat puzzled and discomfited by such very plain dealing,
and not quite free from a sense of having been foiled in the exercise of
his familiar weapons.
But the night-coach had a punctual character, and it was time to join
it at the office; which was so near at hand that they had already sent
their luggage and arranged to walk. Thither the whole party repaired,
therefore, after no more delay than sufficed for the equipment of the
Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs Todgers. They found the coach already at its
starting-place, and the horses in; there, too, were a large majority
of the commercial gentlemen, including the youngest, who was visibly
agitated, and in a state of deep mental dejection.
Nothing could equal the distress of Mrs Todgers in parting from the
young ladies, except the strong emotions with which she bade adieu to Mr
Pecksniff. Never surely was a pocket-handkerchief taken in and out of
a flat reticule so often as Mrs Todgers's was, as she stood upon the
pavement by the coach-door supported on either side by a commercial
gentleman; and by the sight of the coach-lamps caught such brief
snatches and glimpses of the good man's face, as the constant
interposition of Mr Jinkins allowed. For Jinkins, to the last the
youngest gentleman's rock a-head in life, stood upon the coachstep
talking to the ladies. Upon the other step was Mr Jonas, who maintained
that position in right of his cousinship; whereas the youngest
gentleman, who had been first upon the ground, was deep in the
booking-office among the black and red placards, and the portraits of
fast coaches, where he was ignominiously harassed by porters, and had to
contend and strive perpetually with heavy baggage. This false
position, combined with his nervous excitement, brought about the very
consummation and catastrophe of his miseries; for when in the moment of
parting he aimed a flower, a hothouse flower that had cost money, at the
fair hand of Mercy, it reached, instead, the coachman on the box, who
thanked him kindly, and stuck it in his buttonhole.
They were off now; and Todgers's was alone again. The two young ladies,
leaning back in their separate corners, resigned themselves to their
own regretful thoughts. But Mr Pecksniff, dismissing all ephemeral
considerations of social pleasure and enjoyment, concentrated his
meditations on the one great virtuous purpose before him, of casting
out that ingrate and deceiver, whose presence yet troubled his domestic
hearth, and was a sacrilege upon the altars of his household gods.
CHAPTER TWELVE
WILL BE SEEN IN THE LONG RUN, IF NOT IN THE SHORT ONE, TO CONCERN MR
PINCH AND OTHERS, NEARLY. MR PECKSNIFF ASSERTS THE DIGNITY OF OUTRAGED
VIRTUE. YOUNG MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT FORMS A DESPERATE RESOLUTION
Mr Pinch and Martin, little dreaming of the stormy weather that
impended, made themselves very comfortable in the Pecksniffian halls,
and improved their friendship daily. Martin's facility, both of
invention and execution, being remarkable, the grammar-school proceeded
with great vigour; and Tom repeatedly declared, that if there were
anything like certainty in human affairs, or impartiality in human
judges, a design so new and full of merit could not fail to carry off
the first prize when the time of competition arrived. Without being
quite so sanguine himself, Martin had his hopeful anticipations too; and
they served to make him brisk and eager at his task.
'If I should turn out a great architect, Tom,' said the new pupil one
day, as he stood at a little distance from his drawing, and eyed it with
much complacency, 'I'll tell you what should be one of the things I'd
build.'
'Aye!' cried Tom. 'What?'
'Why, your fortune.'
'No!' said Tom Pinch, quite as much delighted as if the thing were done.
'Would you though? How kind of you to say so.'
'I'd build it up, Tom,' returned Martin, 'on such a strong foundation,
that it should last your life--aye, and your children's lives too, and
their children's after them. I'd be your patron, Tom. I'd take you under
my protection. Let me see the man who should give the cold shoulder to
anybody I chose to protect and patronise, if I were at the top of the
tree, Tom!'
'Now, I don't think,' said Mr Pinch, 'upon my word, that I was ever more
gratified than by this. I really don't.'
'Oh! I mean what I say,' retorted Martin, with a manner as free and easy
in its condescension to, not to say in its compassion for, the other, as
if he were already First Architect in ordinary to all the Crowned Heads
in Europe. 'I'd do it. I'd provide for you.'
'I am afraid,' said Tom, shaking his head, 'that I should be a mighty
awkward person to provide for.'
'Pooh, pooh!' rejoined Martin. 'Never mind that. If I took it in my head
to say, "Pinch is a clever fellow; I approve of Pinch;" I should like
to know the man who would venture to put himself in opposition to me.
Besides, confound it, Tom, you could be useful to me in a hundred ways.'
'If I were not useful in one or two, it shouldn't be for want of
trying,' said Tom.
'For instance,' pursued Martin, after a short reflection, 'you'd be a
capital fellow, now, to see that my ideas were properly carried out; and
to overlook the works in their progress before they were sufficiently
advanced to be very interesting to ME; and to take all that sort of
plain sailing. Then you'd be a splendid fellow to show people over my
studio, and to talk about Art to 'em, when I couldn't be bored myself,
and all that kind of thing. For it would be devilish creditable, Tom
(I'm quite in earnest, I give you my word), to have a man of your
information about one, instead of some ordinary blockhead. Oh, I'd take
care of you. You'd be useful, rely upon it!'
To say that Tom had no idea of playing first fiddle in any social
orchestra, but was always quite satisfied to be set down for the hundred
and fiftieth violin in the band, or thereabouts, is to express his
modesty in very inadequate terms. He was much delighted, therefore, by
these observations.
'I should be married to her then, Tom, of course,' said Martin.
What was that which checked Tom Pinch so suddenly, in the high flow
of his gladness; bringing the blood into his honest cheeks, and a
remorseful feeling to his honest heart, as if he were unworthy of his
friend's regard?
'I should be married to her then,' said Martin, looking with a smile
towards the light; 'and we should have, I hope, children about us.
They'd be very fond of you, Tom.'
But not a word said Mr Pinch. The words he would have uttered died upon
his lips, and found a life more spiritual in self-denying thoughts.
'All the children hereabouts are fond of you, Tom, and mine would be,
of course,' pursued Martin. 'Perhaps I might name one of 'em after
you. Tom, eh? Well, I don't know. Tom's not a bad name. Thomas Pinch
Chuzzlewit. T. P. C. on his pinafores--no objection to that, I should
say?'
Tom cleared his throat, and smiled.
'SHE would like you, Tom, I know,' said Martin.
'Aye!' cried Tom Pinch, faintly.
'I can tell exactly what she would think of you,' said Martin leaning
his chin upon his hand, and looking through the window-glass as if he
read there what he said; 'I know her so well. She would smile, Tom,
often at first when you spoke to her, or when she looked at you--merrily
too--but you wouldn't mind that. A brighter smile you never saw.'
'No, no,' said Tom. 'I wouldn't mind that.'
'She would be as tender with you, Tom,' said Martin, 'as if you were a
child yourself. So you are almost, in some things, an't you, Tom?'
Mr Pinch nodded his entire assent.
'She would always be kind and good-humoured, and glad to see you,' said
Martin; 'and when she found out exactly what sort of fellow you were
(which she'd do very soon), she would pretend to give you little
commissions to execute, and to ask little services of you, which she
knew you were burning to render; so that when she really pleased you
most, she would try to make you think you most pleased her. She
would take to you uncommonly, Tom; and would understand you far more
delicately than I ever shall; and would often say, I know, that you were
a harmless, gentle, well-intentioned, good fellow.'
How silent Tom Pinch was!
'In honour of old time,' said Martin, 'and of her having heard you play
the organ in this damp little church down here--for nothing too--we will
have one in the house. I shall build an architectural music-room on a
plan of my own, and it'll look rather knowing in a recess at one end.
There you shall play away, Tom, till you tire yourself; and, as you like
to do so in the dark, it shall BE dark; and many's the summer evening
she and I will sit and listen to you, Tom; be sure of that!'
It may have required a stronger effort on Tom Pinch's part to leave the
seat on which he sat, and shake his friend by both hands, with nothing
but serenity and grateful feeling painted on his face; it may have
required a stronger effort to perform this simple act with a pure heart,
than to achieve many and many a deed to which the doubtful trumpet blown
by Fame has lustily resounded. Doubtful, because from its long hovering
over scenes of violence, the smoke and steam of death have clogged the
keys of that brave instrument; and it is not always that its notes are
either true or tuneful.
'It's a proof of the kindness of human nature,' said Tom,
characteristically putting himself quite out of sight in the matter,
'that everybody who comes here, as you have done, is more considerate
and affectionate to me than I should have any right to hope, if I were
the most sanguine creature in the world; or should have any power to
express, if I were the most eloquent. It really overpowers me. But trust
me,' said Tom, 'that I am not ungrateful--that I never forget--and that
if I can ever prove the truth of my words to you, I will.'
'That's all right,' observed Martin, leaning back in his chair with a
hand in each pocket, and yawning drearily. 'Very fine talking, Tom;
but I'm at Pecksniff's, I remember, and perhaps a mile or so out of the
high-road to fortune just at this minute. So you've heard again this
morning from what's his name, eh?'
'Who may that be?' asked Tom, seeming to enter a mild protest on behalf
of the dignity of an absent person.
'YOU know. What is it? Northkey.'
'Westlock,' rejoined Tom, in rather a louder tone than usual.
'Ah! to be sure,' said Martin, 'Westlock. I knew it was something
connected with a point of the compass and a door. Well! and what says
Westlock?'
'Oh! he has come into his property,' answered Tom, nodding his head, and
smiling.
'He's a lucky dog,' said Martin. 'I wish it were mine instead. Is that
all the mystery you were to tell me?'
'No,' said Tom; 'not all.'
'What's the rest?' asked Martin.
'For the matter of that,' said Tom, 'it's no mystery, and you won't
think much of it; but it's very pleasant to me. John always used to say
when he was here, "Mark my words, Pinch. When my father's executors cash
up"--he used strange expressions now and then, but that was his way.'
'Cash-up's a very good expression,' observed Martin, 'when other people
don't apply it to you. Well!--What a slow fellow you are, Pinch!'
'Yes, I am I know,' said Tom; 'but you'll make me nervous if you tell me
so. I'm afraid you have put me out a little now, for I forget what I was
going to say.'
'When John's father's executors cashed up,' said Martin impatiently.
'Oh yes, to be sure,' cried Tom; 'yes. "Then," says John, "I'll give you
a dinner, Pinch, and come down to Salisbury on purpose." Now, when John
wrote the other day--the morning Pecksniff left, you know--he said his
business was on the point of being immediately settled, and as he was to
receive his money directly, when could I meet him at Salisbury? I wrote
and said, any day this week; and I told him besides, that there was a
new pupil here, and what a fine fellow you were, and what friends we
had become. Upon which John writes back this letter'--Tom produced
it--'fixes to-morrow; sends his compliments to you; and begs that we
three may have the pleasure of dining together; not at the house where
you and I were, either; but at the very first hotel in the town. Read
what he says.'
'Very well,' said Martin, glancing over it with his customary coolness;
'much obliged to him. I'm agreeable.'
Tom could have wished him to be a little more astonished, a little more
pleased, or in some form or other a little more interested in such a
great event. But he was perfectly self-possessed; and falling into his
favourite solace of whistling, took another turn at the grammar-school,
as if nothing at all had happened.
Mr Pecksniff's horse being regarded in the light of a sacred animal,
only to be driven by him, the chief priest of that temple, or by some
person distinctly nominated for the time being to that high office by
himself, the two young men agreed to walk to Salisbury; and so, when the
time came, they set off on foot; which was, after all, a better mode of
travelling than in the gig, as the weather was very cold and very dry.
Better! A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk--four statute miles an
hour--preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scraping,
creaking, villanous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of
comparison. It is an insult to the walk, to set them side by side. Where
is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man's blood, unless
when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in
his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat, much more peculiar
than agreeable? When did a gig ever sharpen anybody's wits and energies,
unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep
hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circumstances
suggested to the only gentleman left inside, some novel and unheard-of
mode of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!
The air was cold, Tom; so it was, there was no denying it; but would
it have been more genial in the gig? The blacksmith's fire burned very
bright, and leaped up high, as though it wanted men to warm; but would
it have been less tempting, looked at from the clammy cushions of a gig?
The wind blew keenly, nipping the features of the hardy wight who fought
his way along; blinding him with his own hair if he had enough to it,
and wintry dust if he hadn't; stopping his breath as though he had been
soused in a cold bath; tearing aside his wrappings-up, and whistling in
the very marrow of his bones; but it would have done all this a hundred
times more fiercely to a man in a gig, wouldn't it? A fig for gigs!
Better than the gig! When were travellers by wheels and hoofs seen with
such red-hot cheeks as those? when were they so good-humouredly and
merrily bloused? when did their laughter ring upon the air, as they
turned them round, what time the stronger gusts came sweeping up; and,
facing round again as they passed by, dashed on, in such a glow of
ruddy health as nothing could keep pace with, but the high spirits it
engendered? Better than the gig! Why, here is a man in a gig coming
the same way now. Look at him as he passes his whip into his left hand,
chafes his numbed right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those
marble toes of his upon the foot-board. Ha, ha, ha! Who would exchange
this rapid hurry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery, though its
pace were twenty miles for one?
Better than the gig! No man in a gig could have such interest in the
milestones. No man in a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry
users of their legs. How, as the wind sweeps on, upon these breezy
downs, it tracks its flight in darkening ripples on the grass, and
smoothest shadows on the hills! Look round and round upon this bare
bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful
the shadows are! Alas! it is the nature of their kind to be so. The
loveliest things in life, Tom, are but shadows; and they come and go,
and change and fade away, as rapidly as these!
Another mile, and then begins a fall of snow, making the crow, who skims
away so close above the ground to shirk the wind, a blot of ink upon the
landscape. But though it drives and drifts against them as they walk,
stiffening on their skirts, and freezing in the lashes of their eyes,
they wouldn't have it fall more sparingly, no, not so much as by a
single flake, although they had to go a score of miles. And, lo! the
towers of the Old Cathedral rise before them, even now! and by-and-bye
they come into the sheltered streets, made strangely silent by their
white carpet; and so to the Inn for which they are bound; where they
present such flushed and burning faces to the cold waiter, and are so
brimful of vigour, that he almost feels assaulted by their presence;
and, having nothing to oppose to the attack (being fresh, or rather
stale, from the blazing fire in the coffee-room), is quite put out of
his pale countenance.
A famous Inn! the hall a very grove of dead game, and dangling joints
of mutton; and in one corner an illustrious larder, with glass doors,
developing cold fowls and noble joints, and tarts wherein the raspberry
jam coyly withdrew itself, as such a precious creature should, behind a
lattice work of pastry. And behold, on the first floor, at the court-end
of the house, in a room with all the window-curtains drawn, a fire piled
half-way up the chimney, plates warming before it, wax candles gleaming
everywhere, and a table spread for three, with silver and glass enough
for thirty--John Westlock; not the old John of Pecksniff's, but a proper
gentleman; looking another and a grander person, with the consciousness
of being his own master and having money in the bank; and yet in some
respects the old John too, for he seized Tom Pinch by both his hands the
instant he appeared, and fairly hugged him, in his cordial welcome.
'And this,' said John, 'is Mr Chuzzlewit. I am very glad to see
him!'--John had an off-hand manner of his own; so they shook hands
warmly, and were friends in no time.
'Stand off a moment, Tom,' cried the old pupil, laying one hand on each
of Mr Pinch's shoulders, and holding him out at arm's length. 'Let me
look at you! Just the same! Not a bit changed!'
'Why, it's not so very long ago, you know,' said Tom Pinch, 'after all.'
'It seems an age to me,' cried John, 'and so it ought to seem to you,
you dog.' And then he pushed Tom down into the easiest chair, and
clapped him on the back so heartily, and so like his old self in their
old bedroom at old Pecksniff's that it was a toss-up with Tom Pinch
whether he should laugh or cry. Laughter won it; and they all three
laughed together.
'I have ordered everything for dinner, that we used to say we'd have,
Tom,' observed John Westlock.
'No!' said Tom Pinch. 'Have you?'
'Everything. Don't laugh, if you can help it, before the waiters. I
couldn't when I was ordering it. It's like a dream.'
John was wrong there, because nobody ever dreamed such soup as was put
upon the table directly afterwards; or such fish; or such side-dishes;
or such a top and bottom; or such a course of birds and sweets; or
in short anything approaching the reality of that entertainment at
ten-and-sixpence a head, exclusive of wines. As to THEM, the man who can
dream such iced champagne, such claret, port, or sherry, had better go
to bed and stop there.
But perhaps the finest feature of the banquet was, that nobody was half
so much amazed by everything as John himself, who in his high delight
was constantly bursting into fits of laughter, and then endeavouring
to appear preternaturally solemn, lest the waiters should conceive he
wasn't used to it. Some of the things they brought him to carve, were
such outrageous practical jokes, though, that it was impossible to stand
it; and when Tom Pinch insisted, in spite of the deferential advice of
an attendant, not only on breaking down the outer wall of a raised pie
with a tablespoon, but on trying to eat it afterwards, John lost all
dignity, and sat behind the gorgeous dish-cover at the head of the
table, roaring to that extent that he was audible in the kitchen. Nor
had he the least objection to laugh at himself, as he demonstrated when
they had all three gathered round the fire and the dessert was on
the table; at which period the head waiter inquired with respectful
solicitude whether that port, being a light and tawny wine, was suited
to his taste, or whether he would wish to try a fruity port with greater
body. To this John gravely answered that he was well satisfied with what
he had, which he esteemed, as one might say, a pretty tidy vintage;
for which the waiter thanked him and withdrew. And then John told his
friends, with a broad grin, that he supposed it was all right, but he
didn't know; and went off into a perfect shout.
They were very merry and full of enjoyment the whole time, but not the
least pleasant part of the festival was when they all three sat about
the fire, cracking nuts, drinking wine and talking cheerfully. It
happened that Tom Pinch had a word to say to his friend the organist's
assistant, and so deserted his warm corner for a few minutes at this
season, lest it should grow too late; leaving the other two young men
together.
They drank his health in his absence, of course; and John Westlock took
that opportunity of saying, that he had never had even a peevish word
with Tom during the whole term of their residence in Mr Pecksniff's
house. This naturally led him to dwell upon Tom's character, and to hint
that Mr Pecksniff understood it pretty well. He only hinted this, and
very distantly; knowing that it pained Tom Pinch to have that gentleman
disparaged, and thinking it would be as well to leave the new pupil to
his own discoveries.
'Yes,' said Martin. 'It's impossible to like Pinch better than I do,
or to do greater justice to his good qualities. He is the most willing
fellow I ever saw.'
'He's rather too willing,' observed John, who was quick in observation.
'It's quite a fault in him.'
'So it is,' said Martin. 'Very true. There was a fellow only a week or
so ago--a Mr Tigg--who borrowed all the money he had, on a promise to
repay it in a few days. It was but half a sovereign, to be sure; but
it's well it was no more, for he'll never see it again.'
'Poor fellow!' said John, who had been very attentive to these few
words. 'Perhaps you have not had an opportunity of observing that, in
his own pecuniary transactions, Tom's proud.'
'You don't say so! No, I haven't. What do you mean? Won't he borrow?'
John Westlock shook his head.
'That's very odd,' said Martin, setting down his empty glass. 'He's a
strange compound, to be sure.'
'As to receiving money as a gift,' resumed John Westlock; 'I think he'd
die first.'
'He's made up of simplicity,' said Martin. 'Help yourself.'
'You, however,' pursued John, filling his own glass, and looking at his
companion with some curiosity, 'who are older than the majority of Mr
Pecksniff's assistants, and have evidently had much more experience,
understand him, I have no doubt, and see how liable he is to be imposed
upon.'
'Certainly,' said Martin, stretching out his legs, and holding his wine
between his eye and the light. 'Mr Pecksniff knows that too. So do his
daughters. Eh?'
John Westlock smiled, but made no answer.
'By the bye,' said Martin, 'that reminds me. What's your opinion of
Pecksniff? How did he use you? What do you think of him now?--Coolly,
you know, when it's all over?'
'Ask Pinch,' returned the old pupil. 'He knows what my sentiments used
to be upon the subject. They are not changed, I assure you.'
'No, no,' said Martin, 'I'd rather have them from you.'
'But Pinch says they are unjust,' urged John with a smile.
'Oh! well! Then I know what course they take beforehand,' said Martin;
'and, therefore, you can have no delicacy in speaking plainly. Don't
mind me, I beg. I don't like him I tell you frankly. I am with him
because it happens from particular circumstances to suit my convenience.
I have some ability, I believe, in that way; and the obligation, if any,
will most likely be on his side and not mine. At the lowest mark, the
balance will be even, and there'll be no obligation at all. So you may
talk to me, as if I had no connection with him.'
'If you press me to give my opinion--' returned John Westlock.
'Yes, I do,' said Martin. 'You'll oblige me.'
'--I should say,' resumed the other, 'that he is the most consummate
scoundrel on the face of the earth.'
'Oh!' said Martin, as coolly as ever. 'That's rather strong.'
'Not stronger than he deserves,' said John; 'and if he called upon me
to express my opinion of him to his face, I would do so in the very same
terms, without the least qualification. His treatment of Pinch is in
itself enough to justify them; but when I look back upon the five years
I passed in that house, and remember the hyprocrisy, the knavery, the
meannesses, the false pretences, the lip service of that fellow, and
his trading in saintly semblances for the very worst realities; when
I remember how often I was the witness of all this and how often I was
made a kind of party to it, by the fact of being there, with him for my
teacher; I swear to you that I almost despise myself.'
Martin drained his glass, and looked at the fire.
'I don't mean to say that is a right feeling,' pursued John Westlock
'because it was no fault of mine; and I can quite understand--you for
instance, fully appreciating him, and yet being forced by circumstances
to remain there. I tell you simply what my feeling is; and even now,
when, as you say, it's all over; and when I have the satisfaction of
knowing that he always hated me, and we always quarrelled, and I always
told him my mind; even now, I feel sorry that I didn't yield to an
impulse I often had, as a boy, of running away from him and going
abroad.'
'Why abroad?' asked Martin, turning his eyes upon the speaker.
'In search,' replied John Westlock, shrugging his shoulders, 'of
the livelihood I couldn't have earned at home. There would have been
something spirited in that. But, come! Fill your glass, and let us
forget him.'
'As soon as you please,' said Martin. 'In reference to myself and my
connection with him, I have only to repeat what I said before. I have
taken my own way with him so far, and shall continue to do so, even more
than ever; for the fact is, to tell you the truth, that I believe he
looks to me to supply his defects, and couldn't afford to lose me. I had
a notion of that in first going there. Your health!'
'Thank you,' returned young Westlock. 'Yours. And may the new pupil turn
out as well as you can desire!'
'What new pupil?'
'The fortunate youth, born under an auspicious star,' returned John
Westlock, laughing; 'whose parents, or guardians, are destined to be
hooked by the advertisement. What! Don't you know that he has advertised
again?'
'No.'
'Oh, yes. I read it just before dinner in the old newspaper. I know it
to be his; having some reason to remember the style. Hush! Here's Pinch.
Strange, is it not, that the more he likes Pecksniff (if he can like him
better than he does), the greater reason one has to like HIM? Not a word
more, or we shall spoil his whole enjoyment.'
Tom entered as the words were spoken, with a radiant smile upon his
face; and rubbing his hands, more from a sense of delight than because
he was cold (for he had been running fast), sat down in his warm corner
again, and was as happy as only Tom Pinch could be. There is no other
simile that will express his state of mind.
'And so,' he said, when he had gazed at his friend for some time in
silent pleasure, 'so you really are a gentleman at last, John. Well, to
be sure!'
'Trying to be, Tom; trying to be,' he rejoined good-humouredly. 'There
is no saying what I may turn out, in time.'
'I suppose you wouldn't carry your own box to the mail now?' said Tom
Pinch, smiling; 'although you lost it altogether by not taking it.'
'Wouldn't I?' retorted John. 'That's all you know about it, Pinch.
It must be a very heavy box that I wouldn't carry to get away from
Pecksniff's, Tom.'
'There!' cried Pinch, turning to Martin, 'I told you so. The great fault
in his character is his injustice to Pecksniff. You mustn't mind a word
he says on that subject. His prejudice is most extraordinary.'
'The absence of anything like prejudice on Tom's part, you know,' said
John Westlock, laughing heartily, as he laid his hand on Mr Pinch's
shoulder, 'is perfectly wonderful. If one man ever had a profound
knowledge of another, and saw him in a true light, and in his own proper
colours, Tom has that knowledge of Mr Pecksniff.'
'Why, of course I have,' cried Tom. 'That's exactly what I have so often
said to you. If you knew him as well as I do--John, I'd give almost any
money to bring that about--you'd admire, respect, and reverence him. You
couldn't help it. Oh, how you wounded his feelings when you went away!'
'If I had known whereabout his feelings lay,' retorted young Westlock,
'I'd have done my best, Tom, with that end in view, you may depend upon
it. But as I couldn't wound him in what he has not, and in what he knows
nothing of, except in his ability to probe them to the quick in other
people, I am afraid I can lay no claim to your compliment.'
Mr Pinch, being unwilling to protract a discussion which might possibly
corrupt Martin, forbore to say anything in reply to this speech; but
John Westlock, whom nothing short of an iron gag would have
silenced when Mr Pecksniff's merits were once in question, continued
notwithstanding.
'HIS feelings! Oh, he's a tender-hearted man. HIS feelings! Oh, he's a
considerate, conscientious, self-examining, moral vagabond, he is! HIS
feelings! Oh!--what's the matter, Tom?'
Mr Pinch was by this time erect upon the hearth-rug, buttoning his coat
with great energy.
'I can't bear it,' said Tom, shaking his head. 'No. I really cannot. You
must excuse me, John. I have a great esteem and friendship for you;
I love you very much; and have been perfectly charmed and overjoyed
to-day, to find you just the same as ever; but I cannot listen to this.'
'Why, it's my old way, Tom; and you say yourself that you are glad to
find me unchanged.'
'Not in this respect,' said Tom Pinch. 'You must excuse me, John. I
cannot, really; I will not. It's very wrong; you should be more guarded
in your expressions. It was bad enough when you and I used to be alone
together, but under existing circumstances, I can't endure it, really.
No. I cannot, indeed.'
'You are quite right!' exclaimed the other, exchanging looks with
Martin. 'and I am quite wrong, Tom, I don't know how the deuce we fell
on this unlucky theme. I beg your pardon with all my heart.'
'You have a free and manly temper, I know,' said Pinch; 'and therefore,
your being so ungenerous in this one solitary instance, only grieves
me the more. It's not my pardon you have to ask, John. You have done ME
nothing but kindnesses.'
'Well! Pecksniff's pardon then,' said young Westlock. 'Anything Tom,
or anybody. Pecksniff's pardon--will that do? Here! let us drink
Pecksniff's health!'
'Thank you,' cried Tom, shaking hands with him eagerly, and filling
a bumper. 'Thank you; I'll drink it with all my heart, John. Mr
Pecksniff's health, and prosperity to him!'
John Westlock echoed the sentiment, or nearly so; for he drank Mr
Pecksniff's health, and Something to him--but what, was not quite
audible. The general unanimity being then completely restored, they drew
their chairs closer round the fire, and conversed in perfect harmony and
enjoyment until bed-time.
No slight circumstance, perhaps, could have better illustrated the
difference of character between John Westlock and Martin Chuzzlewit,
than the manner in which each of the young men contemplated Tom Pinch,
after the little rupture just described. There was a certain amount of
jocularity in the looks of both, no doubt, but there all resemblance
ceased. The old pupil could not do enough to show Tom how cordially he
felt towards him, and his friendly regard seemed of a graver and more
thoughtful kind than before. The new one, on the other hand, had no
impulse but to laugh at the recollection of Tom's extreme absurdity;
and mingled with his amusement there was something slighting and
contemptuous, indicative, as it appeared, of his opinion that Mr Pinch
was much too far gone in simplicity to be admitted as the friend, on
serious and equal terms, of any rational man.
John Westlock, who did nothing by halves, if he could help it, had
provided beds for his two guests in the hotel; and after a very happy
evening, they retired. Mr Pinch was sitting on the side of his bed with
his cravat and shoes off, ruminating on the manifold good qualities of
his old friend, when he was interrupted by a knock at his chamber door,
and the voice of John himself.
'You're not asleep yet, are you, Tom?'
'Bless you, no! not I. I was thinking of you,' replied Tom, opening the
door. 'Come in.'
'I am not going to detail you,' said John; 'but I have forgotten all the
evening a little commission I took upon myself; and I am afraid I may
forget it again, if I fail to discharge it at once. You know a Mr Tigg,
Tom, I believe?'
'Tigg!' cried Tom. 'Tigg! The gentleman who borrowed some money of me?'
'Exactly,' said John Westlock. 'He begged me to present his compliments,
and to return it with many thanks. Here it is. I suppose it's a good
one, but he is rather a doubtful kind of customer, Tom.'
Mr Pinch received the little piece of gold with a face whose brightness
might have shamed the metal; and said he had no fear about that. He
was glad, he added, to find Mr Tigg so prompt and honourable in his
dealings; very glad.
'Why, to tell you the truth, Tom,' replied his friend, 'he is not always
so. If you'll take my advice, you'll avoid him as much as you can, in
the event of your encountering him again. And by no means, Tom--pray
bear this in mind, for I am very serious--by no means lend him money any
more.'
'Aye, aye!' said Tom, with his eyes wide open.
'He is very far from being a reputable acquaintance,' returned young
Westlock; 'and the more you let him know you think so, the better for
you, Tom.'
'I say, John,' quoth Mr Pinch, as his countenance fell, and he shook
his head in a dejected manner. 'I hope you are not getting into bad
company.'
'No, no,' he replied laughing. 'Don't be uneasy on that score.'
'Oh, but I AM uneasy,' said Tom Pinch; 'I can't help it, when I hear you
talking in that way. If Mr Tigg is what you describe him to be, you have
no business to know him, John. You may laugh, but I don't consider it by
any means a laughing matter, I assure you.'
'No, no,' returned his friend, composing his features. 'Quite right. It
is not, certainly.'
'You know, John,' said Mr Pinch, 'your very good nature and kindness of
heart make you thoughtless, and you can't be too careful on such a
point as this. Upon my word, if I thought you were falling among bad
companions, I should be quite wretched, for I know how difficult you
would find it to shake them off. I would much rather have lost this
money, John, than I would have had it back again on such terms.'
'I tell you, my dear good old fellow,' cried his friend, shaking him
to and fro with both hands, and smiling at him with a cheerful, open
countenance, that would have carried conviction to a mind much more
suspicious than Tom's; 'I tell you there is no danger.'
'Well!' cried Tom, 'I am glad to hear it; I am overjoyed to hear it. I
am sure there is not, when you say so in that manner. You won't take it
ill, John, that I said what I did just now!'
'Ill!' said the other, giving his hand a hearty squeeze; 'why what
do you think I am made of? Mr Tigg and I are not on such an intimate
footing that you need be at all uneasy, I give you my solemn assurance
of that, Tom. You are quite comfortable now?'
'Quite,' said Tom.
'Then once more, good night!'
'Good night!' cried Tom; 'and such pleasant dreams to you as should
attend the sleep of the best fellow in the world!'
'--Except Pecksniff,' said his friend, stopping at the door for a
moment, and looking gayly back.
'Except Pecksniff,' answered Tom, with great gravity; 'of course.'
And thus they parted for the night; John Westlock full of
light-heartedness and good humour, and poor Tom Pinch quite satisfied;
though still, as he turned over on his side in bed, he muttered to
himself, 'I really do wish, for all that, though, that he wasn't
acquainted with Mr Tigg.'
They breakfasted together very early next morning, for the two young
men desired to get back again in good season; and John Westlock was to
return to London by the coach that day. As he had some hours to spare,
he bore them company for three or four miles on their walk, and
only parted from them at last in sheer necessity. The parting was an
unusually hearty one, not only as between him and Tom Pinch, but on the
side of Martin also, who had found in the old pupil a very different
sort of person from the milksop he had prepared himself to expect.
Young Westlock stopped upon a rising ground, when he had gone a little
distance, and looked back. They were walking at a brisk pace, and Tom
appeared to be talking earnestly. Martin had taken off his greatcoat,
the wind being now behind them, and carried it upon his arm. As he
looked, he saw Tom relieve him of it, after a faint resistance, and,
throwing it upon his own, encumber himself with the weight of both. This
trivial incident impressed the old pupil mightily, for he stood there,
gazing after them, until they were hidden from his view; when he
shook his head, as if he were troubled by some uneasy reflection, and
thoughtfully retraced his steps to Salisbury.
In the meantime, Martin and Tom pursued their way, until they halted,
safe and sound, at Mr Pecksniff's house, where a brief epistle from that
good gentleman to Mr Pinch announced the family's return by that night's
coach. As it would pass the corner of the lane at about six o'clock in
the morning, Mr Pecksniff requested that the gig might be in waiting at
the finger-post about that time, together with a cart for the luggage.
And to the end that he might be received with the greater honour, the
young men agreed to rise early, and be upon the spot themselves.
It was the least cheerful day they had yet passed together. Martin
was out of spirits and out of humour, and took every opportunity of
comparing his condition and prospects with those of young Westlock;
much to his own disadvantage always. This mood of his depressed Tom; and
neither that morning's parting, nor yesterday's dinner, helped to mend
the matter. So the hours dragged on heavily enough; and they were glad
to go to bed early.
They were not quite so glad to get up again at half-past four o'clock,
in all the shivering discomfort of a dark winter's morning; but they
turned out punctually, and were at the finger-post full half-an-hour
before the appointed time. It was not by any means a lively morning, for
the sky was black and cloudy, and it rained hard; but Martin said there
was some satisfaction in seeing that brute of a horse (by this, he meant
Mr Pecksniff's Arab steed) getting very wet; and that he rejoiced, on
his account, that it rained so fast. From this it may be inferred that
Martin's spirits had not improved, as indeed they had not; for while he
and Mr Pinch stood waiting under a hedge, looking at the rain, the gig,
the cart, and its reeking driver, he did nothing but grumble; and, but
that it is indispensable to any dispute that there should be two parties
to it, he would certainly have picked a quarrel with Tom.
At length the noise of wheels was faintly audible in the distance and
presently the coach came splashing through the mud and mire with one
miserable outside passenger crouching down among wet straw, under a
saturated umbrella; and the coachman, guard, and horses, in a fellowship
of dripping wretchedness. Immediately on its stopping, Mr Pecksniff let
down the window-glass and hailed Tom Pinch.
'Dear me, Mr Pinch! Is it possible that you are out upon this very
inclement morning?'
'Yes, sir,' cried Tom, advancing eagerly, 'Mr Chuzzlewit and I, sir.'
'Oh!' said Mr Pecksniff, looking not so much at Martin as at the spot on
which he stood. 'Oh! Indeed. Do me the favour to see to the trunks, if
you please, Mr Pinch.'
Then Mr Pecksniff descended, and helped his daughters to alight; but
neither he nor the young ladies took the slightest notice of Martin,
who had advanced to offer his assistance, but was repulsed by Mr
Pecksniff's standing immediately before his person, with his back
towards him. In the same manner, and in profound silence, Mr Pecksniff
handed his daughters into the gig; and following himself and taking the
reins, drove off home.
Lost in astonishment, Martin stood staring at the coach, and when the
coach had driven away, at Mr Pinch, and the luggage, until the cart
moved off too; when he said to Tom:
'Now will you have the goodness to tell me what THIS portends?'
'What?' asked Tom.
'This fellow's behaviour. Mr Pecksniff's, I mean. You saw it?'
'No. Indeed I did not,' cried Tom. 'I was busy with the trunks.'
'It is no matter,' said Martin. 'Come! Let us make haste back!' And
without another word started off at such a pace, that Tom had some
difficulty in keeping up with him.
He had no care where he went, but walked through little heaps of mud
and little pools of water with the utmost indifference; looking straight
before him, and sometimes laughing in a strange manner within himself.
Tom felt that anything he could say would only render him the more
obstinate, and therefore trusted to Mr Pecksniff's manner when they
reached the house, to remove the mistaken impression under which he felt
convinced so great a favourite as the new pupil must unquestionably be
labouring. But he was not a little amazed himself, when they did reach
it, and entered the parlour where Mr Pecksniff was sitting alone
before the fire, drinking some hot tea, to find that instead of taking
favourable notice of his relative and keeping him, Mr Pinch, in the
background, he did exactly the reverse, and was so lavish in his
attentions to Tom, that Tom was thoroughly confounded.
'Take some tea, Mr Pinch--take some tea,' said Pecksniff, stirring the
fire. 'You must be very cold and damp. Pray take some tea, and come into
a warm place, Mr Pinch.'
Tom saw that Martin looked at Mr Pecksniff as though he could have
easily found it in his heart to give HIM an invitation to a very warm
place; but he was quite silent, and standing opposite that gentleman at
the table, regarded him attentively.
'Take a chair, Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'Take a chair, if you please. How
have things gone on in our absence, Mr Pinch?'
'You--you will be very much pleased with the grammar-school, sir,' said
Tom. 'It's nearly finished.'
'If you will have the goodness, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, waving his
hand and smiling, 'we will not discuss anything connected with that
question at present. What have YOU been doing, Thomas, humph?'
Mr Pinch looked from master to pupil, and from pupil to master, and was
so perplexed and dismayed that he wanted presence of mind to answer
the question. In this awkward interval, Mr Pecksniff (who was perfectly
conscious of Martin's gaze, though he had never once glanced towards
him) poked the fire very much, and when he couldn't do that any more,
drank tea assiduously.
'Now, Mr Pecksniff,' said Martin at last, in a very quiet voice, 'if you
have sufficiently refreshed and recovered yourself, I shall be glad to
hear what you mean by this treatment of me.'
'And what,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning his eyes on Tom Pinch, even more
placidly and gently than before, 'what have YOU been doing, Thomas,
humph?'
When he had repeated this inquiry, he looked round the walls of the room
as if he were curious to see whether any nails had been left there by
accident in former times.
Tom was almost at his wit's end what to say between the two, and had
already made a gesture as if he would call Mr Pecksniff's attention to
the gentleman who had last addressed him, when Martin saved him further
trouble, by doing so himself.
'Mr Pecksniff,' he said, softly rapping the table twice or thrice, and
moving a step or two nearer, so that he could have touched him with his
hand; 'you heard what I said just now. Do me the favour to reply, if you
please. I ask you'--he raised his voice a little here--'what you mean by
this?'
'I will talk to you, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff in a severe voice, as he
looked at him for the first time, 'presently.'
'You are very obliging,' returned Martin; 'presently will not do. I must
trouble you to talk to me at once.'
Mr Pecksniff made a feint of being deeply interested in his pocketbook,
but it shook in his hands; he trembled so.
'Now,' retorted Martin, rapping the table again. 'Now. Presently will
not do. Now!'
'Do you threaten me, sir?' cried Mr Pecksniff.
Martin looked at him, and made no answer; but a curious observer
might have detected an ominous twitching at his mouth, and perhaps
an involuntary attraction of his right hand in the direction of Mr
Pecksniff's cravat.
'I lament to be obliged to say, sir,' resumed Mr Pecksniff, 'that it
would be quite in keeping with your character if you did threaten me.
You have deceived me. You have imposed upon a nature which you knew to
be confiding and unsuspicious. You have obtained admission, sir,' said
Mr Pecksniff, rising, 'to this house, on perverted statements and on
false pretences.'
'Go on,' said Martin, with a scornful smile. 'I understand you now. What
more?'
'Thus much more, sir,' cried Mr Pecksniff, trembling from head to foot,
and trying to rub his hands, as though he were only cold. 'Thus much
more, if you force me to publish your shame before a third party, which
I was unwilling and indisposed to do. This lowly roof, sir, must not
be contaminated by the presence of one who has deceived, and cruelly
deceived, an honourable, beloved, venerated, and venerable gentleman;
and who wisely suppressed that deceit from me when he sought my
protection and favour, knowing that, humble as I am, I am an honest
man, seeking to do my duty in this carnal universe, and setting my face
against all vice and treachery. I weep for your depravity, sir,' said
Mr Pecksniff; 'I mourn over your corruption, I pity your voluntary
withdrawal of yourself from the flowery paths of purity and peace;' here
he struck himself upon his breast, or moral garden; 'but I cannot have
a leper and a serpent for an inmate. Go forth,' said Mr Pecksniff,
stretching out his hand: 'go forth, young man! Like all who know you, I
renounce you!'
With what intention Martin made a stride forward at these words, it is
impossible to say. It is enough to know that Tom Pinch caught him in
his arms, and that, at the same moment, Mr Pecksniff stepped back so
hastily, that he missed his footing, tumbled over a chair, and fell in
a sitting posture on the ground; where he remained without an effort
to get up again, with his head in a corner, perhaps considering it the
safest place.
'Let me go, Pinch!' cried Martin, shaking him away. 'Why do you hold me?
Do you think a blow could make him a more abject creature than he is? Do
you think that if I spat upon him, I could degrade him to a lower level
than his own? Look at him. Look at him, Pinch!'
Mr Pinch involuntarily did so. Mr Pecksniff sitting, as has been
already mentioned, on the carpet, with his head in an acute angle of the
wainscot, and all the damage and detriment of an uncomfortable journey
about him, was not exactly a model of all that is prepossessing and
dignified in man, certainly. Still he WAS Pecksniff; it was impossible
to deprive him of that unique and paramount appeal to Tom. And he
returned Tom's glance, as if he would have said, 'Aye, Mr Pinch, look at
me! Here I am! You know what the Poet says about an honest man; and an
honest man is one of the few great works that can be seen for nothing!
Look at me!'
'I tell you,' said Martin, 'that as he lies there, disgraced, bought,
used; a cloth for dirty hands, a mat for dirty feet, a lying, fawning,
servile hound, he is the very last and worst among the vermin of the
world. And mark me, Pinch! The day will come--he knows it; see it
written on his face, while I speak!--when even you will find him out,
and will know him as I do, and as he knows I do. HE renounce ME!
Cast your eyes on the Renouncer, Pinch, and be the wiser for the
recollection!'
He pointed at him as he spoke, with unutterable contempt, and flinging
his hat upon his head, walked from the room and from the house. He went
so rapidly that he was already clear of the village, when he heard Tom
Pinch calling breathlessly after him in the distance.
'Well! what now?' he said, when Tom came up.
'Dear, dear!' cried Tom, 'are you going?'
'Going!' he echoed. 'Going!'
'I didn't so much mean that, as were you going now at once--in this bad
weather--on foot--without your clothes--with no money?' cried Tom.
'Yes,' he answered sternly, 'I am.'
'And where?' cried Tom. 'Oh where will you go?'
'I don't know,' he said. 'Yes, I do. I'll go to America!'
'No, no,' cried Tom, in a kind of agony. 'Don't go there. Pray don't.
Think better of it. Don't be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don't
go to America!'
'My mind is made up,' he said. 'Your friend was right. I'll go to
America. God bless you, Pinch!'
'Take this!' cried Tom, pressing a book upon him in great agitation.
'I must make haste back, and can't say anything I would. Heaven be with
you. Look at the leaf I have turned down. Good-bye, good-bye!'
The simple fellow wrung him by the hand, with tears stealing down his
cheeks; and they parted hurriedly upon their separate ways.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF MARTIN AND HIS DESPARATE RESOLVE, AFTER HE LEFT
MR PECKSNIFF'S HOUSE; WHAT PERSONS HE ENCOUNTERED; WHAT ANXIETIES HE
SUFFERED; AND WHAT NEWS HE HEARD
Carrying Tom Pinch's book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not
even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain, Martin
went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had passed the
finger-post, and was on the high road to London. He slackened very
little in his speed even then, but he began to think, and look about
him, and to disengage his senses from the coil of angry passions which
hitherto had held them prisoner.
It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable
employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was
dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds
came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet
mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little
gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and
punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It
fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel
of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature was anywhere
to be seen. The prospect could hardly have been more desolate if
animated nature had been dissolved in water, and poured down upon the
earth again in that form.
The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite as cheerless
as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed to the last
degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full of independent
schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of realizing them; his
most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied with the extent of his
troubles. To add to his other miseries, he was by this time sensible of
being wet to the skin, and cold at his very heart.
In this deplorable condition he remembered Mr Pinch's book; more
because it was rather troublesome to carry, than from any hope of being
comforted by that parting gift. He looked at the dingy lettering on the
back, and finding it to be an odd volume of the 'Bachelor of Salamanca,'
in the French tongue, cursed Tom Pinch's folly twenty times. He was on
the point of throwing it away, in his ill-humour and vexation, when he
bethought himself that Tom had referred him to a leaf, turned down;
and opening it at that place, that he might have additional cause
of complaint against him for supposing that any cold scrap of the
Bachelor's wisdom could cheer him in such circumstances, found!--
Well, well! not much, but Tom's all. The half-sovereign. He had wrapped
it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf. These words
were scrawled in pencil on the inside: 'I don't want it indeed. I should
not know what to do with it if I had it.'
There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings,
towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths,
wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men
down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not rather have to fan him,
in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine,
than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine,
reproachful truth, since time began!
Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom's
keenly. After a few minutes it had the effect of raising his spirits,
and reminding him that he was not altogether destitute, as he had left
a fair stock of clothes behind him, and wore a gold hunting-watch in
his pocket. He found a curious gratification, too, in thinking what a
winning fellow he must be to have made such an impression on Tom; and in
reflecting how superior he was to Tom; and how much more likely to make
his way in the world. Animated by these thoughts, and strengthened in
his design of endeavouring to push his fortune in another country, he
resolved to get to London as a rallying-point, in the best way he could;
and to lose no time about it.
He was ten good miles from the village made illustrious by being the
abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a little
roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle before the
fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the cheerful blaze to
dry. It was a very different place from the last tavern in which he
had regaled; boasting no greater extent of accommodation than the
brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind so soon accommodates itself
to the necessities of the body, that this poor waggoner's house-of-call,
which he would have despised yesterday, became now quite a choice hotel;
while his dish of eggs and bacon, and his mug of beer, were not by
any means the coarse fare he had supposed, but fully bore out the
inscription on the window-shutter, which proclaimed those viands to be
'Good entertainment for Travellers.'
He pushed away his empty plate; and with a second mug upon the hearth
before him, looked thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes ached. Then
he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in
little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise
Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink
manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple
father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he
glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon
the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough;
and then he looked at the fire again, and seemed to descry a double
distant London, retreating among the fragments of the burning wood.
He had repeated this process in just the same order, many times, as
if it were a matter of necessity, when the sound of wheels called his
attention to the window out of its regular turn; and there he beheld a
kind of light van drawn by four horses, and laden, as well as he could
see (for it was covered in), with corn and straw. The driver, who
was alone, stopped at the door to water his team, and presently came
stamping and shaking the wet off his hat and coat, into the room where
Martin sat.
He was a red-faced burly young fellow; smart in his way, and with a
good-humoured countenance. As he advanced towards the fire he touched
his shining forehead with the forefinger of his stiff leather glove,
by way of salutation; and said (rather unnecessarily) that it was an
uncommon wet day.
'Very wet,' said Martin.
'I don't know as ever I see a wetter.'
'I never felt one,' said Martin.
The driver glanced at Martin's soiled dress, and his damp shirt-sleeves,
and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he warmed his
hands:
'You have been caught in it, sir?'
'Yes,' was the short reply.
'Out riding, maybe?' said the driver
'I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don't,' returned Martin.
'That's bad,' said the driver.
'And may be worse,' said Martin.
Now the driver said 'That's bad,' not so much because Martin didn't own
a horse, as because he said he didn't with all the reckless desperation
of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal to be inferred.
Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled when he had retorted on
the driver; thus giving him to understand that he didn't care a pin for
Fortune; that he was above pretending to be her favourite when he was
not; and that he snapped his fingers at her, the driver, and everybody
else.
The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the
pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he pointed
his thumb towards the road.
'Up or down?'
'Which IS up?' said Martin.
'London, of course,' said the driver.
'Up then,' said Martin. He tossed his head in a careless manner
afterwards, as if he would have added, 'Now you know all about it.'
put his hands deeper into his pockets; changed his tune, and whistled a
little louder.
'I'm going up,' observed the driver; 'Hounslow, ten miles this side
London.'
'Are you?' cried Martin, stopping short and looking at him.
The driver sprinkled the fire with his wet hat until it hissed again and
answered, 'Aye, to be sure he was.'
'Why, then,' said Martin, 'I'll be plain with you. You may suppose from
my dress that I have money to spare. I have not. All I can afford for
coach-hire is a crown, for I have but two. If you can take me for that,
and my waistcoat, or this silk handkerchief, do. If you can't, leave it
alone.'
'Short and sweet,' remarked the driver.
'You want more?' said Martin. 'Then I haven't got more, and I can't get
it, so there's an end of that.' Whereupon he began to whistle again.
'I didn't say I wanted more, did I?' asked the driver, with something
like indignation.
'You didn't say my offer was enough,' rejoined Martin.
'Why, how could I, when you wouldn't let me? In regard to the waistcoat,
I wouldn't have a man's waistcoat, much less a gentleman's waistcoat,
on my mind, for no consideration; but the silk handkerchief's another
thing; and if you was satisfied when we got to Hounslow, I shouldn't
object to that as a gift.'
'Is it a bargain, then?' said Martin.
'Yes, it is,' returned the other.
'Then finish this beer,' said Martin, handing him the mug, and pulling
on his coat with great alacrity; 'and let us be off as soon as you
like.'
In two minutes more he had paid his bill, which amounted to a shilling;
was lying at full length on a truss of straw, high and dry at the top
of the van, with the tilt a little open in front for the convenience of
talking to his new friend; and was moving along in the right direction
with a most satisfactory and encouraging briskness.
The driver's name, as he soon informed Martin, was William Simmons,
better known as Bill; and his spruce appearance was sufficiently
explained by his connection with a large stage-coaching establishment at
Hounslow, whither he was conveying his load from a farm belonging to
the concern in Wiltshire. He was frequently up and down the road on such
errands, he said, and to look after the sick and rest horses, of which
animals he had much to relate that occupied a long time in the
telling. He aspired to the dignity of the regular box, and expected
an appointment on the first vacancy. He was musical besides, and had
a little key-bugle in his pocket, on which, whenever the conversation
flagged, he played the first part of a great many tunes, and regularly
broke down in the second.
'Ah!' said Bill, with a sigh, as he drew the back of his hand across
his lips, and put this instrument in his pocket, after screwing off the
mouth-piece to drain it; 'Lummy Ned of the Light Salisbury, HE was the
one for musical talents. He WAS a guard. What you may call a Guard'an
Angel, was Ned.'
'Is he dead?' asked Martin.
'Dead!' replied the other, with a contemptuous emphasis. 'Not he. You
won't catch Ned a-dying easy. No, no. He knows better than that.'
'You spoke of him in the past tense,' observed Martin, 'so I supposed he
was no more.
'He's no more in England,' said Bill, 'if that's what you mean. He went
to the U-nited States.'
'Did he?' asked Martin, with sudden interest. 'When?'
'Five year ago, or then about,' said Bill. 'He had set up in the public
line here, and couldn't meet his engagements, so he cut off to Liverpool
one day, without saying anything about it, and went and shipped himself
for the U-nited States.'
'Well?' said Martin.
'Well! as he landed there without a penny to bless himself with, of
course they wos very glad to see him in the U-nited States.'
'What do you mean?' asked Martin, with some scorn.
'What do I mean?' said Bill. 'Why, THAT. All men are alike in the
U-nited States, an't they? It makes no odds whether a man has a thousand
pound, or nothing, there. Particular in New York, I'm told, where Ned
landed.'
'New York, was it?' asked Martin, thoughtfully.
'Yes,' said Bill. 'New York. I know that, because he sent word home that
it brought Old York to his mind, quite vivid, in consequence of being so
exactly unlike it in every respect. I don't understand what particular
business Ned turned his mind to, when he got there; but he wrote home
that him and his friends was always a-singing, Ale Columbia, and blowing
up the President, so I suppose it was something in the public line; or
free-and-easy way again. Anyhow, he made his fortune.'
'No!' cried Martin.
'Yes, he did,' said Bill. 'I know that, because he lost it all the day
after, in six-and-twenty banks as broke. He settled a lot of the notes
on his father, when it was ascertained that they was really stopped and
sent 'em over with a dutiful letter. I know that, because they was
shown down our yard for the old gentleman's benefit, that he might treat
himself with tobacco in the workus.'
'He was a foolish fellow not to take care of his money when he had it,'
said Martin, indignantly.
'There you're right,' said Bill, 'especially as it was all in paper, and
he might have took care of it so very easy, by folding it up in a small
parcel.'
Martin said nothing in reply, but soon afterwards fell asleep, and
remained so for an hour or more. When he awoke, finding it had ceased
to rain, he took his seat beside the driver, and asked him several
questions; as how long had the fortunate guard of the Light Salisbury
been in crossing the Atlantic; at what time of the year had he sailed;
what was the name of the ship in which he made the voyage; how much had
he paid for passage-money; did he suffer greatly from sea-sickness?
and so forth. But on these points of detail his friend was possessed
of little or no information; either answering obviously at random or
acknowledging that he had never heard, or had forgotten; nor, although
he returned to the charge very often, could he obtain any useful
intelligence on these essential particulars.
They jogged on all day, and stopped so often--now to refresh, now to
change their team of horses, now to exchange or bring away a set of
harness, now on one point of business, and now upon another, connected
with the coaching on that line of road--that it was midnight when they
reached Hounslow. A little short of the stables for which the van was
bound, Martin got down, paid his crown, and forced his silk handkerchief
upon his honest friend, notwithstanding the many protestations that he
didn't wish to deprive him of it, with which he tried to give the lie to
his longing looks. That done, they parted company; and when the van had
driven into its own yard and the gates were closed, Martin stood in the
dark street, with a pretty strong sense of being shut out, alone, upon
the dreary world, without the key of it.
But in this moment of despondency, and often afterwards, the
recollection of Mr Pecksniff operated as a cordial to him; awakening
in his breast an indignation that was very wholesome in nerving him to
obstinate endurance. Under the influence of this fiery dram he started
off for London without more ado. Arriving there in the middle of the
night, and not knowing where to find a tavern open, he was fain to
stroll about the streets and market-places until morning.
He found himself, about an hour before dawn, in the humbler regions
of the Adelphi; and addressing himself to a man in a fur-cap, who was
taking down the shutters of an obscure public-house, informed him
that he was a stranger, and inquired if he could have a bed there. It
happened by good luck that he could. Though none of the gaudiest, it was
tolerably clean, and Martin felt very glad and grateful when he crept
into it, for warmth, rest, and forgetfulness.
It was quite late in the afternoon when he awoke; and by the time he had
washed and dressed, and broken his fast, it was growing dusk again. This
was all the better, for it was now a matter of absolute necessity that
he should part with his watch to some obliging pawn-broker. He would
have waited until after dark for this purpose, though it had been the
longest day in the year, and he had begun it without a breakfast.
He passed more Golden Balls than all the jugglers in Europe have juggled
with, in the course of their united performances, before he could
determine in favour of any particular shop where those symbols were
displayed. In the end he came back to one of the first he had seen,
and entering by a side-door in a court, where the three balls, with the
legend 'Money Lent,' were repeated in a ghastly transparency, passed
into one of a series of little closets, or private boxes, erected for
the accommodation of the more bashful and uninitiated customers. He
bolted himself in; pulled out his watch; and laid it on the counter.
'Upon my life and soul!' said a low voice in the next box to the shopman
who was in treaty with him, 'you must make it more; you must make it a
trifle more, you must indeed! You must dispense with one half-quarter
of an ounce in weighing out your pound of flesh, my best of friends, and
make it two-and-six.'
Martin drew back involuntarily, for he knew the voice at once.
'You're always full of your chaff,' said the shopman, rolling up the
article (which looked like a shirt) quite as a matter of course, and
nibbing his pen upon the counter.
'I shall never be full of my wheat,' said Mr Tigg, 'as long as I come
here. Ha, ha! Not bad! Make it two-and-six, my dear friend, positively
for this occasion only. Half-a-crown is a delightful coin. Two-and-six.
Going at two-and-six! For the last time at two-and-six!'
'It'll never be the last time till it's quite worn out,' rejoined the
shopman. 'It's grown yellow in the service as it is.'
'Its master has grown yellow in the service, if you mean that, my
friend,' said Mr Tigg; 'in the patriotic service of an ungrateful
country. You are making it two-and-six, I think?'
'I'm making it,' returned the shopman, 'what it always has been--two
shillings. Same name as usual, I suppose?'
'Still the same name,' said Mr Tigg; 'my claim to the dormant peerage
not being yet established by the House of Lords.'
'The old address?'
'Not at all,' said Mr Tigg; 'I have removed my town establishment from
thirty-eight, Mayfair, to number fifteen-hundred-and-forty-two, Park
Lane.'
'Come, I'm not going to put down that, you know,' said the shopman with
a grin.
'You may put down what you please, my friend,' quoth Mr Tigg. 'The fact
is still the same. The apartments for the under-butler and the fifth
footman being of a most confounded low and vulgar kind at thirty-eight,
Mayfair, I have been compelled, in my regard for the feelings which do
them so much honour, to take on lease for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one
years, renewable at the option of the tenant, the elegant and commodious
family mansion, number fifteen-hundred-and-forty-two Park Lane. Make it
two-and-six, and come and see me!'
The shopman was so highly entertained by this piece of humour that Mr
Tigg himself could not repress some little show of exultation. It vented
itself, in part, in a desire to see how the occupant of the next
box received his pleasantry; to ascertain which he glanced round the
partition, and immediately, by the gaslight, recognized Martin.
'I wish I may die,' said Mr Tigg, stretching out his body so far that
his head was as much in Martin's little cell as Martin's own head was,
'but this is one of the most tremendous meetings in Ancient or Modern
History! How are you? What is the news from the agricultural districts?
How are our friends the P.'s? Ha, ha! David, pay particular attention to
this gentleman immediately, as a friend of mine, I beg.'
'Here! Please to give me the most you can for this,' said Martin,
handing the watch to the shopman. 'I want money sorely.'
'He wants money, sorely!' cried Mr Tigg with excessive sympathy. 'David,
will you have the goodness to do your very utmost for my friend, who
wants money sorely. You will deal with my friend as if he were myself.
A gold hunting-watch, David, engine-turned, capped and jewelled in
four holes, escape movement, horizontal lever, and warranted to perform
correctly, upon my personal reputation, who have observed it narrowly
for many years, under the most trying circumstances'--here he winked
at Martin, that he might understand this recommendation would have an
immense effect upon the shopman; 'what do you say, David, to my friend?
Be very particular to deserve my custom and recommendation, David.'
'I can lend you three pounds on this, if you like' said the shopman to
Martin, confidentially. 'It is very old-fashioned. I couldn't say more.'
'And devilish handsome, too,' cried Mr Tigg. 'Two-twelve-six for the
watch, and seven-and-six for personal regard. I am gratified; it may
be weakness, but I am. Three pounds will do. We take it. The name of my
friend is Smivey: Chicken Smivey, of Holborn, twenty-six-and-a-half B:
lodger.' Here he winked at Martin again, to apprise him that all the
forms and ceremonies prescribed by law were now complied with, and
nothing remained but the receipt for the money.
In point of fact, this proved to be the case, for Martin, who had no
resource but to take what was offered him, signified his acquiescence by
a nod of his head, and presently came out with the cash in his pocket.
He was joined in the entry by Mr Tigg, who warmly congratulated him, as
he took his arm and accompanied him into the street, on the successful
issue of the negotiation.
'As for my part in the same,' said Mr Tigg, 'don't mention it. Don't
compliment me, for I can't bear it!'
'I have no such intention, I assure you,' retorted Martin, releasing his
arm and stopping.
'You oblige me very much' said Mr Tigg. 'Thank you.'
'Now, sir,' observed Martin, biting his lip, 'this is a large town, and
we can easily find different ways in it. If you will show me which is
your way, I will take another.'
Mr Tigg was about to speak, but Martin interposed:
'I need scarcely tell you, after what you have just seen, that I
have nothing to bestow upon your friend Mr Slyme. And it is quite as
unnecessary for me to tell you that I don't desire the honour of your
company.'
'Stop' cried Mr Tigg, holding out his hand. 'Hold! There is a most
remarkably long-headed, flowing-bearded, and patriarchal proverb, which
observes that it is the duty of a man to be just before he is generous.
Be just now, and you can be generous presently. Do not confuse me with
the man Slyme. Do not distinguish the man Slyme as a friend of mine, for
he is no such thing. I have been compelled, sir, to abandon the party
whom you call Slyme. I have no knowledge of the party whom you call
Slyme. I am, sir,' said Mr Tigg, striking himself upon the breast,
'a premium tulip, of a very different growth and cultivation from the
cabbage Slyme, sir.'
'It matters very little to me,' said Martin coolly, 'whether you have
set up as a vagabond on your own account, or are still trading on behalf
of Mr Slyme. I wish to hold no correspondence with you. In the devil's
name, man' said Martin, scarcely able, despite his vexation, to repress
a smile as Mr Tigg stood leaning his back against the shutters of a shop
window, adjusting his hair with great composure, 'will you go one way or
other?'
'You will allow me to remind you, sir,' said Mr Tigg, with sudden
dignity, 'that you--not I--that you--I say emphatically, YOU--have
reduced the proceedings of this evening to a cold and distant matter of
business, when I was disposed to place them on a friendly footing.
It being made a matter of business, sir, I beg to say that I expect
a trifle (which I shall bestow in charity) as commission upon the
pecuniary advance, in which I have rendered you my humble services.
After the terms in which you have addressed me, sir,' concluded Mr
Tigg, 'you will not insult me, if you please, by offering more than
half-a-crown.'
Martin drew that piece of money from his pocket, and tossed it towards
him. Mr Tigg caught it, looked at it to assure himself of its goodness,
spun it in the air after the manner of a pieman, and buttoned it up.
Finally, he raised his hat an inch or two from his head with a military
air, and, after pausing a moment with deep gravity, as to decide in
which direction he should go, and to what Earl or Marquis among his
friends he should give the preference in his next call, stuck his hands
in his skirt-pockets and swaggered round the corner. Martin took the
directly opposite course; and so, to his great content, they parted
company.
It was with a bitter sense of humiliation that he cursed, again and
again, the mischance of having encountered this man in the pawnbroker's
shop. The only comfort he had in the recollection was, Mr Tigg's
voluntary avowal of a separation between himself and Slyme, that would
at least prevent his circumstances (so Martin argued) from being known
to any member of his family, the bare possibility of which filled him
with shame and wounded pride. Abstractedly there was greater reason,
perhaps, for supposing any declaration of Mr Tigg's to be false, than
for attaching the least credence to it; but remembering the terms on
which the intimacy between that gentleman and his bosom friend had
subsisted, and the strong probability of Mr Tigg's having established
an independent business of his own on Mr Slyme's connection, it had a
reasonable appearance of probability; at all events, Martin hoped so;
and that went a long way.
His first step, now that he had a supply of ready money for his present
necessities, was, to retain his bed at the public-house until further
notice, and to write a formal note to Tom Pinch (for he knew Pecksniff
would see it) requesting to have his clothes forwarded to London by
coach, with a direction to be left at the office until called for. These
measures taken, he passed the interval before the box arrived--three
days--in making inquiries relative to American vessels, at the offices
of various shipping-agents in the city; and in lingering about the docks
and wharves, with the faint hope of stumbling upon some engagement
for the voyage, as clerk or supercargo, or custodian of something or
somebody, which would enable him to procure a free passage. But
finding, soon, that no such means of employment were likely to present
themselves, and dreading the consequences of delay, he drew up a short
advertisement, stating what he wanted, and inserted it in the leading
newspapers. Pending the receipt of the twenty or thirty answers which
he vaguely expected, he reduced his wardrobe to the narrowest limits
consistent with decent respectability, and carried the overplus at
different times to the pawnbroker's shop, for conversion into money.
And it was strange, very strange, even to himself, to find how, by
quick though almost imperceptible degrees, he lost his delicacy and
self-respect, and gradually came to do that as a matter of course,
without the least compunction, which but a few short days before had
galled him to the quick. The first time he visited the pawnbroker's,
he felt on his way there as if every person whom he passed suspected
whither he was going; and on his way back again, as if the whole human
tide he stemmed, knew well where he had come from. When did he care to
think of their discernment now! In his first wanderings up and down the
weary streets, he counterfeited the walk of one who had an object in
his view; but soon there came upon him the sauntering, slipshod gait of
listless idleness, and the lounging at street-corners, and plucking and
biting of stray bits of straw, and strolling up and down the same place,
and looking into the same shop-windows, with a miserable indifference,
fifty times a day. At first, he came out from his lodging with an uneasy
sense of being observed--even by those chance passers-by, on whom he had
never looked before, and hundreds to one would never see again--issuing
in the morning from a public-house; but now, in his comings-out and
goings-in he did not mind to lounge about the door, or to stand sunning
himself in careless thought beside the wooden stem, studded from head to
heel with pegs, on which the beer-pots dangled like so many boughs upon
a pewter-tree. And yet it took but five weeks to reach the lowest round
of this tall ladder!
Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every
sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God's
highway, so smooth below your carriage-wheels, so rough beneath the
tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent
of men who HAVE lived in their own esteem, that there are scores of
thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in
that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life! Go
ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young,
and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous
forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and
honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of
deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any
hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's
bright torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of the
nineteen hundredth year of Christian Knowledge, who soundingly appeal
to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it has not been
transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of generations, into the
nature of the Beasts!
Five weeks! Of all the twenty or thirty answers, not one had come. His
money--even the additional stock he had raised from the disposal of his
spare clothes (and that was not much, for clothes, though dear to buy,
are cheap to pawn)--was fast diminishing. Yet what could he do? At times
an agony came over him in which he darted forth again, though he was
but newly home, and, returning to some place where he had been already
twenty times, made some new attempt to gain his end, but always
unsuccessfully. He was years and years too old for a cabin-boy, and
years upon years too inexperienced to be accepted as a common seaman.
His dress and manner, too, militated fatally against any such proposal
as the latter; and yet he was reduced to making it; for even if he could
have contemplated the being set down in America totally without money,
he had not enough left now for a steerage passage and the poorest
provisions upon the voyage.
It is an illustration of a very common tendency in the mind of man, that
all this time he never once doubted, one may almost say the certainty
of doing great things in the New World, if he could only get there.
In proportion as he became more and more dejected by his present
circumstances, and the means of gaining America receded from his grasp,
the more he fretted himself with the conviction that that was the only
place in which he could hope to achieve any high end, and worried his
brain with the thought that men going there in the meanwhile might
anticipate him in the attainment of those objects which were dearest to
his heart. He often thought of John Westlock, and besides looking out
for him on all occasions, actually walked about London for three days
together for the express purpose of meeting with him. But although he
failed in this; and although he would not have scrupled to borrow money
of him; and although he believed that John would have lent it; yet still
he could not bring his mind to write to Pinch and inquire where he was
to be found. For although, as we have seen, he was fond of Tom after
his own fashion, he could not endure the thought (feeling so superior to
Tom) of making him the stepping-stone to his fortune, or being anything
to him but a patron; and his pride so revolted from the idea that it
restrained him even now.
It might have yielded, however; and no doubt must have yielded soon, but
for a very strange and unlooked-for occurrence.
The five weeks had quite run out, and he was in a truly desperate
plight, when one evening, having just returned to his lodging, and
being in the act of lighting his candle at the gas jet in the bar before
stalking moodily upstairs to his own room, his landlord called him by
his name. Now as he had never told it to the man, but had scrupulously
kept it to himself, he was not a little startled by this; and so plainly
showed his agitation that the landlord, to reassure him, said 'it was
only a letter.'
'A letter!' cried Martin.
'For Mr Martin Chuzzlewit,' said the landlord, reading the
superscription of one he held in his hand. 'Noon. Chief office. Paid.'
Martin took it from him, thanked him, and walked upstairs. It was not
sealed, but pasted close; the handwriting was quite unknown to him.
He opened it and found enclosed, without any name, address, or other
inscription or explanation of any kind whatever, a Bank of England note
for Twenty Pounds.
To say that he was perfectly stunned with astonishment and delight; that
he looked again and again at the note and the wrapper; that he hurried
below stairs to make quite certain that the note was a good note; and
then hurried up again to satisfy himself for the fiftieth time that
he had not overlooked some scrap of writing on the wrapper; that he
exhausted and bewildered himself with conjectures; and could make
nothing of it but that there the note was, and he was suddenly enriched;
would be only to relate so many matters of course to no purpose. The
final upshot of the business at that time was, that he resolved to treat
himself to a comfortable but frugal meal in his own chamber; and having
ordered a fire to be kindled, went out to purchase it forthwith.
He bought some cold beef, and ham, and French bread, and butter, and
came back with his pockets pretty heavily laden. It was somewhat of
a damping circumstance to find the room full of smoke, which was
attributable to two causes; firstly, to the flue being naturally vicious
and a smoker; and secondly, to their having forgotten, in lighting the
fire, an odd sack or two and some trifles, which had been put up the
chimney to keep the rain out. They had already remedied this oversight,
however; and propped up the window-sash with a bundle of firewood to
keep it open; so that except in being rather inflammatory to the eyes
and choking to the lungs, the apartment was quite comfortable.
Martin was in no vein to quarrel with it, if it had been in less
tolerable order, especially when a gleaming pint of porter was set upon
the table, and the servant-girl withdrew, bearing with her particular
instructions relative to the production of something hot when he should
ring the bell. The cold meat being wrapped in a playbill, Martin laid
the cloth by spreading that document on the little round table with the
print downwards, and arranging the collation upon it. The foot of the
bed, which was very close to the fire, answered for a sideboard; and
when he had completed these preparations, he squeezed an old arm-chair
into the warmest corner, and sat down to enjoy himself.
He had begun to eat with great appetite, glancing round the room
meanwhile with a triumphant anticipation of quitting it for ever on the
morrow, when his attention was arrested by a stealthy footstep on the
stairs, and presently by a knock at his chamber door, which, although
it was a gentle knock enough, communicated such a start to the bundle of
firewood, that it instantly leaped out of window, and plunged into the
street.
'More coals, I suppose,' said Martin. 'Come in!'
'It an't a liberty, sir, though it seems so,' rejoined a man's voice.
'Your servant, sir. Hope you're pretty well, sir.'
Martin stared at the face that was bowing in the doorway, perfectly
remembering the features and expression, but quite forgetting to whom
they belonged.
'Tapley, sir,' said his visitor. 'Him as formerly lived at the Dragon,
sir, and was forced to leave in consequence of a want of jollity, sir.'
'To be sure!' cried Martin. 'Why, how did you come here?'
'Right through the passage, and up the stairs, sir,' said Mark.
'How did you find me out, I mean?' asked Martin.
'Why, sir,' said Mark, 'I've passed you once or twice in the street, if
I'm not mistaken; and when I was a-looking in at the beef-and-ham shop
just now, along with a hungry sweep, as was very much calculated to make
a man jolly, sir--I see you a-buying that.'
Martin reddened as he pointed to the table, and said, somewhat hastily:
'Well! What then?'
'Why, then, sir,' said Mark, 'I made bold to foller; and as I told 'em
downstairs that you expected me, I was let up.'
'Are you charged with any message, that you told them you were
expected?' inquired Martin.
'No, sir, I an't,' said Mark. 'That was what you may call a pious fraud,
sir, that was.'
Martin cast an angry look at him; but there was something in the
fellow's merry face, and in his manner--which with all its cheerfulness
was far from being obtrusive or familiar--that quite disarmed him.
He had lived a solitary life too, for many weeks, and the voice was
pleasant in his ear.
'Tapley,' he said, 'I'll deal openly with you. From all I can judge and
from all I have heard of you through Pinch, you are not a likely kind of
fellow to have been brought here by impertinent curiosity or any other
offensive motive. Sit down. I'm glad to see you.'
'Thankee, sir,' said Mark. 'I'd as lieve stand.'
'If you don't sit down,' retorted Martin, 'I'll not talk to you.'
'Very good, sir,' observed Mark. 'Your will's a law, sir. Down it is;'
and he sat down accordingly upon the bedstead.
'Help yourself,' said Martin, handing him the only knife.
'Thankee, sir,' rejoined Mark. 'After you've done.'
'If you don't take it now, you'll not have any,' said Martin.
'Very good, sir,' rejoined Mark. 'That being your desire--now it is.'
With which reply he gravely helped himself and went on eating. Martin
having done the like for a short time in silence, said abruptly:
'What are you doing in London?'
'Nothing at all, sir,' rejoined Mark.
'How's that?' asked Martin.
'I want a place,' said Mark.
'I'm sorry for you,' said Martin.
'--To attend upon a single gentleman,' resumed Mark. 'If from the
country the more desirable. Makeshifts would be preferred. Wages no
object.'
He said this so pointedly, that Martin stopped in his eating, and said:
'If you mean me--'
'Yes, I do, sir,' interposed Mark.
'Then you may judge from my style of living here, of my means of keeping
a man-servant. Besides, I am going to America immediately.'
'Well, sir,' returned Mark, quite unmoved by this intelligence 'from all
that ever I heard about it, I should say America is a very likely sort
of place for me to be jolly in!'
Again Martin looked at him angrily; and again his anger melted away in
spite of himself.
'Lord bless you, sir,' said Mark, 'what is the use of us a-going round
and round, and hiding behind the corner, and dodging up and down, when
we can come straight to the point in six words? I've had my eye upon you
any time this fortnight. I see well enough there's a screw loose in
your affairs. I know'd well enough the first time I see you down at the
Dragon that it must be so, sooner or later. Now, sir here am I, without
a sitiwation; without any want of wages for a year to come; for I saved
up (I didn't mean to do it, but I couldn't help it) at the Dragon--here
am I with a liking for what's wentersome, and a liking for you, and
a wish to come out strong under circumstances as would keep other men
down; and will you take me, or will you leave me?'
'How can I take you?' cried Martin.
'When I say take,' rejoined Mark, 'I mean will you let me go? and when I
say will you let me go, I mean will you let me go along with you? for go
I will, somehow or another. Now that you've said America, I see clear at
once, that that's the place for me to be jolly in. Therefore, if I don't
pay my own passage in the ship you go in, sir, I'll pay my own passage
in another. And mark my words, if I go alone it shall be, to carry out
the principle, in the rottenest, craziest, leakingest tub of a wessel
that a place can be got in for love or money. So if I'm lost upon the
way, sir, there'll be a drowned man at your door--and always a-knocking
double knocks at it, too, or never trust me!'
'This is mere folly,' said Martin.
'Very good, sir,' returned Mark. 'I'm glad to hear it, because if you
don't mean to let me go, you'll be more comfortable, perhaps, on account
of thinking so. Therefore I contradict no gentleman. But all I say is,
that if I don't emigrate to America in that case, in the beastliest old
cockle-shell as goes out of port, I'm--'
'You don't mean what you say, I'm sure,' said Martin.
'Yes I do,' cried Mark.
'I tell you I know better,' rejoined Martin.
'Very good, sir,' said Mark, with the same air of perfect satisfaction.
'Let it stand that way at present, sir, and wait and see how it turns
out. Why, love my heart alive! the only doubt I have is, whether there's
any credit in going with a gentleman like you, that's as certain to make
his way there as a gimlet is to go through soft deal.'
This was touching Martin on his weak point, and having him at a great
advantage. He could not help thinking, either, what a brisk fellow this
Mark was, and how great a change he had wrought in the atmosphere of the
dismal little room already.
'Why, certainly, Mark,' he said, 'I have hopes of doing well there, or I
shouldn't go. I may have the qualifications for doing well, perhaps.'
'Of course you have, sir,' returned Mark Tapley. 'Everybody knows that.'
'You see,' said Martin, leaning his chin upon his hand, and looking at
the fire, 'ornamental architecture applied to domestic purposes,
can hardly fail to be in great request in that country; for men are
constantly changing their residences there, and moving further off; and
it's clear they must have houses to live in.'
'I should say, sir,' observed Mark, 'that that's a state of things as
opens one of the jolliest look-outs for domestic architecture that ever
I heerd tell on.'
Martin glanced at him hastily, not feeling quite free from a suspicion
that this remark implied a doubt of the successful issue of his plans.
But Mr Tapley was eating the boiled beef and bread with such entire good
faith and singleness of purpose expressed in his visage that he could
not but be satisfied. Another doubt arose in his mind however, as this
one disappeared. He produced the blank cover in which the note had been
enclosed, and fixing his eyes on Mark as he put it in his hands, said:
'Now tell me the truth. Do you know anything about that?'
Mark turned it over and over; held it near his eyes; held it away from
him at arm's length; held it with the superscription upwards and with
the superscription downwards; and shook his head with such a genuine
expression of astonishment at being asked the question, that Martin
said, as he took it from him again:
'No, I see you don't. How should you! Though, indeed, your knowing about
it would not be more extraordinary than its being here. Come, Tapley,'
he added, after a moment's thought, 'I'll trust you with my history,
such as it is, and then you'll see more clearly what sort of fortunes
you would link yourself to, if you followed me.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mark; 'but afore you enter upon it
will you take me if I choose to go? Will you turn off me--Mark
Tapley--formerly of the Blue Dragon, as can be well recommended by Mr
Pinch, and as wants a gentleman of your strength of mind to look up to;
or will you, in climbing the ladder as you're certain to get to the
top of, take me along with you at a respectful distance? Now, sir,'
said Mark, 'it's of very little importance to you, I know, there's the
difficulty; but it's of very great importance to me, and will you be so
good as to consider of it?'
If this were meant as a second appeal to Martin's weak side, founded on
his observation of the effect of the first, Mr Tapley was a skillful and
shrewd observer. Whether an intentional or an accidental shot, it
hit the mark fully for Martin, relenting more and more, said with a
condescension which was inexpressibly delicious to him, after his recent
humiliation:
'We'll see about it, Tapley. You shall tell me in what disposition you
find yourself to-morrow.'
'Then, sir,' said Mark, rubbing his hands, 'the job's done. Go on, sir,
if you please. I'm all attention.'
Throwing himself back in his arm-chair, and looking at the fire, with
now and then a glance at Mark, who at such times nodded his head sagely,
to express his profound interest and attention. Martin ran over the
chief points in his history, to the same effect as he had related them,
weeks before, to Mr Pinch. But he adapted them, according to the best of
his judgment, to Mr Tapley's comprehension; and with that view made as
light of his love affair as he could, and referred to it in very few
words. But here he reckoned without his host; for Mark's interest was
keenest in this part of the business, and prompted him to ask sundry
questions in relation to it; for which he apologised as one in some
measure privileged to do so, from having seen (as Martin explained to
him) the young lady at the Blue Dragon.
'And a young lady as any gentleman ought to feel more proud of being in
love with,' said Mark, energetically, 'don't draw breath.'
'Aye! You saw her when she was not happy,' said Martin, gazing at the
fire again. 'If you had seen her in the old times, indeed--'
'Why, she certainly was a little down-hearted, sir, and something paler
in her colour than I could have wished,' said Mark, 'but none the worse
in her looks for that. I think she seemed better, sir, after she come to
London.'
Martin withdrew his eyes from the fire; stared at Mark as if he thought
he had suddenly gone mad; and asked him what he meant.
'No offence intended, sir,' urged Mark. 'I don't mean to say she was any
the happier without you; but I thought she was a-looking better, sir.'
'Do you mean to tell me she has been in London?' asked Martin, rising
hurriedly, and pushing back his chair.
'Of course I do,' said Mark, rising too, in great amazement from the
bedstead.
'Do you mean to tell me she is in London now?'
'Most likely, sir. I mean to say she was a week ago.'
'And you know where?'
'Yes!' cried Mark. 'What! Don't you?'
'My good fellow!' exclaimed Martin, clutching him by both arms, 'I have
never seen her since I left my grandfather's house.'
'Why, then!' cried Mark, giving the little table such a blow with his
clenched fist that the slices of beef and ham danced upon it, while all
his features seemed, with delight, to be going up into his forehead, and
never coming back again any more, 'if I an't your nat'ral born servant,
hired by Fate, there an't such a thing in natur' as a Blue Dragon. What!
when I was a-rambling up and down a old churchyard in the City, getting
myself into a jolly state, didn't I see your grandfather a-toddling to
and fro for pretty nigh a mortal hour! Didn't I watch him into Todgers's
commercial boarding-house, and watch him out, and watch him home to his
hotel, and go and tell him as his was the service for my money, and I
had said so, afore I left the Dragon! Wasn't the young lady a-sitting
with him then, and didn't she fall a-laughing in a manner as was
beautiful to see! Didn't your grandfather say, "Come back again next
week," and didn't I go next week; and didn't he say that he couldn't
make up his mind to trust nobody no more; and therefore wouldn't engage
me, but at the same time stood something to drink as was handsome! Why,'
cried Mr Tapley, with a comical mixture of delight and chagrin, 'where's
the credit of a man's being jolly under such circumstances! Who could
help it, when things come about like this!'
For some moments Martin stood gazing at him, as if he really doubted the
evidence of his senses, and could not believe that Mark stood there, in
the body, before him. At length he asked him whether, if the young lady
were still in London, he thought he could contrive to deliver a letter
to her secretly.
'Do I think I can?' cried Mark. 'THINK I can? Here, sit down, sir. Write
it out, sir!'
With that he cleared the table by the summary process of tilting
everything upon it into the fireplace; snatched some writing materials
from the mantel-shelf; set Martin's chair before them; forced him down
into it; dipped a pen into the ink; and put it in his hand.
'Cut away, sir!' cried Mark. 'Make it strong, sir. Let it be wery
pinted, sir. Do I think so? I should think so. Go to work, sir!'
Martin required no further adjuration, but went to work at a great rate;
while Mr Tapley, installing himself without any more formalities into
the functions of his valet and general attendant, divested himself
of his coat, and went on to clear the fireplace and arrange the room;
talking to himself in a low voice the whole time.
'Jolly sort of lodgings,' said Mark, rubbing his nose with the knob at
the end of the fire-shovel, and looking round the poor chamber; 'that's
a comfort. The rain's come through the roof too. That an't bad. A lively
old bedstead, I'll be bound; popilated by lots of wampires, no doubt.
Come! my spirits is a-getting up again. An uncommon ragged nightcap
this. A very good sign. We shall do yet! Here, Jane, my dear,' calling
down the stairs, 'bring up that there hot tumbler for my master as was
a-mixing when I come in. That's right, sir,' to Martin. 'Go at it as if
you meant it, sir. Be very tender, sir, if you please. You can't make it
too strong, sir!'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN WHICH MARTIN BIDS ADIEU TO THE LADY OF HIS LOVE; AND HONOURS AN
OBSCURE INDIVIDUAL WHOSE FORTUNE HE INTENDS TO MAKE BY COMMENDING HER TO
HIS PROTECTION
The letter being duly signed, sealed, and delivered, was handed to Mark
Tapley, for immediate conveyance if possible. And he succeeded so well
in his embassy as to be enabled to return that same night, just as the
house was closing, with the welcome intelligence that he had sent it
upstairs to the young lady, enclosed in a small manuscript of his
own, purporting to contain his further petition to be engaged in Mr
Chuzzlewit's service; and that she had herself come down and told him,
in great haste and agitation, that she would meet the gentleman at
eight o'clock to-morrow morning in St. James's Park. It was then agreed
between the new master and the new man, that Mark should be in waiting
near the hotel in good time, to escort the young lady to the place
of appointment; and when they had parted for the night with this
understanding, Martin took up his pen again; and before he went to bed
wrote another letter, whereof more will be seen presently.
He was up before daybreak, and came upon the Park with the morning,
which was clad in the least engaging of the three hundred and sixty-five
dresses in the wardrobe of the year. It was raw, damp, dark, and dismal;
the clouds were as muddy as the ground; and the short perspective
of every street and avenue was closed up by the mist as by a filthy
curtain.
'Fine weather indeed,' Martin bitterly soliloquised, 'to be wandering
up and down here in, like a thief! Fine weather indeed, for a meeting of
lovers in the open air, and in a public walk! I need be departing, with
all speed, for another country; for I have come to a pretty pass in
this!'
He might perhaps have gone on to reflect that of all mornings in the
year, it was not the best calculated for a young lady's coming forth
on such an errand, either. But he was stopped on the road to this
reflection, if his thoughts tended that way, by her appearance at a
short distance, on which he hurried forward to meet her. Her squire,
Mr Tapley, at the same time fell discreetly back, and surveyed the fog
above him with an appearance of attentive interest.
'My dear Martin,' said Mary.
'My dear Mary,' said Martin; and lovers are such a singular kind of
people that this is all they did say just then, though Martin took her
arm, and her hand too, and they paced up and down a short walk that was
least exposed to observation, half-a-dozen times.
'If you have changed at all, my love, since we parted,' said Martin at
length, as he looked upon her with a proud delight, 'it is only to be
more beautiful than ever!'
Had she been of the common metal of love-worn young ladies, she would
have denied this in her most interesting manner; and would have told him
that she knew she had become a perfect fright; or that she had wasted
away with weeping and anxiety; or that she was dwindling gently into an
early grave; or that her mental sufferings were unspeakable; or would,
either by tears or words, or a mixture of both, have furnished him with
some other information to that effect, and made him as miserable as
possible. But she had been reared up in a sterner school than the minds
of most young girls are formed in; she had had her nature strengthened
by the hands of hard endurance and necessity; had come out from her
young trials constant, self-denying, earnest, and devoted; had acquired
in her maidenhood--whether happily in the end, for herself or him, is
foreign to our present purpose to inquire--something of that nobler
quality of gentle hearts which is developed often by the sorrows and
struggles of matronly years, but often by their lessons only. Unspoiled,
unpampered in her joys or griefs; with frank and full, and deep
affection for the object of her early love; she saw in him one who for
her sake was an outcast from his home and fortune, and she had no
more idea of bestowing that love upon him in other than cheerful and
sustaining words, full of high hope and grateful trustfulness, than she
had of being unworthy of it, in her lightest thought or deed, for any
base temptation that the world could offer.
'What change is there in YOU, Martin,' she replied; 'for that concerns
me nearest? You look more anxious and more thoughtful than you used.'
'Why, as to that, my love,' said Martin as he drew her waist within his
arm, first looking round to see that there were no observers near,
and beholding Mr Tapley more intent than ever on the fog; 'it would be
strange if I did not; for my life--especially of late--has been a hard
one.'
'I know it must have been,' she answered. 'When have I forgotten to
think of it and you?'
'Not often, I hope,' said Martin. 'Not often, I am sure. Not often, I
have some right to expect, Mary; for I have undergone a great deal of
vexation and privation, and I naturally look for that return, you know.'
'A very, very poor return,' she answered with a fainter smile. 'But you
have it, and will have it always. You have paid a dear price for a poor
heart, Martin; but it is at least your own, and a true one.'
'Of course I feel quite certain of that,' said Martin, 'or I shouldn't
have put myself in my present position. And don't say a poor heart,
Mary, for I say a rich one. Now, I am about to break a design to you,
dearest, which will startle you at first, but which is undertaken for
your sake. I am going,' he added slowly, looking far into the deep
wonder of her bright dark eyes, 'abroad.'
'Abroad, Martin!'
'Only to America. See now. How you droop directly!'
'If I do, or, I hope I may say, if I did,' she answered, raising her
head after a short silence, and looking once more into his face, 'it was
for grief to think of what you are resolved to undergo for me. I would
not venture to dissuade you, Martin; but it is a long, long distance;
there is a wide ocean to be crossed; illness and want are sad calamities
in any place, but in a foreign country dreadful to endure. Have you
thought of all this?'
'Thought of it!' cried Martin, abating, in his fondness--and he WAS very
fond of her--hardly an iota of his usual impetuosity. 'What am I to do?
It's very well to say, "Have I thought of it?" my love; but you should
ask me in the same breath, have I thought of starving at home; have I
thought of doing porter's work for a living; have I thought of holding
horses in the streets to earn my roll of bread from day to day? Come,
come,' he added, in a gentler tone, 'do not hang down your head, my
dear, for I need the encouragement that your sweet face alone can give
me. Why, that's well! Now you are brave again.'
'I am endeavouring to be,' she answered, smiling through her tears.
'Endeavouring to be anything that's good, and being it, is, with you,
all one. Don't I know that of old?' cried Martin, gayly. 'So! That's
famous! Now I can tell you all my plans as cheerfully as if you were my
little wife already, Mary.'
She hung more closely on his arm, and looking upwards in his face, bade
him speak on.
'You see,' said Martin, playing with the little hand upon his wrist,
'that my attempts to advance myself at home have been baffled and
rendered abortive. I will not say by whom, Mary, for that would give
pain to us both. But so it is. Have you heard him speak of late of any
relative of mine or his, called Pecksniff? Only tell me what I ask you,
no more.'
'I have heard, to my surprise, that he is a better man than was
supposed.'
'I thought so,' interrupted Martin.
'And that it is likely we may come to know him, if not to visit and
reside with him and--I think--his daughters. He HAS daughters, has he,
love?'
'A pair of them,' Martin answered. 'A precious pair! Gems of the first
water!'
'Ah! You are jesting!'
'There is a sort of jesting which is very much in earnest, and includes
some pretty serious disgust,' said Martin. 'I jest in reference to Mr
Pecksniff (at whose house I have been living as his assistant, and at
whose hands I have received insult and injury), in that vein. Whatever
betides, or however closely you may be brought into communication with
this family, never forget that, Mary; and never for an instant,
whatever appearances may seem to contradict me, lose sight of this
assurance--Pecksniff is a scoundrel.'
'Indeed!'
'In thought, and in deed, and in everything else. A scoundrel from the
topmost hair of his head, to the nethermost atom of his heel. Of his
daughters I will only say that, to the best of my knowledge and belief,
they are dutiful young ladies, and take after their father closely. This
is a digression from the main point, and yet it brings me to what I was
going to say.'
He stopped to look into her eyes again, and seeing, in a hasty glance
over his shoulder, that there was no one near, and that Mark was still
intent upon the fog, not only looked at her lips, too, but kissed them
into the bargain.
'Now I am going to America, with great prospects of doing well, and of
returning home myself very soon; it may be to take you there for a few
years, but, at all events, to claim you for my wife; which, after such
trials, I should do with no fear of your still thinking it a duty to
cleave to him who will not suffer me to live (for this is true), if he
can help it, in my own land. How long I may be absent is, of course,
uncertain; but it shall not be very long. Trust me for that.'
'In the meantime, dear Martin--'
'That's the very thing I am coming to. In the meantime you shall hear,
constantly, of all my goings-on. Thus.'
He paused to take from his pocket the letter he had written overnight,
and then resumed:
'In this fellow's employment, and living in this fellow's house (by
fellow, I mean Mr Pecksniff, of course), there is a certain person of
the name of Pinch. Don't forget; a poor, strange, simple oddity, Mary;
but thoroughly honest and sincere; full of zeal; and with a cordial
regard for me. Which I mean to return one of these days, by setting him
up in life in some way or other.'
'Your old kind nature, Martin!'
'Oh!' said Martin, 'that's not worth speaking of, my love. He's very
grateful and desirous to serve me; and I am more than repaid. Now one
night I told this Pinch my history, and all about myself and you; in
which he was not a little interested, I can tell you, for he knows you!
Aye, you may look surprised--and the longer the better for it becomes
you--but you have heard him play the organ in the church of that village
before now; and he has seen you listening to his music; and has caught
his inspiration from you, too!'
'Was HE the organist?' cried Mary. 'I thank him from my heart!'
'Yes, he was,' said Martin, 'and is, and gets nothing for it either.
There never was such a simple fellow! Quite an infant! But a very good
sort of creature, I assure you.'
'I am sure of that,' she said with great earnestness. 'He must be!'
'Oh, yes, no doubt at all about it,' rejoined Martin, in his usual
careless way. 'He is. Well! It has occurred to me--but stay. If I read
you what I have written and intend sending to him by post to-night
it will explain itself. "My dear Tom Pinch." That's rather familiar
perhaps,' said Martin, suddenly remembering that he was proud when they
had last met, 'but I call him my dear Tom Pinch because he likes it, and
it pleases him.'
'Very right, and very kind,' said Mary.
'Exactly so!' cried Martin. 'It's as well to be kind whenever one can;
and, as I said before, he really is an excellent fellow. "My dear Tom
Pinch--I address this under cover to Mrs Lupin, at the Blue Dragon,
and have begged her in a short note to deliver it to you without saying
anything about it elsewhere; and to do the same with all future letters
she may receive from me. My reason for so doing will be at once apparent
to you"--I don't know that it will be, by the bye,' said Martin,
breaking off, 'for he's slow of comprehension, poor fellow; but he'll
find it out in time. My reason simply is, that I don't want my letters
to be read by other people; and particularly by the scoundrel whom he
thinks an angel.'
'Mr Pecksniff again?' asked Mary.
'The same,' said Martin '--will be at once apparent to you. I have
completed my arrangements for going to America; and you will be
surprised to hear that I am to be accompanied by Mark Tapley, upon whom
I have stumbled strangely in London, and who insists on putting himself
under my protection'--meaning, my love,' said Martin, breaking off
again, 'our friend in the rear, of course.'
She was delighted to hear this, and bestowed a kind glance upon Mark,
which he brought his eyes down from the fog to encounter and received
with immense satisfaction. She said in his hearing, too, that he was a
good soul and a merry creature, and would be faithful, she was certain;
commendations which Mr Tapley inwardly resolved to deserve, from such
lips, if he died for it.
'"Now, my dear Pinch,"' resumed Martin, proceeding with his letter; '"I
am going to repose great trust in you, knowing that I may do so with
perfect reliance on your honour and secrecy, and having nobody else just
now to trust in."'
'I don't think I would say that, Martin.'
'Wouldn't you? Well! I'll take that out. It's perfectly true, though.'
'But it might seem ungracious, perhaps.'
'Oh, I don't mind Pinch,' said Martin. 'There's no occasion to stand on
any ceremony with HIM. However, I'll take it out, as you wish it, and
make the full stop at "secrecy." Very well! "I shall not only"--this is
the letter again, you know.'
'I understand.'
'"I shall not only enclose my letters to the young lady of whom I have
told you, to your charge, to be forwarded as she may request; but I most
earnestly commit her, the young lady herself, to your care and regard,
in the event of your meeting in my absence. I have reason to think
that the probabilities of your encountering each other--perhaps very
frequently--are now neither remote nor few; and although in our position
you can do very little to lessen the uneasiness of hers, I trust to you
implicitly to do that much, and so deserve the confidence I have reposed
in you." You see, my dear Mary,' said Martin, 'it will be a great
consolation to you to have anybody, no matter how simple, with whom you
can speak about ME; and the very first time you talk to Pinch, you'll
feel at once that there is no more occasion for any embarrassment or
hesitation in talking to him, than if he were an old woman.'
'However that may be,' she returned, smiling, 'he is your friend, and
that is enough.'
'Oh, yes, he's my friend,' said Martin, 'certainly. In fact, I have told
him in so many words that we'll always take notice of him, and protect
him; and it's a good trait in his character that he's grateful--very
grateful indeed. You'll like him of all things, my love, I know. You'll
observe very much that's comical and old-fashioned about Pinch, but you
needn't mind laughing at him; for he'll not care about it. He'll rather
like it indeed!'
'I don't think I shall put that to the test, Martin.'
'You won't if you can help it, of course,' he said, 'but I think you'll
find him a little too much for your gravity. However, that's neither
here nor there, and it certainly is not the letter; which ends
thus: "Knowing that I need not impress the nature and extent of that
confidence upon you at any greater length, as it is already sufficiently
established in your mind, I will only say, in bidding you farewell and
looking forward to our next meeting, that I shall charge myself from
this time, through all changes for the better, with your advancement and
happiness, as if they were my own. You may rely upon that. And
always believe me, my dear Tom Pinch, faithfully your friend, Martin
Chuzzlewit. P.S.--I enclose the amount which you so kindly"--Oh,' said
Martin, checking himself, and folding up the letter, 'that's nothing!'
At this crisis Mark Tapley interposed, with an apology for remarking
that the clock at the Horse Guards was striking.
'Which I shouldn't have said nothing about, sir,' added Mark, 'if the
young lady hadn't begged me to be particular in mentioning it.'
'I did,' said Mary. 'Thank you. You are quite right. In another minute
I shall be ready to return. We have time for a very few words more, dear
Martin, and although I had much to say, it must remain unsaid until the
happy time of our next meeting. Heaven send it may come speedily and
prosperously! But I have no fear of that.'
'Fear!' cried Martin. 'Why, who has? What are a few months? What is a
whole year? When I come gayly back, with a road through life hewn out
before me, then indeed, looking back upon this parting, it may seem
a dismal one. But now! I swear I wouldn't have it happen under more
favourable auspices, if I could; for then I should be less inclined to
go, and less impressed with the necessity.'
'Yes, yes. I feel that too. When do you go?'
'To-night. We leave for Liverpool to-night. A vessel sails from that
port, as I hear, in three days. In a month, or less, we shall be there.
Why, what's a month! How many months have flown by, since our last
parting!'
'Long to look back upon,' said Mary, echoing his cheerful tone, 'but
nothing in their course!'
'Nothing at all!' cried Martin. 'I shall have change of scene and change
of place; change of people, change of manners, change of cares and
hopes! Time will wear wings indeed! I can bear anything, so that I have
swift action, Mary.'
Was he thinking solely of her care for him, when he took so little heed
of her share in the separation; of her quiet monotonous endurance,
and her slow anxiety from day to day? Was there nothing jarring and
discordant even in his tone of courage, with this one note 'self' for
ever audible, however high the strain? Not in her ears. It had been
better otherwise, perhaps, but so it was. She heard the same bold spirit
which had flung away as dross all gain and profit for her sake, making
light of peril and privation that she might be calm and happy; and she
heard no more. That heart where self has found no place and raised no
throne, is slow to recognize its ugly presence when it looks upon it.
As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone
conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred
vices know each other in their hiding-places every day, when Virtue is
incredulous and blind.
'The quarter's gone!' cried Mr Tapley, in a voice of admonition.
'I shall be ready to return immediately,' she said. 'One thing, dear
Martin, I am bound to tell you. You entreated me a few minutes since
only to answer what you asked me in reference to one theme, but you
should and must know (otherwise I could not be at ease) that since
that separation of which I was the unhappy occasion, he has never once
uttered your name; has never coupled it, or any faint allusion to it,
with passion or reproach; and has never abated in his kindness to me.'
'I thank him for that last act,' said Martin, 'and for nothing else.
Though on consideration I may thank him for his other forbearance also,
inasmuch as I neither expect nor desire that he will mention my name
again. He may once, perhaps--to couple it with reproach--in his will.
Let him, if he please! By the time it reaches me, he will be in his
grave; a satire on his own anger, God help him!'
'Martin! If you would but sometimes, in some quiet hour; beside the
winter fire; in the summer air; when you hear gentle music, or think of
Death, or Home, or Childhood; if you would at such a season resolve to
think, but once a month, or even once a year, of him, or any one who
ever wronged you, you would forgive him in your heart, I know!'
'If I believed that to be true, Mary,' he replied, 'I would resolve at
no such time to bear him in my mind; wishing to spare myself the shame
of such a weakness. I was not born to be the toy and puppet of any man,
far less his; to whose pleasure and caprice, in return for any good he
did me, my whole youth was sacrificed. It became between us two a fair
exchange--a barter--and no more; and there is no such balance against
me that I need throw in a mawkish forgiveness to poise the scale. He has
forbidden all mention of me to you, I know,' he added hastily. 'Come!
Has he not?'
'That was long ago,' she returned; 'immediately after your parting;
before you had left the house. He has never done so since.'
'He has never done so since because he has seen no occasion,' said
Martin; 'but that is of little consequence, one way or other. Let all
allusion to him between you and me be interdicted from this time forth.
And therefore, love'--he drew her quickly to him, for the time of
parting had now come--'in the first letter that you write to me through
the Post Office, addressed to New York; and in all the others that you
send through Pinch; remember he has no existence, but has become to us
as one who is dead. Now, God bless you! This is a strange place for such
a meeting and such a parting; but our next meeting shall be in a better,
and our next and last parting in a worse.'
'One other question, Martin, I must ask. Have you provided money for
this journey?'
'Have I?' cried Martin; it might have been in his pride; it might have
been in his desire to set her mind at ease: 'Have I provided money? Why,
there's a question for an emigrant's wife! How could I move on land or
sea without it, love?'
'I mean, enough.'
'Enough! More than enough. Twenty times more than enough. A pocket-full.
Mark and I, for all essential ends, are quite as rich as if we had the
purse of Fortunatus in our baggage.'
'The half-hour's a-going!' cried Mr Tapley.
'Good-bye a hundred times!' cried Mary, in a trembling voice.
But how cold the comfort in Good-bye! Mark Tapley knew it perfectly.
Perhaps he knew it from his reading, perhaps from his experience,
perhaps from intuition. It is impossible to say; but however he knew
it, his knowledge instinctively suggested to him the wisest course of
proceeding that any man could have adopted under the circumstances. He
was taken with a violent fit of sneezing, and was obliged to turn his
head another way. In doing which, he, in a manner fenced and screened
the lovers into a corner by themselves.
There was a short pause, but Mark had an undefined sensation that it was
a satisfactory one in its way. Then Mary, with her veil lowered, passed
him with a quick step, and beckoned him to follow. She stopped once more
before they lost that corner; looked back; and waved her hand to Martin.
He made a start towards them at the moment as if he had some other
farewell words to say; but she only hurried off the faster, and Mr
Tapley followed as in duty bound.
When he rejoined Martin again in his own chamber, he found that
gentleman seated moodily before the dusty grate, with his two feet on
the fender, his two elbows on his knees, and his chin supported, in a
not very ornamental manner, on the palms of his hands.
'Well, Mark!'
'Well, sir,' said Mark, taking a long breath, 'I see the young lady safe
home, and I feel pretty comfortable after it. She sent a lot of kind
words, sir, and this,' handing him a ring, 'for a parting keepsake.'
'Diamonds!' said Martin, kissing it--let us do him justice, it was for
her sake; not for theirs--and putting it on his little finger. 'Splendid
diamonds! My grandfather is a singular character, Mark. He must have
given her this now.'
Mark Tapley knew as well that she had bought it, to the end that that
unconscious speaker might carry some article of sterling value with him
in his necessity; as he knew that it was day, and not night. Though he
had no more acquaintance of his own knowledge with the history of the
glittering trinket on Martin's outspread finger, than Martin himself
had, he was as certain that in its purchase she had expended her whole
stock of hoarded money, as if he had seen it paid down coin by coin. Her
lover's strange obtuseness in relation to this little incident, promptly
suggested to Mark's mind its real cause and root; and from that moment
he had a clear and perfect insight into the one absorbing principle of
Martin's character.
'She is worthy of the sacrifices I have made,' said Martin, folding his
arms, and looking at the ashes in the stove, as if in resumption of some
former thoughts. 'Well worthy of them. No riches'--here he stroked his
chin and mused--'could have compensated for the loss of such a nature.
Not to mention that in gaining her affection I have followed the bent
of my own wishes, and baulked the selfish schemes of others who had
no right to form them. She is quite worthy--more than worthy--of the
sacrifices I have made. Yes, she is. No doubt of it.'
These ruminations might or might not have reached Mark Tapley; for
though they were by no means addressed to him, yet they were softly
uttered. In any case, he stood there, watching Martin with an
indescribable and most involved expression on his visage, until that
young man roused himself and looked towards him; when he turned away,
as being suddenly intent upon certain preparations for the journey,
and, without giving vent to any articulate sound, smiled with surpassing
ghastliness, and seemed by a twist of his features and a motion of his
lips, to release himself of this word:
'Jolly!'
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BURDEN WHEREOF, IS HAIL COLUMBIA!
A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or circling
late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street
corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of their own
tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment 'One!' The earth
covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of
dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and
fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift
clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping
after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on,
and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.
Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits, they
repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what
wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible
disport?
Here! Free from that cramped prison called the earth, and out upon the
waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all night
long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on the coast of
that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so quietly in the
midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush the blasts from
unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the fury of their unchecked
liberty, they storm and buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed
into passion like their own, leaps up, in ravings mightier than theirs,
and the whole scene is madness.
On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long
heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for
what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of
rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and
savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up of foam that whitens the
black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in
nothing, but eternal strife; on, on, on, they roll, and darker grows the
night, and louder howls the wind, and more clamorous and fierce become
the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the
storm 'A ship!'
Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall masts
trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she comes, now
high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea,
as hiding for the moment from its fury; and every storm-voice in the air
and water cries more loudly yet, 'A ship!'
Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry,
the angry waves rise up above each other's hoary heads to look; and
round about the vessel, far as the mariners on the decks can pierce into
the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down and starting up,
and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her
they break; and round her surge and roar; and giving place to others,
moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled
anger. Still she comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude
crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers
the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of
troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull,
and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at
every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman's grave, with but a plank to
cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.
Among these sleeping voyagers were Martin and Mark Tapley, who, rocked
into a heavy drowsiness by the unaccustomed motion, were as insensible
to the foul air in which they lay, as to the uproar without. It was
broad day when the latter awoke with a dim idea that he was dreaming
of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead which had turned bottom
upwards in the course of the night. There was more reason in this too,
than in the roasting of eggs; for the first objects Mr Tapley recognized
when he opened his eyes were his own heels--looking down to him, as he
afterwards observed, from a nearly perpendicular elevation.
'Well!' said Mark, getting himself into a sitting posture, after various
ineffectual struggles with the rolling of the ship. 'This is the first
time as ever I stood on my head all night.'
'You shouldn't go to sleep upon the ground with your head to leeward
then,' growled a man in one of the berths.
'With my head to WHERE?' asked Mark.
The man repeated his previous sentiment.
'No, I won't another time,' said Mark, 'when I know whereabouts on the
map that country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a better piece of
advice. Don't you nor any other friend of mine never go to sleep with
his head in a ship any more.'
The man gave a grunt of discontented acquiescence, turned over in his
berth, and drew his blanket over his head.
'--For,' said Mr Tapley, pursuing the theme by way of soliloquy in a low
tone of voice; 'the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any going. It never
knows what to do with itself. It hasn't got no employment for its
mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like them Polar bears in the
wild-beast shows as is constantly a-nodding their heads from side to
side, it never CAN be quiet. Which is entirely owing to its uncommon
stupidity.'
'Is that you, Mark?' asked a faint voice from another berth.
'It's as much of me as is left, sir, after a fortnight of this work,'
Mr Tapley replied, 'What with leading the life of a fly, ever since I've
been aboard--for I've been perpetually holding-on to something or other
in a upside-down position--what with that, sir, and putting a very
little into myself, and taking a good deal out of myself, there an't too
much of me to swear by. How do you find yourself this morning, sir?'
'Very miserable,' said Martin, with a peevish groan. 'Ugh. This is
wretched, indeed!'
'Creditable,' muttered Mark, pressing one hand upon his aching head and
looking round him with a rueful grin. 'That's the great comfort. It IS
creditable to keep up one's spirits here. Virtue's its own reward. So's
jollity.'
Mark was so far right that unquestionably any man who retained his
cheerfulness among the steerage accommodations of that noble and
fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, 'THE SCREW,' was solely indebted to
his own resources, and shipped his good humour, like his provisions,
without any contribution or assistance from the owners. A dark, low,
stifling cabin, surrounded by berths all filled to overflowing with men,
women, and children, in various stages of sickness and misery, is not
the liveliest place of assembly at any time; but when it is so crowded
(as the steerage cabin of the Screw was, every passage out), that
mattresses and beds are heaped upon the floor, to the extinction of
everything like comfort, cleanliness, and decency, it is liable to
operate not only as a pretty strong banner against amiability of temper,
but as a positive encourager of selfish and rough humours. Mark felt
this, as he sat looking about him; and his spirits rose proportionately.
There were English people, Irish people, Welsh people, and Scotch people
there; all with their little store of coarse food and shabby clothes;
and nearly all with their families of children. There were children of
all ages; from the baby at the breast, to the slattern-girl who was as
much a grown woman as her mother. Every kind of domestic suffering that
is bred in poverty, illness, banishment, sorrow, and long travel in bad
weather, was crammed into the little space; and yet was there infinitely
less of complaint and querulousness, and infinitely more of mutual
assistance and general kindness to be found in that unwholesome ark,
than in many brilliant ballrooms.
Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face brightened as he looked.
Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and rocking it
to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted than its own young limbs; here a
poor woman with an infant in her lap, mended another little creature's
clothes, and quieted another who was creeping up about her from their
scanty bed upon the floor. Here were old men awkwardly engaged in little
household offices, wherein they would have been ridiculous but for their
good-will and kind purpose; and here were swarthy fellows--giants in
their way--doing such little acts of tenderness for those about them,
as might have belonged to gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The very idiot in
the corner who sat mowing there, all day, had his faculty of imitation
roused by what he saw about him; and snapped his fingers to amuse a
crying child.
'Now, then,' said Mark, nodding to a woman who was dressing her three
children at no great distance from him--and the grin upon his face had
by this time spread from ear to ear--'Hand over one of them young 'uns
according to custom.'
'I wish you'd get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with people who
don't belong to you,' observed Martin, petulantly.
'All right,' said Mark. 'SHE'll do that. It's a fair division of labour,
sir. I wash her boys, and she makes our tea. I never COULD make tea, but
any one can wash a boy.'
The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his kindness,
as well she might, for she had been covered every night with his
greatcoat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards and a rug. But
Martin, who seldom got up or looked about him, was quite incensed by the
folly of this speech, and expressed his dissatisfaction by an impatient
groan.
'So it is, certainly,' said Mark, brushing the child's hair as coolly as
if he had been born and bred a barber.
'What are you talking about, now?' asked Martin.
'What you said,' replied Mark; 'or what you meant, when you gave that
there dismal vent to your feelings. I quite go along with it, sir. It IS
very hard upon her.'
'What is?'
'Making the voyage by herself along with these young impediments here,
and going such a way at such a time of the year to join her husband.
If you don't want to be driven mad with yellow soap in your eye, young
man,' said Mr Tapley to the second urchin, who was by this time under
his hands at the basin, 'you'd better shut it.'
'Where does she join her husband?' asked Martin, yawning.
'Why, I'm very much afraid,' said Mr Tapley, in a low voice, 'that she
don't know. I hope she mayn't miss him. But she sent her last letter by
hand, and it don't seem to have been very clearly understood between 'em
without it, and if she don't see him a-waving his pocket-handkerchief on
the shore, like a pictur out of a song-book, my opinion is, she'll break
her heart.'
'Why, how, in Folly's name, does the woman come to be on board ship on
such a wild-goose venture!' cried Martin.
Mr Tapley glanced at him for a moment as he lay prostrate in his berth,
and then said, very quietly:
'Ah! How indeed! I can't think! He's been away from her for two year;
she's been very poor and lonely in her own country; and has always been
a-looking forward to meeting him. It's very strange she should be here.
Quite amazing! A little mad perhaps! There can't be no other way of
accounting for it.'
Martin was too far gone in the lassitude of sea-sickness to make any
reply to these words, or even to attend to them as they were spoken. And
the subject of their discourse returning at this crisis with some hot
tea, effectually put a stop to any resumption of the theme by Mr Tapley;
who, when the meal was over and he had adjusted Martin's bed, went up on
deck to wash the breakfast service, which consisted of two half-pint tin
mugs, and a shaving-pot of the same metal.
It is due to Mark Tapley to state that he suffered at least as much from
sea-sickness as any man, woman, or child, on board; and that he had a
peculiar faculty of knocking himself about on the smallest provocation,
and losing his legs at every lurch of the ship. But resolved, in his
usual phrase, to 'come out strong' under disadvantageous circumstances,
he was the life and soul of the steerage, and made no more of stopping
in the middle of a facetious conversation to go away and be excessively
ill by himself, and afterwards come back in the very best and gayest of
tempers to resume it, than if such a course of proceeding had been the
commonest in the world.
It cannot be said that as his illness wore off, his cheerfulness and
good nature increased, because they would hardly admit of augmentation;
but his usefulness among the weaker members of the party was much
enlarged; and at all times and seasons there he was exerting it. If
a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down Mark tumbled into the
cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman in his arms, or
half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a saucepan, or a basket,
or something animate or inanimate, that he thought would be the better
for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather in the middle of the day
tempted those who seldom or never came on deck at other times to crawl
into the long-boat, or lie down upon the spare spars, and try to eat,
there, in the centre of the group, was Mr Tapley, handing about salt
beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the
children's provisions with his pocketknife, for their greater ease and
comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some
roaring old song to a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters
to their friends at home for people who couldn't write, or cracking
jokes with the crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging,
half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or
other; but always doing something for the general entertainment. At
night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on the deck, and the driving
sparks that flew among the rigging, and the clouds of sails, seemed to
menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire, in case the elements
of air and water failed to compass her destruction; there, again, was Mr
Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves turned up to his elbows,
doing all kinds of culinary offices; compounding the strangest dishes;
recognized by every one as an established authority; and helping all
parties to achieve something which, left to themselves, they never could
have done, and never would have dreamed of. In short, there never was a
more popular character than Mark Tapley became, on board that noble and
fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, the Screw; and he attained at last to
such a pitch of universal admiration, that he began to have grave doubts
within himself whether a man might reasonably claim any credit for being
jolly under such exciting circumstances.
'If this was going to last,' said Tapley, 'there'd be no great
difference as I can perceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I
never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be afraid that the Fates is
determined to make the world easy to me.'
'Well, Mark,' said Martin, near whose berth he had ruminated to this
effect. 'When will this be over?'
'Another week, they say, sir,' returned Mark, 'will most likely bring
us into port. The ship's a-going along at present, as sensible as a ship
can, sir; though I don't mean to say as that's any very high praise.'
'I don't think it is, indeed,' groaned Martin.
'You'd feel all the better for it, sir, if you was to turn out,'
observed Mark.
'And be seen by the ladies and gentlemen on the after-deck,' returned
Martin, with a scronful emphasis upon the words, 'mingling with the
beggarly crowd that are stowed away in this vile hole. I should be
greatly the better for that, no doubt.'
'I'm thankful that I can't say from my own experience what the feelings
of a gentleman may be,' said Mark, 'but I should have thought, sir, as a
gentleman would feel a deal more uncomfortable down here than up in the
fresh air, especially when the ladies and gentlemen in the after-cabin
know just as much about him as he does about them, and are likely to
trouble their heads about him in the same proportion. I should have
thought that, certainly.'
'I tell you, then,' rejoined Martin, 'you would have thought wrong, and
do think wrong.'
'Very likely, sir,' said Mark, with imperturbable good temper. 'I often
do.'
'As to lying here,' cried Martin, raising himself on his elbow, and
looking angrily at his follower. 'Do you suppose it's a pleasure to lie
here?'
'All the madhouses in the world,' said Mr Tapley, 'couldn't produce such
a maniac as the man must be who could think that.'
'Then why are you forever goading and urging me to get up?' asked
Martin, 'I lie here because I don't wish to be recognized, in the better
days to which I aspire, by any purse-proud citizen, as the man who came
over with him among the steerage passengers. I lie here because I wish
to conceal my circumstances and myself, and not to arrive in a new world
badged and ticketed as an utterly poverty-stricken man. If I could have
afforded a passage in the after-cabin I should have held up my head with
the rest. As I couldn't I hide it. Do you understand that?'
'I am very sorry, sir,' said Mark. 'I didn't know you took it so much to
heart as this comes to.'
'Of course you didn't know,' returned his master. 'How should you
know, unless I told you? It's no trial to you, Mark, to make yourself
comfortable and to bustle about. It's as natural for you to do so under
the circumstances as it is for me not to do so. Why, you don't suppose
there is a living creature in this ship who can by possibility have half
so much to undergo on board of her as I have? Do you?' he asked, sitting
upright in his berth and looking at Mark, with an expression of great
earnestness not unmixed with wonder.
Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and with his head very much
on one side, pondered upon this question as if he felt it an extremely
difficult one to answer. He was relieved from his embarrassment by
Martin himself, who said, as he stretched himself upon his back again
and resumed the book he had been reading:
'But what is the use of my putting such a case to you, when the very
essence of what I have been saying is, that you cannot by possibility
understand it! Make me a little brandy-and-water--cold and very
weak--and give me a biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a nearer
neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and keep her children a
little quieter to-night than she did last night; that's a good fellow.'
Mr Tapley set himself to obey these orders with great alacrity, and
pending their execution, it may be presumed his flagging spirits
revived; inasmuch as he several times observed, below his breath, that
in respect of its power of imparting a credit to jollity, the Screw
unquestionably had some decided advantages over the Dragon. He also
remarked that it was a high gratification to him to reflect that he
would carry its main excellence ashore with him, and have it constantly
beside him wherever he went; but what he meant by these consolatory
thoughts he did not explain.
And now a general excitement began to prevail on board; and various
predictions relative to the precise day, and even the precise hour
at which they would reach New York, were freely broached. There was
infinitely more crowding on deck and looking over the ship's side than
there had been before; and an epidemic broke out for packing up things
every morning, which required unpacking again every night. Those who had
any letters to deliver, or any friends to meet, or any settled plans of
going anywhere or doing anything, discussed their prospects a hundred
times a day; and as this class of passengers was very small, and the
number of those who had no prospects whatever was very large, there were
plenty of listeners and few talkers. Those who had been ill all along,
got well now, and those who had been well, got better. An American
gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin
the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black
hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather,
which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books,
trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into
his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already
inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can
never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves.
An English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from
a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong box
besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man,
and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great
sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close
before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they
took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until
the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers
were to be conveyed ashore.
Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying alongside
an hour or more--during which period her very firemen were objects of
hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been so many angels,
good or bad--took all her living freight aboard. Among them Mark, who
still had his friend and her three children under his close protection;
and Martin, who had once more dressed himself in his usual attire, but
wore a soiled, old cloak above his ordinary clothes, until such time as
he should separate for ever from his late companions.
The steamer--which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked its
long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or antediluvian
monster--dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and presently they
saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.
'And this,' said Mr Tapley, looking far ahead, 'is the Land of Liberty,
is it? Very well. I'm agreeable. Any land will do for me, after so much
water!'
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MARTIN DISEMBARKS FROM THAT NOBLE AND FAST-SAILING LINE-OF-PACKET SHIP,
'THE SCREW', AT THE PORT OF NEW YORK, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
HE MAKES SOME ACQUAINTANCES, AND DINES AT A BOARDING-HOUSE. THE
PARTICULARS OF THOSE TRANSACTIONS
Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and margin of the
land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the day before;
and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such an exciting
occasion, the friends of the disappointed candidate had found it
necessary to assert the great principles of Purity of Election and
Freedom of opinion by breaking a few legs and arms, and furthermore
pursuing one obnoxious gentleman through the streets with the design of
hitting his nose. These good-humoured little outbursts of the popular
fancy were not in themselves sufficiently remarkable to create any great
stir, after the lapse of a whole night; but they found fresh life and
notoriety in the breath of the newsboys, who not only proclaimed them
with shrill yells in all the highways and byways of the town, upon the
wharves and among the shipping, but on the deck and down in the cabins
of the steamboat; which, before she touched the shore, was boarded and
overrun by a legion of those young citizens.
'Here's this morning's New York Sewer!' cried one. 'Here's this
morning's New York Stabber! Here's the New York Family Spy! Here's the
New York Private Listener! Here's the New York Peeper! Here's the New
York Plunderer! Here's the New York Keyhole Reporter! Here's the
New York Rowdy Journal! Here's all the New York papers! Here's full
particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday, in which
the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the
interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the Political,
Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here they are! Here's
the papers, here's the papers!'
'Here's the Sewer!' cried another. 'Here's the New York Sewer! Here's
some of the twelfth thousand of to-day's Sewer, with the best accounts
of the markets, and all the shipping news, and four whole columns of
country correspondence, and a full account of the Ball at Mrs White's
last night, where all the beauty and fashion of New York was assembled;
with the Sewer's own particulars of the private lives of all the ladies
that was there! Here's the Sewer! Here's some of the twelfth thousand of
the New York Sewer! Here's the Sewer's exposure of the Wall Street
Gang, and the Sewer's exposure of the Washington Gang, and the Sewer's
exclusive account of a flagrant act of dishonesty committed by the
Secretary of State when he was eight years old; now communicated, at a
great expense, by his own nurse. Here's the Sewer! Here's the New York
Sewer, in its twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be
shown up, and all their names printed! Here's the Sewer's article
upon the Judge that tried him, day afore yesterday, for libel, and the
Sewer's tribute to the independent Jury that didn't convict him, and the
Sewer's account of what they might have expected if they had! Here's
the Sewer, here's the Sewer! Here's the wide-awake Sewer; always on the
lookout; the leading Journal of the United States, now in its twelfth
thousand, and still a-printing off:--Here's the New York Sewer!'
'It is in such enlightened means,' said a voice almost in Martin's ear,
'that the bubbling passions of my country find a vent.'
Martin turned involuntarily, and saw, standing close at his side, a
sallow gentleman, with sunken cheeks, black hair, small twinkling eyes,
and a singular expression hovering about that region of his face, which
was not a frown, nor a leer, and yet might have been mistaken at the
first glance for either. Indeed it would have been difficult, on a much
closer acquaintance, to describe it in any more satisfactory terms than
as a mixed expression of vulgar cunning and conceit. This gentleman wore
a rather broad-brimmed hat for the greater wisdom of his appearance; and
had his arms folded for the greater impressiveness of his attitude. He
was somewhat shabbily dressed in a blue surtout reaching nearly to
his ankles, short loose trousers of the same colour, and a faded buff
waistcoat, through which a discoloured shirt-frill struggled to force
itself into notice, as asserting an equality of civil rights with
the other portions of his dress, and maintaining a declaration of
Independence on its own account. His feet, which were of unusually
large proportions, were leisurely crossed before him as he half leaned
against, half sat upon, the steamboat's bulwark; and his thick cane,
shod with a mighty ferule at one end and armed with a great metal
knob at the other, depended from a line-and-tassel on his wrist. Thus
attired, and thus composed into an aspect of great profundity, the
gentleman twitched up the right-hand corner of his mouth and his right
eye simultaneously, and said, once more:
'It is in such enlightened means that the bubbling passions of my
country find a vent.'
As he looked at Martin, and nobody else was by, Martin inclined his
head, and said:
'You allude to--?'
'To the Palladium of rational Liberty at home, sir, and the dread of
Foreign oppression abroad,' returned the gentleman, as he pointed with
his cane to an uncommonly dirty newsboy with one eye. 'To the Envy of
the world, sir, and the leaders of Human Civilization. Let me ask you
sir,' he added, bringing the ferule of his stick heavily upon the deck
with the air of a man who must not be equivocated with, 'how do you like
my Country?'
'I am hardly prepared to answer that question yet,' said Martin 'seeing
that I have not been ashore.'
'Well, I should expect you were not prepared, sir,' said the gentleman,
'to behold such signs of National Prosperity as those?'
He pointed to the vessels lying at the wharves; and then gave a vague
flourish with his stick, as if he would include the air and water,
generally, in this remark.
'Really,' said Martin, 'I don't know. Yes. I think I was.'
The gentleman glanced at him with a knowing look, and said he liked his
policy. It was natural, he said, and it pleased him as a philosopher to
observe the prejudices of human nature.
'You have brought, I see, sir,' he said, turning round towards Martin,
and resting his chin on the top of his stick, 'the usual amount of
misery and poverty and ignorance and crime, to be located in the bosom
of the great Republic. Well, sir! let 'em come on in shiploads from the
old country. When vessels are about to founder, the rats are said to
leave 'em. There is considerable of truth, I find, in that remark.'
'The old ship will keep afloat a year or two longer yet, perhaps,' said
Martin with a smile, partly occasioned by what the gentleman said,
and partly by his manner of saying it, which was odd enough for he
emphasised all the small words and syllables in his discourse, and left
the others to take care of themselves; as if he thought the larger parts
of speech could be trusted alone, but the little ones required to be
constantly looked after.
'Hope is said by the poet, sir,' observed the gentleman, 'to be the
nurse of young Desire.'
Martin signified that he had heard of the cardinal virtue in question
serving occasionally in that domestic capacity.
'She will not rear her infant in the present instance, sir, you'll
find,' observed the gentleman.
'Time will show,' said Martin.
The gentleman nodded his head gravely; and said, 'What is your name,
sir?'
Martin told him.
'How old are you, sir?'
Martin told him.
'What is your profession, sir?'
Martin told him that also.
'What is your destination, sir?' inquired the gentleman.
'Really,' said Martin laughing, 'I can't satisfy you in that particular,
for I don't know it myself.'
'Yes?' said the gentleman.
'No,' said Martin.
The gentleman adjusted his cane under his left arm, and took a more
deliberate and complete survey of Martin than he had yet had leisure to
make. When he had completed his inspection, he put out his right hand,
shook Martin's hand, and said:
'My name is Colonel Diver, sir. I am the Editor of the New York Rowdy
Journal.'
Martin received the communication with that degree of respect which an
announcement so distinguished appeared to demand.
'The New York Rowdy Journal, sir,' resumed the colonel, 'is, as I expect
you know, the organ of our aristocracy in this city.'
'Oh! there IS an aristocracy here, then?' said Martin. 'Of what is it
composed?'
'Of intelligence, sir,' replied the colonel; 'of intelligence and
virtue. And of their necessary consequence in this republic--dollars,
sir.'
Martin was very glad to hear this, feeling well assured that if
intelligence and virtue led, as a matter of course, to the acquisition
of dollars, he would speedily become a great capitalist. He was about
to express the gratification such news afforded him, when he was
interrupted by the captain of the ship, who came up at the moment to
shake hands with the colonel; and who, seeing a well-dressed stranger on
the deck (for Martin had thrown aside his cloak), shook hands with him
also. This was an unspeakable relief to Martin, who, in spite of the
acknowledged supremacy of Intelligence and virtue in that happy country,
would have been deeply mortified to appear before Colonel Diver in the
poor character of a steerage passenger.
'Well cap'en!' said the colonel.
'Well colonel,' cried the captain. 'You're looking most uncommon bright,
sir. I can hardly realise its being you, and that's a fact.'
'A good passage, cap'en?' inquired the colonel, taking him aside,
'Well now! It was a pretty spanking run, sir,' said, or rather sung, the
captain, who was a genuine New Englander; 'considerin' the weather.'
'Yes?' said the colonel.
'Well! It was, sir,' said the captain. 'I've just now sent a boy up to
your office with the passenger-list, colonel.'
'You haven't got another boy to spare, p'raps, cap'en?' said the
colonel, in a tone almost amounting to severity.
'I guess there air a dozen if you want 'em, colonel,' said the captain.
'One moderate big 'un could convey a dozen champagne, perhaps,' observed
the colonel, musing, 'to my office. You said a spanking run, I think?'
'Well, so I did,' was the reply.
'It's very nigh, you know,' observed the colonel. 'I'm glad it was a
spanking run, cap'en. Don't mind about quarts if you're short of 'em.
The boy can as well bring four-and-twenty pints, and travel twice as
once.--A first-rate spanker, cap'en, was it? Yes?'
'A most e--tarnal spanker,' said the skipper.
'I admire at your good fortun, cap'en. You might loan me a corkscrew at
the same time, and half-a-dozen glasses if you liked. However bad the
elements combine against my country's noble packet-ship, the Screw,
sir,' said the colonel, turning to Martin, and drawing a flourish on
the surface of the deck with his cane, 'her passage either way is almost
certain to eventuate a spanker!'
The captain, who had the Sewer below at that moment, lunching
expensively in one cabin, while the amiable Stabber was drinking himself
into a state of blind madness in another, took a cordial leave of his
friend the colonel, and hurried away to dispatch the champagne; well
knowing (as it afterwards appeared) that if he failed to conciliate the
editor of the Rowdy Journal, that potentate would denounce him and his
ship in large capitals before he was a day older; and would probably
assault the memory of his mother also, who had not been dead more than
twenty years. The colonel being again left alone with Martin, checked
him as he was moving away, and offered in consideration of his being an
Englishman, to show him the town and to introduce him, if such were his
desire, to a genteel boarding-house. But before they entered on these
proceedings (he said), he would beseech the honour of his company at the
office of the Rowdy Journal, to partake of a bottle of champagne of his
own importation.
All this was so extremely kind and hospitable, that Martin, though it
was quite early in the morning, readily acquiesced. So, instructing
Mark, who was deeply engaged with his friend and her three children,
that when he had done assisting them, and had cleared the baggage,
he was to wait for further orders at the Rowdy Journal Office, Martin
accompanied his new friend on shore.
They made their way as they best could through the melancholy crowd of
emigrants upon the wharf, who, grouped about their beds and boxes, with
the bare ground below them and the bare sky above, might have fallen
from another planet, for anything they knew of the country; and walked
for some short distance along a busy street, bounded on one side by the
quays and shipping; and on the other by a long row of staring red-brick
storehouses and offices, ornamented with more black boards and white
letters, and more white boards and black letters, than Martin had ever
seen before, in fifty times the space. Presently they turned up a narrow
street, and presently into other narrow streets, until at last they
stopped before a house whereon was painted in great characters, 'ROWDY
JOURNAL.'
The colonel, who had walked the whole way with one hand in his breast,
his head occasionally wagging from side to side, and his hat thrown back
upon his ears, like a man who was oppressed to inconvenience by a sense
of his own greatness, led the way up a dark and dirty flight of stairs
into a room of similar character, all littered and bestrewn with odds
and ends of newspapers and other crumpled fragments, both in proof and
manuscript. Behind a mangy old writing-table in this apartment sat a
figure with a stump of a pen in its mouth and a great pair of scissors
in its right hand, clipping and slicing at a file of Rowdy Journals;
and it was such a laughable figure that Martin had some difficulty in
preserving his gravity, though conscious of the close observation of
Colonel Diver.
The individual who sat clipping and slicing as aforesaid at the Rowdy
Journals, was a small young gentleman of very juvenile appearance, and
unwholesomely pale in the face; partly, perhaps, from intense thought,
but partly, there is no doubt, from the excessive use of tobacco, which
he was at that moment chewing vigorously. He wore his shirt-collar
turned down over a black ribbon; and his lank hair, a fragile crop, was
not only smoothed and parted back from his brow, that none of the Poetry
of his aspect might be lost, but had, here and there, been grubbed up by
the roots; which accounted for his loftiest developments being somewhat
pimply. He had that order of nose on which the envy of mankind has
bestowed the appellation 'snub,' and it was very much turned up at the
end, as with a lofty scorn. Upon the upper lip of this young gentleman
were tokens of a sandy down; so very, very smooth and scant, that,
though encouraged to the utmost, it looked more like a recent trace of
gingerbread than the fair promise of a moustache; and this conjecture,
his apparently tender age went far to strengthen. He was intent upon
his work. Every time he snapped the great pair of scissors, he made
a corresponding motion with his jaws, which gave him a very terrible
appearance.
Martin was not long in determining within himself that this must be
Colonel Diver's son; the hope of the family, and future mainspring of
the Rowdy Journal. Indeed he had begun to say that he presumed this
was the colonel's little boy, and that it was very pleasant to see
him playing at Editor in all the guilelessness of childhood, when the
colonel proudly interposed and said:
'My War Correspondent, sir--Mr Jefferson Brick!'
Martin could not help starting at this unexpected announcement, and the
consciousness of the irretrievable mistake he had nearly made.
Mr Brick seemed pleased with the sensation he produced upon the
stranger, and shook hands with him, with an air of patronage designed
to reassure him, and to let him blow that there was no occasion to be
frightened, for he (Brick) wouldn't hurt him.
'You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see, sir,' quoth the colonel,
with a smile. 'England has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has heard of
Jefferson Brick. Let me see. When did you leave England, sir?'
'Five weeks ago,' said Martin.
'Five weeks ago,' repeated the colonel, thoughtfully; as he took his
seat upon the table, and swung his legs. 'Now let me ask you, sir which
of Mr Brick's articles had become at that time the most obnoxious to the
British Parliament and the Court of Saint James's?'
'Upon my word,' said Martin, 'I--'
'I have reason to know, sir,' interrupted the colonel, 'that the
aristocratic circles of your country quail before the name of Jefferson
Brick. I should like to be informed, sir, from your lips, which of his
sentiments has struck the deadliest blow--'
'At the hundred heads of the Hydra of Corruption now grovelling in the
dust beneath the lance of Reason, and spouting up to the universal arch
above us, its sanguinary gore,' said Mr Brick, putting on a little blue
cloth cap with a glazed front, and quoting his last article.
'The libation of freedom, Brick'--hinted the colonel.
'--Must sometimes be quaffed in blood, colonel,' cried Brick. And when
he said 'blood,' he gave the great pair of scissors a sharp snap, as if
THEY said blood too, and were quite of his opinion.
This done, they both looked at Martin, pausing for a reply.
'Upon my life,' said Martin, who had by this time quite recovered his
usual coolness, 'I can't give you any satisfactory information about it;
for the truth is that I--'
'Stop!' cried the colonel, glancing sternly at his war correspondent and
giving his head one shake after every sentence. 'That you never heard of
Jefferson Brick, sir. That you never read Jefferson Brick, sir. That
you never saw the Rowdy Journal, sir. That you never knew, sir, of its
mighty influence upon the cabinets of Europe. Yes?'
'That's what I was about to observe, certainly,' said Martin.
'Keep cool, Jefferson,' said the colonel gravely. 'Don't bust! oh you
Europeans! After that, let's have a glass of wine!' So saying, he got
down from the table, and produced, from a basket outside the door, a
bottle of champagne, and three glasses.
'Mr Jefferson Brick, sir,' said the colonel, filling Martin's glass
and his own, and pushing the bottle to that gentleman, 'will give us a
sentiment.'
'Well, sir!' cried the war correspondent, 'Since you have concluded to
call upon me, I will respond. I will give you, sir, The Rowdy Journal
and its brethren; the well of Truth, whose waters are black from being
composed of printers' ink, but are quite clear enough for my country to
behold the shadow of her Destiny reflected in.'
'Hear, hear!' cried the colonel, with great complacency. 'There are
flowery components, sir, in the language of my friend?'
'Very much so, indeed,' said Martin.
'There is to-day's Rowdy, sir,' observed the colonel, handing him a
paper. 'You'll find Jefferson Brick at his usual post in the van of
human civilization and moral purity.'
The colonel was by this time seated on the table again. Mr Brick also
took up a position on that same piece of furniture; and they fell to
drinking pretty hard. They often looked at Martin as he read the paper,
and then at each other. When he laid it down, which was not until they
had finished a second bottle, the colonel asked him what he thought of
it.
'Why, it's horribly personal,' said Martin.
The colonel seemed much flattered by this remark; and said he hoped it
was.
'We are independent here, sir,' said Mr Jefferson Brick. 'We do as we
like.'
'If I may judge from this specimen,' returned Martin, 'there must be a
few thousands here, rather the reverse of independent, who do as they
don't like.'
'Well! They yield to the popular mind of the Popular Instructor, sir,'
said the colonel. 'They rile up, sometimes; but in general we have a
hold upon our citizens, both in public and in private life, which is as
much one of the ennobling institutions of our happy country as--'
'As nigger slavery itself,' suggested Mr Brick.
'En--tirely so,' remarked the colonel.
'Pray,' said Martin, after some hesitation, 'may I venture to ask,
with reference to a case I observe in this paper of yours, whether the
Popular Instructor often deals in--I am at a loss to express it without
giving you offence--in forgery? In forged letters, for instance,' he
pursued, for the colonel was perfectly calm and quite at his ease,
'solemnly purporting to have been written at recent periods by living
men?'
'Well, sir!' replied the colonel. 'It does, now and then.'
'And the popular instructed--what do they do?' asked Martin.
'Buy 'em:' said the colonel.
Mr Jefferson Brick expectorated and laughed; the former copiously, the
latter approvingly.
'Buy 'em by hundreds of thousands,' resumed the colonel. 'We are a smart
people here, and can appreciate smartness.'
'Is smartness American for forgery?' asked Martin.
'Well!' said the colonel, 'I expect it's American for a good many things
that you call by other names. But you can't help yourself in Europe. We
can.'
'And do, sometimes,' thought Martin. 'You help yourselves with very
little ceremony, too!'
'At all events, whatever name we choose to employ,' said the colonel,
stooping down to roll the third empty bottle into a corner after the
other two, 'I suppose the art of forgery was not invented here sir?'
'I suppose not,' replied Martin.
'Nor any other kind of smartness I reckon?'
'Invented! No, I presume not.'
'Well!' said the colonel; 'then we got it all from the old country, and
the old country's to blame for it, and not the new 'un. There's an end
of THAT. Now, if Mr Jefferson Brick and you will be so good as to clear,
I'll come out last, and lock the door.'
Rightly interpreting this as the signal for their departure, Martin
walked downstairs after the war correspondent, who preceded him with
great majesty. The colonel following, they left the Rowdy Journal Office
and walked forth into the streets; Martin feeling doubtful whether
he ought to kick the colonel for having presumed to speak to him,
or whether it came within the bounds of possibility that he and his
establishment could be among the boasted usages of that regenerated
land.
It was clear that Colonel Diver, in the security of his strong position,
and in his perfect understanding of the public sentiment, cared very
little what Martin or anybody else thought about him. His high-spiced
wares were made to sell, and they sold; and his thousands of readers
could as rationally charge their delight in filth upon him, as a glutton
can shift upon his cook the responsibility of his beastly excess.
Nothing would have delighted the colonel more than to be told that
no such man as he could walk in high success the streets of any other
country in the world; for that would only have been a logical assurance
to him of the correct adaptation of his labours to the prevailing taste,
and of his being strictly and peculiarly a national feature of America.
They walked a mile or more along a handsome street which the colonel
said was called Broadway, and which Mr Jefferson Brick said 'whipped the
universe.' Turning, at length, into one of the numerous streets which
branched from this main thoroughfare, they stopped before a rather
mean-looking house with jalousie blinds to every window; a flight of
steps before the green street-door; a shining white ornament on the
rails on either side like a petrified pineapple, polished; a little
oblong plate of the same material over the knocker whereon the name of
'Pawkins' was engraved; and four accidental pigs looking down the area.
The colonel knocked at this house with the air of a man who lived there;
and an Irish girl popped her head out of one of the top windows to see
who it was. Pending her journey downstairs, the pigs were joined by two
or three friends from the next street, in company with whom they lay
down sociably in the gutter.
'Is the major indoors?' inquired the colonel, as he entered.
'Is it the master, sir?' returned the girl, with a hesitation
which seemed to imply that they were rather flush of majors in that
establishment.
'The master!' said Colonel Diver, stopping short and looking round at
his war correspondent.
'Oh! The depressing institutions of that British empire, colonel!' said
Jefferson Brick. 'Master!'
'What's the matter with the word?' asked Martin.
'I should hope it was never heard in our country, sir; that's all,' said
Jefferson Brick; 'except when it is used by some degraded Help, as new
to the blessings of our form of government, as this Help is. There are
no masters here.'
'All "owners," are they?' said Martin.
Mr Jefferson Brick followed in the Rowdy Journal's footsteps without
returning any answer. Martin took the same course, thinking as he went,
that perhaps the free and independent citizens, who in their moral
elevation, owned the colonel for their master, might render better
homage to the goddess, Liberty, in nightly dreams upon the oven of a
Russian Serf.
The colonel led the way into a room at the back of the house upon
the ground-floor, light, and of fair dimensions, but exquisitely
uncomfortable; having nothing in it but the four cold white walls and
ceiling, a mean carpet, a dreary waste of dining-table reaching from
end to end, and a bewildering collection of cane-bottomed chairs. In the
further region of this banqueting-hall was a stove, garnished on either
side with a great brass spittoon, and shaped in itself like three little
iron barrels set up on end in a fender, and joined together on the
principle of the Siamese Twins. Before it, swinging himself in a
rocking-chair, lounged a large gentleman with his hat on, who amused
himself by spitting alternately into the spittoon on the right hand of
the stove, and the spittoon on the left, and then working his way back
again in the same order. A negro lad in a soiled white jacket was busily
engaged in placing on the table two long rows of knives and forks,
relieved at intervals by jugs of water; and as he travelled down one
side of this festive board, he straightened with his dirty hands the
dirtier cloth, which was all askew, and had not been removed since
breakfast. The atmosphere of this room was rendered intensely hot and
stifling by the stove; but being further flavoured by a sickly gush
of soup from the kitchen, and by such remote suggestions of tobacco as
lingered within the brazen receptacles already mentioned, it became, to
a stranger's senses, almost insupportable.
The gentleman in the rocking-chair having his back towards them, and
being much engaged in his intellectual pastime, was not aware of their
approach until the colonel, walking up to the stove, contributed
his mite towards the support of the left-hand spittoon, just as the
major--for it was the major--bore down upon it. Major Pawkins then
reserved his fire, and looking upward, said, with a peculiar air of
quiet weariness, like a man who had been up all night--an air which
Martin had already observed both in the colonel and Mr Jefferson Brick--
'Well, colonel!'
'Here is a gentleman from England, major,' the colonel replied, 'who
has concluded to locate himself here if the amount of compensation suits
him.'
'I am glad to see you, sir,' observed the major, shaking hands with
Martin, and not moving a muscle of his face. 'You are pretty bright, I
hope?'
'Never better,' said Martin.
'You are never likely to be,' returned the major. 'You will see the sun
shine HERE.'
'I think I remember to have seen it shine at home sometimes,' said
Martin, smiling.
'I think not,' replied the major. He said so with a stoical indifference
certainly, but still in a tone of firmness which admitted of no further
dispute on that point. When he had thus settled the question, he put his
hat a little on one side for the greater convenience of scratching his
head, and saluted Mr Jefferson Brick with a lazy nod.
Major Pawkins (a gentleman of Pennsylvanian origin) was distinguished by
a very large skull, and a great mass of yellow forehead; in deference
to which commodities it was currently held in bar-rooms and other such
places of resort that the major was a man of huge sagacity. He was
further to be known by a heavy eye and a dull slow manner; and for being
a man of that kind who--mentally speaking--requires a deal of room to
turn himself in. But, in trading on his stock of wisdom, he invariably
proceeded on the principle of putting all the goods he had (and more)
into his window; and that went a great way with his constituency of
admirers. It went a great way, perhaps, with Mr Jefferson Brick, who
took occasion to whisper in Martin's ear:
'One of the most remarkable men in our country, sir!'
It must not be supposed, however, that the perpetual exhibition in the
market-place of all his stock-in-trade for sale or hire, was the major's
sole claim to a very large share of sympathy and support. He was a great
politician; and the one article of his creed, in reference to all public
obligations involving the good faith and integrity of his country, was,
'run a moist pen slick through everything, and start fresh.' This
made him a patriot. In commercial affairs he was a bold speculator.
In plainer words he had a most distinguished genius for swindling, and
could start a bank, or negotiate a loan, or form a land-jobbing company
(entailing ruin, pestilence, and death, on hundreds of families), with
any gifted creature in the Union. This made him an admirable man of
business. He could hang about a bar-room, discussing the affairs of the
nation, for twelve hours together; and in that time could hold forth
with more intolerable dulness, chew more tobacco, smoke more tobacco,
drink more rum-toddy, mint-julep, gin-sling, and cocktail, than any
private gentleman of his acquaintance. This made him an orator and a
man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising character, and a
popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent by the popular party
to the State House of New York, if not in the end to Washington itself.
But as a man's private prosperity does not always keep pace with his
patriotic devotion to public affairs; and as fraudulent transactions
have their downs as well as ups, the major was occasionally under a
cloud. Hence, just now Mrs Pawkins kept a boarding-house, and Major
Pawkins rather 'loafed' his time away than otherwise.
'You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great
commercial depression,' said the major.
'At an alarming crisis,' said the colonel.
'At a period of unprecedented stagnation,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.
'I am sorry to hear that,' returned Martin. 'It's not likely to last, I
hope?'
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well
that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always
IS depressed, and always IS stagnated, and always IS at an alarming
crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make
oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it
is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable
globe.
'It's not likely to last, I hope?' said Martin.
'Well!' returned the major, 'I expect we shall get along somehow, and
come right in the end.'
'We are an elastic country,' said the Rowdy Journal.
'We are a young lion,' said Mr Jefferson Brick.
'We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves,' observed
the major. 'Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, colonel?'
The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity, Major
Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring bar-room, which, as he
observed, was 'only in the next block.' He then referred Martin to
Mrs Pawkins for all particulars connected with the rate of board and
lodging, and informed him that he would have the pleasure of seeing that
lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as the dinner hour was two
o'clock, and it only wanted a quarter now. This reminded him that if the
bitter were to be taken at all, there was no time to lose; so he walked
off without more ado, and left them to follow if they thought proper.
When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove, and so
disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their brows,
the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as to leave no
doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman's attire. Indeed,
as Martin walked behind him to the bar-room, he could not help thinking
that the great square major, in his listlessness and langour, looked
very much like a stale weed himself; such as might be hoed out of
the public garden, with great advantage to the decent growth of that
preserve, and tossed on some congenial dunghill.
They encountered more weeds in the bar-room, some of whom (being thirsty
souls as well as dirty) were pretty stale in one sense, and pretty fresh
in another. Among them was a gentleman who, as Martin gathered from the
conversation that took place over the bitter, started that afternoon for
the Far West on a six months' business tour, and who, as his outfit and
equipment for this journey, had just such another shiny hat and just
such another little pale valise as had composed the luggage of the
gentleman who came from England in the Screw.
They were walking back very leisurely; Martin arm-in-arm with Mr
Jefferson Brick, and the major and the colonel side-by-side before them;
when, as they came within a house or two of the major's residence, they
heard a bell ringing violently. The instant this sound struck upon their
ears, the colonel and the major darted off, dashed up the steps and in
at the street-door (which stood ajar) like lunatics; while Mr Jefferson
Brick, detaching his arm from Martin's, made a precipitate dive in the
same direction, and vanished also.
'Good Heaven!' thought Martin. 'The premises are on fire! It was an
alarm bell!'
But there was no smoke to be seen, nor any flame, nor was there any
smell of fire. As Martin faltered on the pavement, three more gentlemen,
with horror and agitation depicted in their faces, came plunging wildly
round the street corner; jostled each other on the steps; struggled for
an instant; and rushed into the house, a confused heap of arms and
legs. Unable to bear it any longer, Martin followed. Even in his
rapid progress he was run down, thrust aside, and passed, by two more
gentlemen, stark mad, as it appeared, with fierce excitement.
'Where is it?' cried Martin, breathlessly, to a negro whom he
encountered in the passage.
'In a eatin room, sa. Kernell, sa, him kep a seat 'side himself, sa.'
'A seat!' cried Martin.
'For a dinnar, sa.'
Martin started at him for a moment, and burst into a hearty laugh; to
which the negro, out of his natural good humour and desire to please, so
heartily responded, that his teeth shone like a gleam of light. 'You're
the pleasantest fellow I have seen yet,' said Martin clapping him on the
back, 'and give me a better appetite than bitters.'
With this sentiment he walked into the dining-room and slipped into
a chair next the colonel, which that gentleman (by this time nearly
through his dinner) had turned down in reserve for him, with its back
against the table.
It was a numerous company--eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these some
five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by
themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that
was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to
eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in
before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time
to assert the first law of nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be
considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment--for there was
a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the
middle--disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its
wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters,
stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by
scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished,
whole cucumbers at once, like sugar-plums, and no man winked his eye.
Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun.
It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted
their food in wedges; feeding, not themselves, but broods of nightmares,
who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with
lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of
heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs
Pawkins felt each day at dinner-time is hidden from all human knowledge.
But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
When the colonel had finished his dinner, which event took place while
Martin, who had sent his plate for some turkey, was waiting to begin,
he asked him what he thought of the boarders, who were from all parts of
the Union, and whether he would like to know any particulars concerning
them.
'Pray,' said Martin, 'who is that sickly little girl opposite, with the
tight round eyes? I don't see anybody here, who looks like her mother,
or who seems to have charge of her.'
'Do you mean the matron in blue, sir?' asked the colonel, with emphasis.
'That is Mrs Jefferson Brick, sir.'
'No, no,' said Martin, 'I mean the little girl, like a doll; directly
opposite.'
'Well, sir!' cried the colonel. 'THAT is Mrs Jefferson Brick.'
Martin glanced at the colonel's face, but he was quite serious.
'Bless my soul! I suppose there will be a young Brick then, one of these
days?' said Martin.
'There are two young Bricks already, sir,' returned the colonel.
The matron looked so uncommonly like a child herself, that Martin could
not help saying as much. 'Yes, sir,' returned the colonel, 'but some
institutions develop human natur; others re--tard it.'
'Jefferson Brick,' he observed after a short silence, in commendation
of his correspondent, 'is one of the most remarkable men in our country,
sir!'
This had passed almost in a whisper, for the distinguished gentleman
alluded to sat on Martin's other hand.
'Pray, Mr Brick,' said Martin, turning to him, and asking a question
more for conversation's sake than from any feeling of interest in its
subject, 'who is that;' he was going to say 'young' but thought it
prudent to eschew the word--'that very short gentleman yonder, with the
red nose?'
'That is Pro--fessor Mullit, sir,' replied Jefferson.
'May I ask what he is professor of?' asked Martin.
'Of education, sir,' said Jefferson Brick.
'A sort of schoolmaster, possibly?' Martin ventured to observe.
'He is a man of fine moral elements, sir, and not commonly endowed,'
said the war correspondent. 'He felt it necessary, at the last election
for President, to repudiate and denounce his father, who voted on the
wrong interest. He has since written some powerful pamphlets, under
the signature of "Suturb," or Brutus reversed. He is one of the most
remarkable men in our country, sir.'
'There seem to be plenty of 'em,' thought Martin, 'at any rate.'
Pursuing his inquiries Martin found that there were no fewer than four
majors present, two colonels, one general, and a captain, so that he
could not help thinking how strongly officered the American militia must
be; and wondering very much whether the officers commanded each other;
or if they did not, where on earth the privates came from. There seemed
to be no man there without a title; for those who had not attained to
military honours were either doctors, professors, or reverends. Three
very hard and disagreeable gentlemen were on missions from neighbouring
States; one on monetary affairs, one on political, one on sectarian.
Among the ladies, there were Mrs Pawkins, who was very straight, bony,
and silent; and a wiry-faced old damsel, who held strong sentiments
touching the rights of women, and had diffused the same in lectures;
but the rest were strangely devoid of individual traits of character,
insomuch that any one of them might have changed minds with the other,
and nobody would have found it out. These, by the way, were the only
members of the party who did not appear to be among the most remarkable
people in the country.
Several of the gentlemen got up, one by one, and walked off as they
swallowed their last morsel; pausing generally by the stove for a minute
or so to refresh themselves at the brass spittoons. A few sedentary
characters, however, remained at table full a quarter of an hour, and
did not rise until the ladies rose, when all stood up.
'Where are they going?' asked Martin, in the ear of Mr Jefferson Brick.
'To their bedrooms, sir.'
'Is there no dessert, or other interval of conversation?' asked Martin,
who was disposed to enjoy himself after his long voyage.
'We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that,' was the
reply.
So the ladies passed out in single file; Mr Jefferson Brick and such
other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the departure
of their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of THEM. Martin
thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his opinion to himself
for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform himself by, the
conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged about the stove as
if a great weight had been taken off their minds by the withdrawal of
the other sex; and who made a plentiful use of the spittoons and their
toothpicks.
It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part
of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes,
joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down
into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow
cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars.
Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars;
life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its
dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having
their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honour
and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good
Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars.
Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the
nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by
stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars!
What is a flag to THEM!
One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a fox,
will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with these
gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who brawled the
loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was their champion who,
in the brutal fury of his own pursuit, could cast no stigma upon them
for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes'
straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative
assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize
opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully,
and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and
stabs at Freedom, striking far deeper into her House of Life than any
sultan's scimitar could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a
grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh
heaven of Fame.
Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such questions as
naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the national poets,
the theatre, literature, and the arts. But the information which these
gentlemen were in a condition to give him on such topics, did not extend
beyond the effusions of such master-spirits of the time as Colonel
Diver, Mr Jefferson Brick, and others; renowned, as it appeared, for
excellence in the achievement of a peculiar style of broadside essay
called 'a screamer.'
'We are a busy people, sir,' said one of the captains, who was from the
West, 'and have no time for reading mere notions. We don't mind 'em
if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong stuff of
another sort, but darn your books.'
Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare thought
of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor political, and was
not in a newspaper, inquired 'if any gentleman would drink some?' Most
of the company, considering this a very choice and seasonable idea,
lounged out, one by one, to the bar-room in the next block. Thence
they probably went to their stores and counting-houses; thence to the
bar-room again, to talk once more of dollars, and enlarge their minds
with the perusal and discussion of screamers; and thence each man to
snore in the bosom of his own family.
'Which would seem,' said Martin, pursuing the current of his own
thoughts, 'to be the principal recreation they enjoy in common.' With
that, he fell a-musing again on dollars, demagogues, and bar-rooms;
debating within himself whether busy people of this class were really
as busy as they claimed to be, or only had an inaptitude for social and
domestic pleasure.
It was a difficult question to solve; and the mere fact of its being
strongly presented to his mind by all that he had seen and heard, was
not encouraging. He sat down at the deserted board, and becoming
more and more despondent, as he thought of all the uncertainties and
difficulties of his precarious situation, sighed heavily.
Now, there had been at the dinner-table a middle-aged man with a dark
eye and a sunburnt face, who had attracted Martin's attention by having
something very engaging and honest in the expression of his features;
but of whom he could learn nothing from either of his neighbours, who
seemed to consider him quite beneath their notice. He had taken no part
in the conversation round the stove, nor had he gone forth with the
rest; and now, when he heard Martin sigh for the third or fourth
time, he interposed with some casual remark, as if he desired, without
obtruding himself upon a stranger's notice, to engage him in cheerful
conversation if he could. His motive was so obvious, and yet so
delicately expressed, that Martin felt really grateful to him, and
showed him so in the manner of his reply.
'I will not ask you,' said this gentleman with a smile, as he rose and
moved towards him, 'how you like my country, for I can quite anticipate
your feeling on that point. But, as I am an American, and consequently
bound to begin with a question, I'll ask you how you like the colonel?'
'You are so very frank,' returned Martin, 'that I have no hesitation in
saying I don't like him at all. Though I must add that I am beholden to
him for his civility in bringing me here--and arranging for my stay,
on pretty reasonable terms, by the way,' he added, remembering that the
colonel had whispered him to that effect, before going out.
'Not much beholden,' said the stranger drily. 'The colonel occasionally
boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest information
for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to board here, I
believe, with a view to the little percentage which attaches to those
good offices; and which the hostess deducts from his weekly bill. I
don't offend you, I hope?' he added, seeing that Martin reddened.
'My dear sir,' returned Martin, as they shook hands, 'how is that
possible! to tell you the truth, I--am--'
'Yes?' said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.
'I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,' said Martin,
getting the better of his hesitation, 'to know how this colonel escapes
being beaten.'
'Well! He has been beaten once or twice,' remarked the gentleman
quietly. 'He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so
long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw
our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don't know that Franklin, in very
severe terms, published his opinion that those who were slandered
by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient remedy in the
administration of this country's laws or in the decent and right-minded
feeling of its people, were justified in retorting on such public
nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?'
'I was not aware of that,' said Martin, 'but I am very glad to know
it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially'--here he hesitated
again.
'Go on,' said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin's
throat.
'Especially,' pursued Martin, 'as I can already understand that it may
have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely on any
question which was not a party one in this very free country.'
'Some courage, no doubt,' returned his new friend. 'Do you think it
would require any to do so, now?'
'Indeed I think it would; and not a little,' said Martin.
'You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could breathe
this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us to-morrow,
he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature,
and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has
anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and
who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate
hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears,
believe me. In some cases I could name to you, where a native writer
has ventured on the most harmless and good-humoured illustrations of
our vices or defects, it has been found necessary to announce, that in
a second edition the passage has been expunged, or altered, or explained
away, or patched into praise.'
'And how has this been brought about?' asked Martin, in dismay.
'Think of what you have seen and heard to-day, beginning with the
colonel,' said his friend, 'and ask yourself. How THEY came about,
is another question. Heaven forbid that they should be samples of the
intelligence and virtue of America, but they come uppermost, and in
great numbers, and too often represent it. Will you walk?'
There was a cordial candour in his manner, and an engaging confidence
that it would not be abused; a manly bearing on his own part, and a
simple reliance on the manly faith of a stranger; which Martin had
never seen before. He linked his arm readily in that of the American
gentleman, and they walked out together.
It was perhaps to men like this, his new companion, that a traveller
of honoured name, who trod those shores now nearly forty years ago, and
woke upon that soil, as many have done since, to blots and stains upon
its high pretensions, which in the brightness of his distant dreams were
lost to view, appealed in these words--
'Oh, but for such, Columbia's days were done;
Rank without ripeness, quickened without sun,
Crude at the surface, rotten at the core,
Her fruits would fall before her spring were o'er!'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MARTIN ENLARGES HIS CIRCLE OF AQUAINTANCE; INCREASES HIS STOCK
OF WISDOM; AND HAS AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY OF COMPARING HIS OWN
EXPERIENCES WITH THOSE OF LUMMY NED OF THE LIGHT SALISBURY, AS RELATED
BY HIS FRIEND MR WILLIAM SIMMONS
It was characteristic of Martin, that all this while he had either
forgotten Mark Tapley as completely as if there had been no such person
in existence, or, if for a moment the figure of that gentleman rose
before his mental vision, had dismissed it as something by no means of
a pressing nature, which might be attended to by-and-bye, and could wait
his perfect leisure. But, being now in the streets again, it occurred to
him as just coming within the bare limits of possibility that Mr Tapley
might, in course of time, grow tired of waiting on the threshold of the
Rowdy Journal Office, so he intimated to his new friend, that if they
could conveniently walk in that direction, he would be glad to get this
piece of business off his mind.
'And speaking of business,' said Martin, 'may I ask, in order that I may
not be behind-hand with questions either, whether your occupation holds
you to this city, or like myself, you are a visitor here?'
'A visitor,' replied his friend. 'I was "raised" in the State of
Massachusetts, and reside there still. My home is in a quiet country
town. I am not often in these busy places; and my inclination to visit
them does not increase with our better acquaintance, I assure you.'
'You have been abroad?' asked Martin.
'Oh yes.'
'And, like most people who travel, have become more than ever attached
to your home and native country,' said Martin, eyeing him curiously.
'To my home--yes,' rejoined his friend. 'To my native country AS my
home--yes, also.'
'You imply some reservation,' said Martin.
'Well,' returned his new friend, 'if you ask me whether I came back here
with a greater relish for my country's faults; with a greater fondness
for those who claim (at the rate of so many dollars a day) to be her
friends; with a cooler indifference to the growth of principles among
us in respect of public matters and of private dealings between man and
man, the advocacy of which, beyond the foul atmosphere of a criminal
trial, would disgrace your own old Bailey lawyers; why, then I answer
plainly, No.'
'Oh!' said Martin; in so exactly the same key as his friend's No, that
it sounded like an echo.
'If you ask me,' his companion pursued, 'whether I came back here better
satisfied with a state of things which broadly divides society into two
classes--whereof one, the great mass, asserts a spurious independence,
most miserably dependent for its mean existence on the disregard of
humanizing conventionalities of manner and social custom, so that the
coarser a man is, the more distinctly it shall appeal to his taste;
while the other, disgusted with the low standard thus set up and made
adaptable to everything, takes refuge among the graces and refinements
it can bring to bear on private life, and leaves the public weal to
such fortune as may betide it in the press and uproar of a general
scramble--then again I answer, No.'
And again Martin said 'Oh!' in the same odd way as before, being anxious
and disconcerted; not so much, to say the truth, on public grounds, as
with reference to the fading prospects of domestic architecture.
'In a word,' resumed the other, 'I do not find and cannot believe and
therefore will not allow, that we are a model of wisdom, and an example
to the world, and the perfection of human reason, and a great deal more
to the same purpose, which you may hear any hour in the day; simply
because we began our political life with two inestimable advantages.'
'What were they?' asked Martin.
'One, that our history commenced at so late a period as to escape the
ages of bloodshed and cruelty through which other nations have passed;
and so had all the light of their probation, and none of its darkness.
The other, that we have a vast territory, and not--as yet--too many
people on it. These facts considered, we have done little enough, I
think.'
'Education?' suggested Martin, faintly.
'Pretty well on that head,' said the other, shrugging his shoulders,
'still no mighty matter to boast of; for old countries, and despotic
countries too, have done as much, if not more, and made less noise about
it. We shine out brightly in comparison with England, certainly; but
hers is a very extreme case. You complimented me on my frankness, you
know,' he added, laughing.
'Oh! I am not at all astonished at your speaking thus openly when my
country is in question,' returned Martin. 'It is your plain-speaking in
reference to your own that surprises me.'
'You will not find it a scarce quality here, I assure you, saving among
the Colonel Divers, and Jefferson Bricks, and Major Pawkinses; though
the best of us are something like the man in Goldsmith's comedy, who
wouldn't suffer anybody but himself to abuse his master. Come!' he
added. 'Let us talk of something else. You have come here on some design
of improving your fortune, I dare say; and I should grieve to put you
out of heart. I am some years older than you, besides; and may, on a few
trivial points, advise you, perhaps.'
There was not the least curiosity or impertinence in the manner of this
offer, which was open-hearted, unaffected, and good-natured. As it was
next to impossible that he should not have his confidence awakened by
a deportment so prepossessing and kind, Martin plainly stated what had
brought him into those parts, and even made the very difficult avowal
that he was poor. He did not say how poor, it must be admitted, rather
throwing off the declaration with an air which might have implied that
he had money enough for six months, instead of as many weeks; but poor
he said he was, and grateful he said he would be, for any counsel that
his friend would give him.
It would not have been very difficult for any one to see; but it was
particularly easy for Martin, whose perceptions were sharpened by his
circumstances, to discern; that the stranger's face grew infinitely
longer as the domestic-architecture project was developed. Nor, although
he made a great effort to be as encouraging as possible, could he
prevent his head from shaking once involuntarily, as if it said in the
vulgar tongue, upon its own account, 'No go!' But he spoke in a cheerful
tone, and said, that although there was no such opening as Martin
wished, in that city, he would make it matter of immediate consideration
and inquiry where one was most likely to exist; and then he made Martin
acquainted with his name, which was Bevan; and with his profession,
which was physic, though he seldom or never practiced; and with other
circumstances connected with himself and family, which fully occupied
the time, until they reached the Rowdy Journal Office.
Mr Tapley appeared to be taking his ease on the landing of the first
floor; for sounds as of some gentleman established in that region
whistling 'Rule Britannia' with all his might and main, greeted their
ears before they reached the house. On ascending to the spot from
whence this music proceeded, they found him recumbent in the midst of a
fortification of luggage, apparently performing his national anthem
for the gratification of a grey-haired black man, who sat on one of the
outworks (a portmanteau), staring intently at Mark, while Mark, with
his head reclining on his hand, returned the compliment in a thoughtful
manner, and whistled all the time. He seemed to have recently dined, for
his knife, a casebottle, and certain broken meats in a handkerchief, lay
near at hand. He had employed a portion of his leisure in the decoration
of the Rowdy Journal door, whereon his own initials now appeared in
letters nearly half a foot long, together with the day of the month in
smaller type; the whole surrounded by an ornamental border, and looking
very fresh and bold.
'I was a'most afraid you was lost, sir!' cried Mark, rising, and
stopping the tune at that point where Britons generally are supposed to
declare (when it is whistled) that they never, never, never--
'Nothing gone wrong, I hope, sir?'
'No, Mark. Where's your friend?'
'The mad woman, sir?' said Mr Tapley. 'Oh! she's all right, sir.'
'Did she find her husband?'
'Yes, sir. Leastways she's found his remains,' said Mark, correcting
himself.
'The man's not dead, I hope?'
'Not altogether dead, sir,' returned Mark; 'but he's had more fevers and
agues than is quite reconcilable with being alive. When she didn't see
him a-waiting for her, I thought she'd have died herself, I did!'
'Was he not here, then?'
'HE wasn't here. There was a feeble old shadow come a-creeping down at
last, as much like his substance when she know'd him, as your shadow
when it's drawn out to its very finest and longest by the sun, is like
you. But it was his remains, there's no doubt about that. She took on
with joy, poor thing, as much as if it had been all of him!'
'Had he bought land?' asked Mr Bevan.
'Ah! He'd bought land,' said Mark, shaking his head, 'and paid for it
too. Every sort of nateral advantage was connected with it, the agents
said; and there certainly was ONE, quite unlimited. No end to the
water!'
'It's a thing he couldn't have done without, I suppose,' observed
Martin, peevishly.
'Certainly not, sir. There it was, any way; always turned on, and no
water-rate. Independent of three or four slimy old rivers close by,
it varied on the farm from four to six foot deep in the dry season.
He couldn't say how deep it was in the rainy time, for he never had
anything long enough to sound it with.'
'Is this true?' asked Martin of his companion.
'Extremely probable,' he answered. 'Some Mississippi or Missouri lot, I
dare say.'
'However,' pursued Mark, 'he came from I-don't-know-where-and-all, down
to New York here, to meet his wife and children; and they started off
again in a steamboat this blessed afternoon, as happy to be along with
each other as if they were going to Heaven. I should think they was,
pretty straight, if I may judge from the poor man's looks.'
'And may I ask,' said Martin, glancing, but not with any displeasure,
from Mark to the negro, 'who this gentleman is? Another friend of
yours?'
'Why sir,' returned Mark, taking him aside, and speaking confidentially
in his ear, 'he's a man of colour, sir!'
'Do you take me for a blind man,' asked Martin, somewhat impatiently,
'that you think it necessary to tell me that, when his face is the
blackest that ever was seen?'
'No, no; when I say a man of colour,' returned Mark, 'I mean that
he's been one of them as there's picters of in the shops. A man and a
brother, you know, sir,' said Mr Tapley, favouring his master with a
significant indication of the figure so often represented in tracts and
cheap prints.
'A slave!' cried Martin, in a whisper.
'Ah!' said Mark in the same tone. 'Nothing else. A slave. Why, when that
there man was young--don't look at him while I'm a-telling it--he was
shot in the leg; gashed in the arm; scored in his live limbs, like
crimped fish; beaten out of shape; had his neck galled with an iron
collar, and wore iron rings upon his wrists and ankles. The marks are on
him to this day. When I was having my dinner just now, he stripped off
his coat, and took away my appetite.'
'Is THIS true?' asked Martin of his friend, who stood beside them.
'I have no reason to doubt it,' he answered, shaking his head 'It very
often is.'
'Bless you,' said Mark, 'I know it is, from hearing his whole story.
That master died; so did his second master from having his head cut
open with a hatchet by another slave, who, when he'd done it, went and
drowned himself; then he got a better one; in years and years he saved
up a little money, and bought his freedom, which he got pretty cheap at
last, on account of his strength being nearly gone, and he being ill.
Then he come here. And now he's a-saving up to treat himself, afore
he dies, to one small purchase--it's nothing to speak of. Only his own
daughter; that's all!' cried Mr Tapley, becoming excited. 'Liberty for
ever! Hurrah! Hail, Columbia!'
'Hush!' cried Martin, clapping his hand upon his mouth; 'and don't be an
idiot. What is he doing here?'
'Waiting to take our luggage off upon a truck,' said Mark. 'He'd have
come for it by-and-bye, but I engaged him for a very reasonable charge
(out of my own pocket) to sit along with me and make me jolly; and I
am jolly; and if I was rich enough to contract with him to wait upon me
once a day, to be looked at, I'd never be anything else.'
The fact may cause a solemn impeachment of Mark's veracity, but it must
be admitted nevertheless, that there was that in his face and manner at
the moment, which militated strongly against this emphatic declaration
of his state of mind.
'Lord love you, sir,' he added, 'they're so fond of Liberty in this part
of the globe, that they buy her and sell her and carry her to market
with 'em. They've such a passion for Liberty, that they can't help
taking liberties with her. That's what it's owing to.'
'Very well,' said Martin, wishing to change the theme. 'Having come to
that conclusion, Mark, perhaps you'll attend to me. The place to which
the luggage is to go is printed on this card. Mrs Pawkins's Boarding
House.'
'Mrs Pawkins's boarding-house,' repeated Mark. 'Now, Cicero.'
'Is that his name?' asked Martin
'That's his name, sir,' rejoined Mark. And the negro grinning assent
from under a leathern portmanteau, than which his own face was many
shades deeper, hobbled downstairs with his portion of their worldly
goods; Mark Tapley having already gone before with his share.
Martin and his friend followed them to the door below, and were about
to pursue their walk, when the latter stopped, and asked, with some
hesitation, whether that young man was to be trusted?
'Mark! oh certainly! with anything.'
'You don't understand me--I think he had better go with us. He is an
honest fellow, and speaks his mind so very plainly.'
'Why, the fact is,' said Martin, smiling, 'that being unaccustomed to a
free republic, he is used to do so.'
'I think he had better go with us,' returned the other. 'He may get into
some trouble otherwise. This is not a slave State; but I am ashamed
to say that a spirit of Tolerance is not so common anywhere in
these latitudes as the form. We are not remarkable for behaving very
temperately to each other when we differ; but to strangers! no, I really
think he had better go with us.'
Martin called to him immediately to be of their party; so Cicero and the
truck went one way, and they three went another.
They walked about the city for two or three hours; seeing it from the
best points of view, and pausing in the principal streets, and before
such public buildings as Mr Bevan pointed out. Night then coming
on apace, Martin proposed that they should adjourn to Mrs Pawkins's
establishment for coffee; but in this he was overruled by his new
acquaintance, who seemed to have set his heart on carrying him, though
it were only for an hour, to the house of a friend of his who lived hard
by. Feeling (however disinclined he was, being weary) that it would be
in bad taste, and not very gracious, to object that he was unintroduced,
when this open-hearted gentleman was so ready to be his sponsor,
Martin--for once in his life, at all events--sacrificed his own will and
pleasure to the wishes of another, and consented with a fair grace. So
travelling had done him that much good, already.
Mr Bevan knocked at the door of a very neat house of moderate size, from
the parlour windows of which, lights were shining brightly into the now
dark street. It was quickly opened by a man with such a thoroughly Irish
face, that it seemed as if he ought, as a matter of right and principle,
to be in rags, and could have no sort of business to be looking
cheerfully at anybody out of a whole suit of clothes.
Commending Mark to the care of this phenomenon--for such he may be said
to have been in Martin's eyes--Mr Bevan led the way into the room
which had shed its cheerfulness upon the street, to whose occupants he
introduced Mr Chuzzlewit as a gentleman from England, whose acquaintance
he had recently had the pleasure to make. They gave him welcome in all
courtesy and politeness; and in less than five minutes' time he found
himself sitting very much at his ease by the fireside, and becoming
vastly well acquainted with the whole family.
There were two young ladies--one eighteen; the other twenty--both very
slender, but very pretty; their mother, who looked, as Martin thought
much older and more faded than she ought to have looked; and their
grandmother, a little sharp-eyed, quick old woman, who seemed to have
got past that stage, and to have come all right again. Besides these,
there were the young ladies' father, and the young ladies' brother; the
first engaged in mercantile affairs; the second, a student at college;
both, in a certain cordiality of manner, like his own friend, and not
unlike him in face. Which was no great wonder, for it soon appeared that
he was their near relation. Martin could not help tracing the family
pedigree from the two young ladies, because they were foremost in his
thoughts; not only from being, as aforesaid, very pretty, but by reason
of their wearing miraculously small shoes, and the thinnest possible
silk stockings; the which their rocking-chairs developed to a
distracting extent.
There is no doubt that it was a monstrous comfortable circumstance to be
sitting in a snug, well-furnished room, warmed by a cheerful fire, and
full of various pleasant decorations, including four small shoes, and
the like amount of silk stockings, and--yes, why not?--the feet and
legs therein enshrined. And there is no doubt that Martin was monstrous
well-disposed to regard his position in that light, after his recent
experience of the Screw, and of Mrs Pawkins's boarding-house. The
consequence was that he made himself very agreeable indeed; and by
the time the tea and coffee arrived (with sweet preserves, and cunning
tea-cakes in its train), was in a highly genial state, and much esteemed
by the whole family.
Another delightful circumstance turned up before the first cup of tea
was drunk. The whole family had been in England. There was a pleasant
thing! But Martin was not quite so glad of this, when he found that
they knew all the great dukes, lords, viscounts, marquesses, duchesses,
knights, and baronets, quite affectionately, and were beyond everything
interested in the least particular concerning them. However, when they
asked, after the wearer of this or that coronet, and said, 'Was he quite
well?' Martin answered, 'Yes, oh yes. Never better;' and when they said,
'his lordship's mother, the duchess, was she much changed?' Martin said,
'Oh dear no, they would know her anywhere, if they saw her to-morrow;'
and so got on pretty well. In like manner when the young ladies
questioned him touching the Gold Fish in that Grecian fountain in such
and such a nobleman's conservatory, and whether there were as many as
there used to be, he gravely reported, after mature consideration, that
there must be at least twice as many; and as to the exotics, 'Oh! well!
it was of no use talking about THEM; they must be seen to be believed;'
which improved state of circumstances reminded the family of the
splendour of that brilliant festival (comprehending the whole British
Peerage and Court Calendar) to which they were specially invited, and
which indeed had been partly given in their honour; and recollections
of what Mr Norris the father had said to the marquess, and of what Mrs
Norris the mother had said to the marchioness, and of what the marquess
and marchioness had both said, when they said that upon their words and
honours they wished Mr Norris the father and Mrs Norris the mother, and
the Misses Norris the daughters, and Mr Norris Junior, the son, would
only take up their permanent residence in England, and give them the
pleasure of their everlasting friendship, occupied a very considerable
time.
Martin thought it rather stange, and in some sort inconsistent, that
during the whole of these narrations, and in the very meridian of their
enjoyment thereof, both Mr Norris the father, and Mr Norris Junior,
the son (who corresponded, every post, with four members of the English
Peerage), enlarged upon the inestimable advantage of having no such
arbitrary distinctions in that enlightened land, where there were no
noblemen but nature's noblemen, and where all society was based on one
broad level of brotherly love and natural equality. Indeed, Mr Norris
the father gradually expanding into an oration on this swelling theme,
was becoming tedious, when Mr Bevan diverted his thoughts by happening
to make some causal inquiry relative to the occupier of the next house;
in reply to which, this same Mr Norris the father observed, that 'that
person entertained religious opinions of which he couldn't approve; and
therefore he hadn't the honour of knowing the gentleman.' Mrs Norris the
mother added another reason of her own, the same in effect, but varying
in words; to wit, that she believed the people were well enough in their
way, but they were not genteel.
Another little trait came out, which impressed itself on Martin
forcibly. Mr Bevan told them about Mark and the negro, and then it
appeared that all the Norrises were abolitionists. It was a great relief
to hear this, and Martin was so much encouraged on finding himself in
such company, that he expressed his sympathy with the oppressed and
wretched blacks. Now, one of the young ladies--the prettiest and most
delicate--was mightily amused at the earnestness with which he spoke;
and on his craving leave to ask her why, was quite unable for a time to
speak for laughing. As soon however as she could, she told him that
the negroes were such a funny people, so excessively ludicrous in their
manners and appearance, that it was wholly impossible for those who knew
them well, to associate any serious ideas with such a very absurd part
of the creation. Mr Norris the father, and Mrs Norris the mother, and
Miss Norris the sister, and Mr Norris Junior the brother, and even Mrs
Norris Senior the grandmother, were all of this opinion, and laid
it down as an absolute matter of fact--as if there were nothing in
suffering and slavery, grim enough to cast a solemn air on any human
animal; though it were as ridiculous, physically, as the most
grotesque of apes, or morally, as the mildest Nimrod among tuft-hunting
republicans!
'In short,' said Mr Norris the father, settling the question
comfortably, 'there is a natural antipathy between the races.'
'Extending,' said Martin's friend, in a low voice, 'to the cruellest of
tortures, and the bargain and sale of unborn generations.'
Mr Norris the son said nothing, but he made a wry face, and dusted his
fingers as Hamlet might after getting rid of Yorick's skull; just as
though he had that moment touched a negro, and some of the black had
come off upon his hands.
In order that their talk might fall again into its former pleasant
channel, Martin dropped the subject, with a shrewd suspicion that it
would be a dangerous theme to revive under the best of circumstances;
and again addressed himself to the young ladies, who were very
gorgeously attired in very beautiful colours, and had every article of
dress on the same extensive scale as the little shoes and the thin silk
stockings. This suggested to him that they were great proficients in the
French fashions, which soon turned out to be the case, for though their
information appeared to be none of the newest, it was very extensive;
and the eldest sister in particular, who was distinguished by a talent
for metaphysics, the laws of hydraulic pressure, and the rights of human
kind, had a novel way of combining these acquirements and bringing them
to bear on any subject from Millinery to the Millennium, both inclusive,
which was at once improving and remarkable; so much so, in short, that
it was usually observed to reduce foreigners to a state of temporary
insanity in five minutes.
Martin felt his reason going; and as a means of saving himself, besought
the other sister (seeing a piano in the room) to sing. With this request
she willingly complied; and a bravura concert, solely sustained by the
Misses Noriss, presently began. They sang in all languages--except their
own. German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Swiss; but nothing
native; nothing so low as native. For, in this respect, languages are
like many other travellers--ordinary and commonplace enough at home, but
'specially genteel abroad.
There is little doubt that in course of time the Misses Norris would
have come to Hebrew, if they had not been interrupted by an announcement
from the Irishman, who, flinging open the door, cried in a loud voice--
'Jiniral Fladdock!'
'My!' cried the sisters, desisting suddenly. 'The general come back!'
As they made the exclamation, the general, attired in full uniform for a
ball, came darting in with such precipitancy that, hitching his boot
in the carpet, and getting his sword between his legs, he came down
headlong, and presented a curious little bald place on the crown of his
head to the eyes of the astonished company. Nor was this the worst of
it; for being rather corpulent and very tight, the general being down,
could not get up again, but lay there writhing and doing such things with
his boots, as there is no other instance of in military history.
Of course there was an immediate rush to his assistance; and the general
was promptly raised. But his uniform was so fearfully and wonderfully
made, that he came up stiff and without a bend in him like a dead Clown,
and had no command whatever of himself until he was put quite flat upon
the soles of his feet, when he became animated as by a miracle, and
moving edgewise that he might go in a narrower compass and be in less
danger of fraying the gold lace on his epaulettes by brushing them
against anything, advanced with a smiling visage to salute the lady of
the house.
To be sure, it would have been impossible for the family to testify
purer delight and joy than at this unlooked-for appearance of General
Fladdock! The general was as warmly received as if New York had been in
a state of siege and no other general was to be got for love or money.
He shook hands with the Norrises three times all round, and then
reviewed them from a little distance as a brave commander might, with
his ample cloak drawn forward over the right shoulder and thrown back
upon the left side to reveal his manly breast.
'And do I then,' cried the general, 'once again behold the choicest
spirits of my country!'
'Yes,' said Mr Norris the father. 'Here we are, general.'
Then all the Norrises pressed round the general, inquiring how and where
he had been since the date of his letter, and how he had enjoyed himself
in foreign parts, and particularly and above all, to what extent he had
become acquainted with the great dukes, lords, viscounts, marquesses,
duchesses, knights, and baronets, in whom the people of those benighted
countries had delight.
'Well, then, don't ask me,' said the general, holding up his hand. 'I
was among 'em all the time, and have got public journals in my trunk
with my name printed'--he lowered his voice and was very impressive
here--'among the fashionable news. But, oh, the conventionalities of
that a-mazing Europe!'
'Ah!' cried Mr Norris the father, giving his head a melancholy shake,
and looking towards Martin as though he would say, 'I can't deny it,
sir. I would if I could.'
'The limited diffusion of a moral sense in that country!' exclaimed the
general. 'The absence of a moral dignity in man!'
'Ah!' sighed all the Norrises, quite overwhelmed with despondency.
'I couldn't have realised it,' pursued the general, 'without being
located on the spot. Norris, your imagination is the imagination of a
strong man, but YOU couldn't have realised it, without being located on
the spot!'
'Never,' said Mr Norris.
'The ex-clusiveness, the pride, the form, the ceremony,' exclaimed the
general, emphasizing the article more vigorously at every repetition.
'The artificial barriers set up between man and man; the division of the
human race into court cards and plain cards, of every denomination--into
clubs, diamonds, spades--anything but heart!'
'Ah!' cried the whole family. 'Too true, general!'
'But stay!' cried Mr Norris the father, taking him by the arm. 'Surely
you crossed in the Screw, general?'
'Well! so I did,' was the reply.
'Possible!' cried the young ladies. 'Only think!'
The general seemed at a loss to understand why his having come home
in the Screw should occasion such a sensation, nor did he seem at all
clearer on the subject when Mr Norris, introducing him to Martin, said:
'A fellow-passenger of yours, I think?'
'Of mine?' exclaimed the general; 'No!'
He had never seen Martin, but Martin had seen him, and recognized him,
now that they stood face to face, as the gentleman who had stuck his
hands in his pockets towards the end of the voyage, and walked the deck
with his nostrils dilated.
Everybody looked at Martin. There was no help for it. The truth must
out.
'I came over in the same ship as the general,' said Martin, 'but not in
the same cabin. It being necessary for me to observe strict economy, I
took my passage in the steerage.'
If the general had been carried up bodily to a loaded cannon, and
required to let it off that moment, he could not have been in a state
of greater consternation than when he heard these words. He,
Fladdock--Fladdock in full militia uniform, Fladdock the General,
Fladdock, the caressed of foreign noblemen--expected to know a fellow
who had come over in the steerage of line-of-packet ship, at the cost
of four pound ten! And meeting that fellow in the very sanctuary of New
York fashion, and nestling in the bosom of the New York aristocracy! He
almost laid his hand upon his sword.
A death-like stillness fell upon the Norisses. If this story should get
wind, their country relation had, by his imprudence, for ever disgraced
them. They were the bright particular stars of an exalted New York
sphere. There were other fashionable spheres above them, and other
fashionable spheres below, and none of the stars in any one of these
spheres had anything to say to the stars in any other of these spheres.
But, through all the spheres it would go forth that the Norrises,
deceived by gentlemanly manners and appearances, had, falling from their
high estate, 'received' a dollarless and unknown man. O guardian eagle
of the pure Republic, had they lived for this!
'You will allow me,' said Martin, after a terrible silence, 'to take
my leave. I feel that I am the cause of at least as much embarrassment
here, as I have brought upon myself. But I am bound, before I go, to
exonerate this gentleman, who, in introducing me to such society, was
quite ignorant of my unworthiness, I assure you.'
With that he made his bow to the Norrises, and walked out like a man of
snow; very cool externally, but pretty hot within.
'Come, come,' said Mr Norris the father, looking with a pale face on
the assembled circle as Martin closed the door, 'the young man has this
night beheld a refinement of social manner, and an easy magnificence of
social decoration, to which he is a stranger in his own country. Let us
hope it may awake a moral sense within him.'
If that peculiarly transatlantic article, a moral sense--for, if native
statesmen, orators, and pamphleteers, are to be believed, America quite
monopolises the commodity--if that peculiarly transatlantic article be
supposed to include a benevolent love of all mankind, certainly Martin's
would have borne, just then, a deal of waking. As he strode along
the street, with Mark at his heels, his immoral sense was in active
operation; prompting him to the utterance of some rather sanguinary
remarks, which it was well for his own credit that nobody overheard.
He had so far cooled down, however, that he had begun to laugh at the
recollection of these incidents, when he heard another step behind him,
and turning round encountered his friend Bevan, quite out of breath.
He drew his arm through Martin's, and entreating him to walk slowly, was
silent for some minutes. At length he said:
'I hope you exonerate me in another sense?'
'How do you mean?' asked Martin.
'I hope you acquit me of intending or foreseeing the termination of our
visit. But I scarcely need ask you that.'
'Scarcely indeed,' said Martin. 'I am the more beholden to you for your
kindness, when I find what kind of stuff the good citizens here are made
of.'
'I reckon,' his friend returned, 'that they are made of pretty much the
same stuff as other folks, if they would but own it, and not set up on
false pretences.'
'In good faith, that's true,' said Martin.
'I dare say,' resumed his friend, 'you might have such a scene as that
in an English comedy, and not detect any gross improbability or anomaly
in the matter of it?'
'Yes, indeed!'
'Doubtless it is more ridiculous here than anywhere else,' said his
companion; 'but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I
myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the
first that you came over in the steerage, for I had seen the list of
passengers, and knew it did not comprise your name.'
'I feel more obliged to you than before,' said Martin.
'Norris is a very good fellow in his way,' observed Mr Bevan.
'Is he?' said Martin drily.
'Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or anybody
else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to him IN FORMA
PAUPERIS, he would be all kindness and consideration.'
'I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find such a
character as THAT,' said Martin. Neither he nor his friend said anything
more on the way back; each appearing to find sufficient occupation in
his own thoughts.
The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal,
was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with
a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end
of the board Mrs Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking
tea; out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted
and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three
flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of
different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in
broad day.
These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when
Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they stopped
directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they
went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the
teapot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their
chilling coldness.
'Have you been to meeting, Mrs Brick?' asked Martin's friend, with
something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.
'To lecture, sir.'
'I beg your pardon. I forgot. You don't go to meeting, I think?'
Here the lady on the right of Mrs Brick gave a pious cough as much as to
say 'I do!'--as, indeed, she did nearly every night in the week.
'A good discourse, ma'am?' asked Mr Bevan, addressing this lady.
The lady raised her eyes in a pious manner, and answered 'Yes.' She
had been much comforted by some good, strong, peppery doctrine, which
satisfactorily disposed of all her friends and acquaintances, and quite
settled their business. Her bonnet, too, had far outshone every bonnet
in the congregation; so she was tranquil on all accounts.
'What course of lectures are you attending now, ma'am?' said Martin's
friend, turning again to Mrs Brick.
'The Philosophy of the Soul, on Wednesdays.'
'On Mondays?'
'The Philosophy of Crime.'
'On Fridays?'
'The Philosophy of Vegetables.'
'You have forgotten Thursdays; the Philosophy of Government, my dear,'
observed the third lady.
'No,' said Mrs Brick. 'That's Tuesdays.'
'So it is!' cried the lady. 'The Philosophy of Matter on Thursdays, of
course.'
'You see, Mr Chuzzlewit, our ladies are fully employed,' said Bevan.
'Indeed you have reason to say so,' answered Martin. 'Between these very
grave pursuits abroad, and family duties at home, their time must be
pretty well engrossed.'
Martin stopped here, for he saw that the ladies regarded him with no
very great favour, though what he had done to deserve the disdainful
expression which appeared in their faces he was at a loss to divine. But
on their going upstairs to their bedrooms--which they very soon did--Mr
Bevan informed him that domestic drudgery was far beneath the exalted
range of these Philosophers, and that the chances were a hundred to one
that not one of the three could perform the easiest woman's work for
herself, or make the simplest article of dress for any of her children.
'Though whether they might not be better employed with such blunt
instruments as knitting-needles than with these edge-tools,' he said,
'is another question; but I can answer for one thing--they don't often
cut themselves. Devotions and lectures are our balls and concerts. They
go to these places of resort, as an escape from monotony; look at each
other's clothes; and come home again.'
'When you say "home," do you mean a house like this?'
'Very often. But I see you are tired to death, and will wish you good
night. We will discuss your projects in the morning. You cannot but
feel already that it is useless staying here, with any hope of advancing
them. You will have to go further.'
'And to fare worse?' said Martin, pursuing the old adage.
'Well, I hope not. But sufficient for the day, you know--good night'
They shook hands heartily and separated. As soon as Martin was left
alone, the excitement of novelty and change which had sustained him
through all the fatigues of the day, departed; and he felt so thoroughly
dejected and worn out, that he even lacked the energy to crawl upstairs
to bed.
In twelve or fifteen hours, how great a change had fallen on his hopes
and sanguine plans! New and strange as he was to the ground on which he
stood, and to the air he breathed, he could not--recalling all that he
had crowded into that one day--but entertain a strong misgiving that his
enterprise was doomed. Rash and ill-considered as it had often looked on
shipboard, but had never seemed on shore, it wore a dismal aspect, now,
that frightened him. Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid, they
came upon him in depressing and discouraging shapes, and gave him no
relief. Even the diamonds on his finger sparkled with the brightness of
tears, and had no ray of hope in all their brilliant lustre.
He continued to sit in gloomy rumination by the stove, unmindful of
the boarders who dropped in one by one from their stores and
counting-houses, or the neighbouring bar-rooms, and, after taking long
pulls from a great white waterjug upon the sideboard, and lingering with
a kind of hideous fascination near the brass spittoons, lounged heavily
to bed; until at length Mark Tapley came and shook him by the arm,
supposing him asleep.
'Mark!' he cried, starting.
'All right, sir,' said that cheerful follower, snuffing with his fingers
the candle he bore. 'It ain't a very large bed, your'n, sir; and a man
as wasn't thirsty might drink, afore breakfast, all the water you've
got to wash in, and afterwards eat the towel. But you'll sleep without
rocking to-night, sir.'
'I feel as if the house were on the sea' said Martin, staggering when he
rose; 'and am utterly wretched.'
'I'm as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,' said Mark. 'But, Lord, I have
reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that's my opinion. Take
care how you go'--for they were now ascending the stairs. 'You recollect
the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the very small trunk, sir?'
'The valise? Yes.'
'Well, sir, there's been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash
to-night, and they're put outside the bedroom doors here. If you take
notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what a many
fronts, you'll penetrate the mystery of his packing.'
But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so
had no interest in this discovery. Mr Tapley, nothing dashed by his
indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the
bed-chamber prepared for his reception; which was a very little narrow
room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest without a lid;
two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are commonly tried upon
at a ready-made establishment in England; a little looking-glass nailed
against the wall; and a washing-table, with a jug and ewer, that might
have been mistaken for a milk-pot and slop-basin.
'I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,'
said Mark. 'They've certainly got a touch of the 'phoby, sir.'
'I wish you would pull off my boots for me,' said Martin, dropping into
one of the chairs 'I am quite knocked up--dead beat, Mark.'
'You won't say that to-morrow morning, sir,' returned Mr Tapley; 'nor
even to-night, sir, when you've made a trial of this.' With which he
produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks
of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon,
and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still
depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.
'What do you call this?' said Martin.
But Mr Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the
mixture--which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice--and
signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through
that agency by the enraptured drinker.
Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the
reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more until the
goblet was drained to the last drop.
'There, sir!' said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face; 'if
ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in the
way, all you've got to do is to ask the nearest man to go and fetch a
cobbler.'
'To go and fetch a cobbler?' repeated Martin.
'This wonderful invention, sir,' said Mark, tenderly patting the empty
glass, 'is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long;
cobbler, when you name it short. Now you're equal to having your boots
took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.'
Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the
bootjack.
'Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,' said Martin; 'but, good Heaven,
if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or
money!'
'Well, sir!' replied the imperturbable Tapley; 'from what we've seen
already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn't
do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.'
'Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!' said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; 'what
would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though
it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!'
'Oh, Dragon, Dragon!' echoed Mark, cheerfully, 'if there warn't any
water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back,
I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in
New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there's a
fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and
whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn't give in on the
doorsteps, or you'll never get up to the top!'
'Wisely said, Mark,' cried Martin. 'We must look forward.'
'In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked
backward was turned into stones,' replied Mark; 'and my opinion always
was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served 'em right. I wish
you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!'
'They must be of home, then,' said Martin, as he lay down in bed.
'So I say, too,' whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and
in his own room; 'for if there don't come a time afore we're well out of
this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping up one's jollity,
I'm a United Statesman!'
Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects
afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light
of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle--a
dream within a dream--as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the
ocean to the English shore.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOES BUSINESS WITH THE HOUSE OF ANTHONY CHUZZLEWIT AND SON, FROM WHICH
ONE OF THE PARTNERS RETIRES UNEXPECTEDLY
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to
a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels,
step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from
the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would
seem to be the signal for instant confusion. As if, in the gap he had
left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a
solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages
of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly
dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock
before, becomes but sand and dust.
Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The
extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy
in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be
faithfully set down in these pages.
'What a cold spring it is!' whimpered old Anthony, drawing near the
evening fire, 'It was a warmer season, sure, when I was young!'
'You needn't go scorching your clothes into holes, whether it was or
not,' observed the amiable Jonas, raising his eyes from yesterday's
newspaper, 'Broadcloth ain't so cheap as that comes to.'
'A good lad!' cried the father, breathing on his cold hands, and feebly
chafing them against each other. 'A prudent lad! He never delivered
himself up to the vanities of dress. No, no!'
'I don't know but I would, though, mind you, if I could do it for
nothing,' said his son, as he resumed the paper.
'Ah!' chuckled the old man. 'IF, indeed!--But it's very cold.'
'Let the fire be!' cried Mr Jonas, stopping his honoured parent's hand
in the use of the poker. 'Do you mean to come to want in your old age,
that you take to wasting now?'
'There's not time for that, Jonas,' said the old man.
'Not time for what?' bawled his heir.
'For me to come to want. I wish there was!'
'You always were as selfish an old blade as need be,' said Jonas in a
voice too low for him to hear, and looking at him with an angry frown.
'You act up to your character. You wouldn't mind coming to want,
wouldn't you! I dare say you wouldn't. And your own flesh and blood
might come to want too, might they, for anything you cared? Oh you
precious old flint!'
After this dutiful address he took his tea-cup in his hand--for that
meal was in progress, and the father and son and Chuffey were partakers
of it. Then, looking steadfastly at his father, and stopping now and
then to carry a spoonful of tea to his lips, he proceeded in the same
tone, thus:
'Want, indeed! You're a nice old man to be talking of want at this time
of day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare! There isn't
time? No, I should hope not. But you'd live to be a couple of hundred if
you could; and after all be discontented. I know you!'
The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr Jonas
shook his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a loftier
position, went on to argue the point on high moral grounds.
'If you're in such a state of mind as that,' he grumbled, but in the
same subdued key, 'why don't you make over your property? Buy an annuity
cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else
that watches the speculation. But no, that wouldn't suit YOU. That would
be natural conduct to your own son, and you like to be unnatural, and to
keep him out of his rights. Why, I should be ashamed of myself if I was
you, and glad to hide my head in the what you may call it.'
Possibly this general phrase supplied the place of grave, or tomb,
or sepulchre, or cemetery, or mausoleum, or other such word which the
filial tenderness of Mr Jonas made him delicate of pronouncing. He
pursued the theme no further; for Chuffey, somehow discovering, from
his old corner by the fireside, that Anthony was in the attitude of a
listener, and that Jonas appeared to be speaking, suddenly cried out,
like one inspired:
'He is your own son, Mr Chuzzlewit. Your own son, sir!'
Old Chuffey little suspected what depth of application these words had,
or that, in the bitter satire which they bore, they might have sunk into
the old man's very soul, could he have known what words here hanging on
his own son's lips, or what was passing in his thoughts. But the voice
diverted the current of Anthony's reflections, and roused him.
'Yes, yes, Chuffey, Jonas is a chip of the old block. It is a very
old block, now, Chuffey,' said the old man, with a strange look of
discomposure.
'Precious old,' assented Jonas
'No, no, no,' said Chuffey. 'No, Mr Chuzzlewit. Not old at all, sir.'
'Oh! He's worse than ever, you know!' cried Jonas, quite disgusted.
'Upon my soul, father, he's getting too bad. Hold your tongue, will
you?'
'He says you're wrong!' cried Anthony to the old clerk.
'Tut, tut!' was Chuffey's answer. 'I know better. I say HE'S wrong.
I say HE'S wrong. He's a boy. That's what he is. So are you, Mr
Chuzzlewit--a kind of boy. Ha! ha! ha! You're quite a boy to many I have
known; you're a boy to me; you're a boy to hundreds of us. Don't mind
him!'
With which extraordinary speech--for in the case of Chuffey this was a
burst of eloquence without a parallel--the poor old shadow drew through
his palsied arm his master's hand, and held it there, with his own
folded upon it, as if he would defend him.
'I grow deafer every day, Chuff,' said Anthony, with as much softness of
manner, or, to describe it more correctly, with as little hardness as he
was capable of expressing.
'No, no,' cried Chuffey. 'No, you don't. What if you did? I've been deaf
this twenty year.'
'I grow blinder, too,' said the old man, shaking his head.
'That's a good sign!' cried Chuffey. 'Ha! ha! The best sign in the
world! You saw too well before.'
He patted Anthony upon the hand as one might comfort a child, and
drawing the old man's arm still further through his own, shook his
trembling fingers towards the spot where Jonas sat, as though he would
wave him off. But, Anthony remaining quite still and silent, he relaxed
his hold by slow degrees and lapsed into his usual niche in the corner;
merely putting forth his hand at intervals and touching his old employer
gently on the coat, as with the design of assuring himself that he was
yet beside him.
Mr Jonas was so very much amazed by these proceedings that he could do
nothing but stare at the two old men, until Chuffey had fallen into his
usual state, and Anthony had sunk into a doze; when he gave some vent
to his emotions by going close up to the former personage, and making as
though he would, in vulgar parlance, 'punch his head.'
'They've been carrying on this game,' thought Jonas in a brown study,
'for the last two or three weeks. I never saw my father take so much
notice of him as he has in that time. What! You're legacy hunting, are
you, Mister Chuff? Eh?'
But Chuffey was as little conscious of the thought as of the bodily
advance of Mr Jonas's clenched fist, which hovered fondly about his ear.
When he had scowled at him to his heart's content, Jonas took the candle
from the table, and walking into the glass office, produced a bunch of
keys from his pocket. With one of these he opened a secret drawer in the
desk; peeping stealthily out, as he did so, to be certain that the two
old men were still before the fire.
'All as right as ever,' said Jonas, propping the lid of the desk open
with his forehead, and unfolding a paper. 'Here's the will, Mister
Chuff. Thirty pound a year for your maintenance, old boy, and all the
rest to his only son, Jonas. You needn't trouble yourself to be too
affectionate. You won't get anything by it. What's that?'
It WAS startling, certainly. A face on the other side of the glass
partition looking curiously in; and not at him but at the paper in his
hand. For the eyes were attentively cast down upon the writing, and were
swiftly raised when he cried out. Then they met his own, and were as the
eyes of Mr Pecksniff.
Suffering the lid of the desk to fall with a loud noise, but not
forgetting even then to lock it, Jonas, pale and breathless, gazed upon
this phantom. It moved, opened the door, and walked in.
'What's the matter?' cried Jonas, falling back. 'Who is it? Where do you
come from? What do you want?'
'Matter!' cried the voice of Mr Pecksniff, as Pecksniff in the flesh
smiled amiably upon him. 'The matter, Mr Jonas!'
'What are you prying and peering about here for?' said Jonas, angrily.
'What do you mean by coming up to town in this way, and taking one
unawares? It's precious odd a man can't read the--the newspaper--in his
own office without being startled out of his wits by people coming in
without notice. Why didn't you knock at the door?'
'So I did, Mr Jonas,' answered Pecksniff, 'but no one heard me. I was
curious,' he added in his gentle way as he laid his hand upon the young
man's shoulder, 'to find out what part of the newspaper interested you
so much; but the glass was too dim and dirty.'
Jonas glanced in haste at the partition. Well. It wasn't very clean. So
far he spoke the truth.
'Was it poetry now?' said Mr Pecksniff, shaking the forefinger of his
right hand with an air of cheerful banter. 'Or was it politics? Or was
it the price of stock? The main chance, Mr Jonas, the main chance, I
suspect.'
'You ain't far from the truth,' answered Jonas, recovering himself and
snuffing the candle; 'but how the deuce do you come to be in London
again? Ecod! it's enough to make a man stare, to see a fellow looking at
him all of a sudden, who he thought was sixty or seventy mile away.'
'So it is,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'No doubt of it, my dear Mr Jonas. For
while the human mind is constituted as it is--'
'Oh, bother the human mind,' interrupted Jonas with impatience 'what
have you come up for?'
'A little matter of business,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'which has arisen
quite unexpectedly.'
'Oh!' cried Jonas, 'is that all? Well. Here's father in the next room.
Hallo father, here's Pecksniff! He gets more addle-pated every day
he lives, I do believe,' muttered Jonas, shaking his honoured parent
roundly. 'Don't I tell you Pecksniff's here, stupid-head?'
The combined effects of the shaking and this loving remonstrance soon
awoke the old man, who gave Mr Pecksniff a chuckling welcome which was
attributable in part to his being glad to see that gentleman, and in
part to his unfading delight in the recollection of having called him a
hypocrite. As Mr Pecksniff had not yet taken tea (indeed he had, but an
hour before, arrived in London) the remains of the late collation, with
a rasher of bacon, were served up for his entertainment; and as Mr Jonas
had a business appointment in the next street, he stepped out to keep
it; promising to return before Mr Pecksniff could finish his repast.
'And now, my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff to Anthony; 'now that we
are alone, pray tell me what I can do for you. I say alone, because I
believe that our dear friend Mr Chuffey is, metaphysically speaking,
a--shall I say a dummy?' asked Mr Pecksniff with his sweetest smile, and
his head very much on one side.
'He neither hears us,' replied Anthony, 'nor sees us.'
'Why, then,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I will be bold to say, with the utmost
sympathy for his afflictions, and the greatest admiration of those
excellent qualities which do equal honour to his head and to his heart,
that he is what is playfully termed a dummy. You were going to observe,
my dear sir--?'
'I was not going to make any observation that I know of,' replied the
old man.
'I was,' said Mr Pecksniff, mildly.
'Oh! YOU were? What was it?'
'That I never,' said Mr Pecksniff, previously rising to see that the
door was shut, and arranging his chair when he came back, so that it
could not be opened in the least without his immediately becoming aware
of the circumstance; 'that I never in my life was so astonished as by
the receipt of your letter yesterday. That you should do me the honour
to wish to take counsel with me on any matter, amazed me; but that you
should desire to do so, to the exclusion even of Mr Jonas, showed an
amount of confidence in one to whom you had done a verbal injury--merely
a verbal injury, you were anxious to repair--which gratified, which
moved, which overcame me.'
He was always a glib speaker, but he delivered this short address very
glibly; having been at some pains to compose it outside the coach.
Although he paused for a reply, and truly said that he was there at
Anthony's request, the old man sat gazing at him in profound silence and
with a perfectly blank face. Nor did he seem to have the least desire or
impulse to pursue the conversation, though Mr Pecksniff looked towards
the door, and pulled out his watch, and gave him many other hints that
their time was short, and Jonas, if he kept his word, would soon return.
But the strangest incident in all this strange behaviour was, that of a
sudden, in a moment, so swiftly that it was impossible to trace how,
or to observe any process of change, his features fell into their old
expression, and he cried, striking his hand passionately upon the table
as if no interval at all had taken place:
'Will you hold your tongue, sir, and let me speak?'
Mr Pecksniff deferred to him with a submissive bow; and said within
himself, 'I knew his hand was changed, and that his writing staggered. I
said so yesterday. Ahem! Dear me!'
'Jonas is sweet upon your daughter, Pecksniff,' said the old man, in his
usual tone.
'We spoke of that, if you remember, sir, at Mrs Todgers's,' replied the
courteous architect.
'You needn't speak so loud,' retorted Anthony. 'I'm not so deaf as
that.'
Mr Pecksniff had certainly raised his voice pretty high; not so much
because he thought Anthony was deaf, as because he felt convinced that
his perceptive faculties were waxing dim; but this quick resentment of
his considerate behaviour greatly disconcerted him, and, not knowing
what tack to shape his course upon, he made another inclination of the
head, yet more submissive that the last.
'I have said,' repeated the old man, 'that Jonas is sweet upon your
daughter.'
'A charming girl, sir,' murmured Mr Pecksniff, seeing that he waited
for an answer. 'A dear girl, Mr Chuzzlewit, though I say it, who should
not.'
'You know better,' cried the old man, advancing his weazen face at least
a yard, and starting forward in his chair to do it. 'You lie! What, you
WILL be a hypocrite, will you?'
'My good sir,' Mr Pecksniff began.
'Don't call me a good sir,' retorted Anthony, 'and don't claim to be
one yourself. If your daughter was what you would have me believe, she
wouldn't do for Jonas. Being what she is, I think she will. He might be
deceived in a wife. She might run riot, contract debts, and waste his
substance. Now when I am dead--'
His face altered so horribly as he said the word, that Mr Pecksniff
really was fain to look another way.
'--It will be worse for me to know of such doings, than if I was alive;
for to be tormented for getting that together, which even while I suffer
for its acquisition, is flung into the very kennels of the streets,
would be insupportable torture. No,' said the old man, hoarsely, 'let
that be saved at least; let there be something gained, and kept fast
hold of, when so much is lost.'
'My dear Mr Chuzzlewit,' said Pecksniff, 'these are unwholesome fancies;
quite unnecessary, sir, quite uncalled for, I am sure. The truth is, my
dear sir, that you are not well!'
'Not dying though!' cried Anthony, with something like the snarl of a
wild animal. 'Not yet! There are years of life in me. Why, look at him,'
pointing to his feeble clerk. 'Death has no right to leave him standing,
and to mow me down!'
Mr Pecksniff was so much afraid of the old man, and so completely taken
aback by the state in which he found him, that he had not even presence
of mind enough to call up a scrap of morality from the great storehouse
within his own breast. Therefore he stammered out that no doubt it was,
in fairness and decency, Mr Chuffey's turn to expire; and that from
all he had heard of Mr Chuffey, and the little he had the pleasure of
knowing of that gentleman, personally, he felt convinced in his own
mind that he would see the propriety of expiring with as little delay as
possible.
'Come here!' said the old man, beckoning him to draw nearer. 'Jonas
will be my heir, Jonas will be rich, and a great catch for you. You know
that. Jonas is sweet upon your daughter.'
'I know that too,' thought Mr Pecksniff, 'for you have said it often
enough.'
'He might get more money than with her,' said the old man, 'but she
will help him to take care of what they have. She is not too young or
heedless, and comes of a good hard griping stock. But don't you play
too fine a game. She only holds him by a thread; and if you draw it too
tight (I know his temper) it'll snap. Bind him when he's in the mood,
Pecksniff; bind him. You're too deep. In your way of leading him on,
you'll leave him miles behind. Bah, you man of oil, have I no eyes to
see how you have angled with him from the first?'
'Now I wonder,' thought Mr Pecksniff, looking at him with a wistful
face, 'whether this is all he has to say?'
Old Anthony rubbed his hands and muttered to himself; complained again
that he was cold; drew his chair before the fire; and, sitting with his
back to Mr Pecksniff, and his chin sunk down upon his breast, was, in
another minute, quite regardless or forgetful of his presence.
Uncouth and unsatisfactory as this short interview had been, it had
furnished Mr Pecksniff with a hint which, supposing nothing further
were imparted to him, repaid the journey up and home again. For the good
gentleman had never (for want of an opportunity) dived into the depths
of Mr Jonas's nature; and any recipe for catching such a son-in-law
(much more one written on a leaf out of his own father's book) was worth
the having. In order that he might lose no chance of improving so fair
an opportunity by allowing Anthony to fall asleep before he had finished
all he had to say, Mr Pecksniff, in the disposal of the refreshments on
the table, a work to which he now applied himself in earnest, resorted
to many ingenious contrivances for attracting his attention; such as
coughing, sneezing, clattering the teacups, sharpening the knives,
dropping the loaf, and so forth. But all in vain, for Mr Jonas returned,
and Anthony had said no more.
'What! My father asleep again?' he cried, as he hung up his hat, and
cast a look at him. 'Ah! and snoring. Only hear!'
'He snores very deep,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'Snores deep?' repeated Jonas. 'Yes; let him alone for that. He'll snore
for six, at any time.'
'Do you know, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff, 'that I think your father
is--don't let me alarm you--breaking?'
'Oh, is he though?' replied Jonas, with a shake of the head which
expressed the closeness of his dutiful observation. 'Ecod, you don't
know how tough he is. He ain't upon the move yet.'
'It struck me that he was changed, both in his appearance and manner,'
said Mr Pecksniff.
'That's all you know about it,' returned Jonas, seating himself with a
melancholy air. 'He never was better than he is now. How are they all at
home? How's Charity?'
'Blooming, Mr Jonas, blooming.'
'And the other one; how's she?'
'Volatile trifler!' said Mr Pecksniff, fondly musing. 'She is well, she
is well. Roving from parlour to bedroom, Mr Jonas, like a bee, skimming
from post to pillar, like the butterfly; dipping her young beak into our
currant wine, like the humming-bird! Ah! were she a little less giddy
than she is; and had she but the sterling qualities of Cherry, my young
friend!'
'Is she so very giddy, then?' asked Jonas.
'Well, well!' said Mr Pecksniff, with great feeling; 'let me not be hard
upon my child. Beside her sister Cherry she appears so. A strange noise
that, Mr Jonas!'
'Something wrong in the clock, I suppose,' said Jonas, glancing towards
it. 'So the other one ain't your favourite, ain't she?'
The fond father was about to reply, and had already summoned into his
face a look of most intense sensibility, when the sound he had already
noticed was repeated.
'Upon my word, Mr Jonas, that is a very extraordinary clock,' said
Pecksniff.
It would have been, if it had made the noise which startled them; but
another kind of time-piece was fast running down, and from that the
sound proceeded. A scream from Chuffey, rendered a hundred times more
loud and formidable by his silent habits, made the house ring from roof
to cellar; and, looking round, they saw Anthony Chuzzlewit extended on
the floor, with the old clerk upon his knees beside him.
He had fallen from his chair in a fit, and lay there, battling for each
gasp of breath, with every shrivelled vein and sinew starting in its
place, as if it were bent on bearing witness to his age, and sternly
pleading with Nature against his recovery. It was frightful to see how
the principle of life, shut up within his withered frame, fought like a
strong devil, mad to be released, and rent its ancient prison-house.
A young man in the fullness of his vigour, struggling with so much
strength of desperation, would have been a dismal sight; but an old,
old, shrunken body, endowed with preternatural might, and giving the lie
in every motion of its every limb and joint to its enfeebled aspect, was
a hideous spectacle indeed.
They raised him up, and fetched a surgeon with all haste, who bled the
patient and applied some remedies; but the fits held him so long that
it was past midnight when they got him--quiet now, but quite unconscious
and exhausted--into bed.
'Don't go,' said Jonas, putting his ashy lips to Mr Pecksniff's ear and
whispered across the bed. 'It was a mercy you were present when he was
taken ill. Some one might have said it was my doing.'
'YOUR doing!' cried Mr Pecksniff.
'I don't know but they might,' he replied, wiping the moisture from his
white face. 'People say such things. How does he look now?'
Mr Pecksniff shook his head.
'I used to joke, you know,' said. Jonas: 'but I--I never wished him
dead. Do you think he's very bad?'
'The doctor said he was. You heard,' was Mr Pecksniff's answer.
'Ah! but he might say that to charge us more, in case of his getting
well' said Jonas. 'You mustn't go away, Pecksniff. Now it's come to
this, I wouldn't be without a witness for a thousand pound.'
Chuffey said not a word, and heard not a word. He had sat himself down
in a chair at the bedside, and there he remained, motionless; except
that he sometimes bent his head over the pillow, and seemed to listen.
He never changed in this. Though once in the dreary night Mr Pecksniff,
having dozed, awoke with a confused impression that he had heard
him praying, and strangely mingling figures--not of speech, but
arithmetic--with his broken prayers.
Jonas sat there, too, all night; not where his father could have seen
him, had his consciousness returned, but hiding, as it were, behind him,
and only reading how he looked, in Mr Pecksniff's eyes. HE, the coarse
upstart, who had ruled the house so long--that craven cur, who was
afraid to move, and shook so, that his very shadow fluttered on the
wall!
It was broad, bright, stirring day when, leaving the old clerk to watch
him, they went down to breakfast. People hurried up and down the street;
windows and doors were opened; thieves and beggars took their usual
posts; workmen bestirred themselves; tradesmen set forth their shops;
bailiffs and constables were on the watch; all kinds of human creatures
strove, in their several ways, as hard to live, as the one sick old
man who combated for every grain of sand in his fast-emptying glass, as
eagerly as if it were an empire.
'If anything happens Pecksniff,' said Jonas, 'you must promise me to
stop here till it's all over. You shall see that I do what's right.'
'I know that you will do what's right, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff.
'Yes, yes, but I won't be doubted. No one shall have it in his power to
say a syllable against me,' he returned. 'I know how people will talk.
Just as if he wasn't old, or I had the secret of keeping him alive!'
Mr Pecksniff promised that he would remain, if circumstances should
render it, in his esteemed friend's opinion, desirable; they were
finishing their meal in silence, when suddenly an apparition stood
before them, so ghastly to the view that Jonas shrieked aloud, and both
recoiled in horror.
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 FILIAL PIETY OF GOOD MR JONAS
Mr Pecksniff was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit had said
'Spare no expense.' Mankind is evil in its thoughts and in its base
constructions, and Jonas was resolved it should not have an inch to
stretch into an ell against him. It never should be charged upon his
father's son that he had grudged the money for his father's funeral.
Hence, until the obsequies should be concluded, Jonas had taken for his
motto 'Spend, and spare not!'
Mr Pecksniff had been to the undertaker, and was now upon his way to
another officer in the train of mourning--a female functionary, a nurse,
and watcher, and performer of nameless offices about the persons of the
dead--whom he had recommended. Her name, as Mr Pecksniff gathered from
a scrap of writing in his hand, was Gamp; her residence in Kingsgate
Street, High Holborn. So Mr Pecksniff, in a hackney cab, was rattling
over Holborn stones, in quest of Mrs Gamp.
This lady lodged at a bird-fancier's, next door but one to the
celebrated mutton-pie shop, and directly opposite to the original
cat's-meat warehouse; the renown of which establishments was duly
heralded on their respective fronts. It was a little house, and this was
the more convenient; for Mrs Gamp being, in her highest walk of art,
a monthly nurse, or, as her sign-board boldly had it, 'Midwife,' and
lodging in the first-floor front, was easily assailable at night by
pebbles, walking-sticks, and fragments of tobacco-pipe; all much more
efficacious than the street-door knocker, which was so constructed as
to wake the street with ease, and even spread alarms of fire in Holborn,
without making the smallest impression on the premises to which it was
addressed.
It chanced on this particular occasion, that Mrs Gamp had been up all
the previous night, in attendance upon a ceremony to which the usage of
gossips has given that name which expresses, in two syllables, the curse
pronounced on Adam. It chanced that Mrs Gamp had not been regularly
engaged, but had been called in at a crisis, in consequence of her great
repute, to assist another professional lady with her advice; and thus it
happened that, all points of interest in the case being over, Mrs Gamp
had come home again to the bird-fancier's and gone to bed. So when Mr
Pecksniff drove up in the hackney cab, Mrs Gamp's curtains were drawn
close, and Mrs Gamp was fast asleep behind them.
If the bird-fancier had been at home, as he ought to have been, there
would have been no great harm in this; but he was out, and his shop was
closed. The shutters were down certainly; and in every pane of glass
there was at least one tiny bird in a tiny bird-cage, twittering and
hopping his little ballet of despair, and knocking his head against the
roof; while one unhappy goldfinch who lived outside a red villa with
his name on the door, drew the water for his own drinking, and mutely
appealed to some good man to drop a farthing's-worth of poison in it.
Still, the door was shut. Mr Pecksniff tried the latch, and shook it,
causing a cracked bell inside to ring most mournfully; but no one came.
The bird-fancier was an easy shaver also, and a fashionable hair-dresser
also, and perhaps he had been sent for, express, from the court end of
the town, to trim a lord, or cut and curl a lady; but however that
might be, there, upon his own ground, he was not; nor was there any more
distinct trace of him to assist the imagination of an inquirer, than
a professional print or emblem of his calling (much favoured in the
trade), representing a hair-dresser of easy manners curling a lady
of distinguished fashion, in the presence of a patent upright grand
pianoforte.
Noting these circumstances, Mr Pecksniff, in the innocence of his heart,
applied himself to the knocker; but at the first double knock every
window in the street became alive with female heads; and before he could
repeat the performance whole troops of married ladies (some about to
trouble Mrs Gamp themselves very shortly) came flocking round the steps,
all crying out with one accord, and with uncommon interest, 'Knock at
the winder, sir, knock at the winder. Lord bless you, don't lose no more
time than you can help--knock at the winder!'
Acting upon this suggestion, and borrowing the driver's whip for the
purpose, Mr Pecksniff soon made a commotion among the first floor
flower-pots, and roused Mrs Gamp, whose voice--to the great satisfaction
of the matrons--was heard to say, 'I'm coming.'
'He's as pale as a muffin,' said one lady, in allusion to Mr Pecksniff.
'So he ought to be, if he's the feelings of a man,' observed another.
A third lady (with her arms folded) said she wished he had chosen any
other time for fetching Mrs Gamp, but it always happened so with HER.
It gave Mr Pecksniff much uneasiness to find, from these remarks, that
he was supposed to have come to Mrs Gamp upon an errand touching--not
the close of life, but the other end. Mrs Gamp herself was under the
same impression, for, throwing open the window, she cried behind the
curtains, as she hastily attired herself--
'Is it Mrs Perkins?'
'No!' returned Mr Pecksniff, sharply. 'Nothing of the sort.'
'What, Mr Whilks!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'Don't say it's you, Mr Whilks, and
that poor creetur Mrs Whilks with not even a pincushion ready. Don't say
it's you, Mr Whilks!'
'It isn't Mr Whilks,' said Pecksniff. 'I don't know the man. Nothing
of the kind. A gentleman is dead; and some person being wanted in the
house, you have been recommended by Mr Mould the undertaker.'
As she was by this time in a condition to appear, Mrs Gamp, who had
a face for all occasions, looked out of the window with her mourning
countenance, and said she would be down directly. But the matrons took
it very ill that Mr Pecksniff's mission was of so unimportant a kind;
and the lady with her arms folded rated him in good round terms,
signifying that she would be glad to know what he meant by terrifying
delicate females 'with his corpses;' and giving it as her opinion that
he was quite ugly enough to know better. The other ladies were not at
all behind-hand in expressing similar sentiments; and the children, of
whom some scores had now collected, hooted and defied Mr Pecksniff quite
savagely. So when Mrs Gamp appeared, the unoffending gentleman was glad
to hustle her with very little ceremony into the cabriolet, and drive
off, overwhelmed with popular execration.
Mrs Gamp had a large bundle with her, a pair of pattens, and a species
of gig umbrella; the latter article in colour like a faded leaf, except
where a circular patch of a lively blue had been dexterously let in at
the top. She was much flurried by the haste she had made, and laboured
under the most erroneous views of cabriolets, which she appeared
to confound with mail-coaches or stage-wagons, inasmuch as she was
constantly endeavouring for the first half mile to force her luggage
through the little front window, and clamouring to the driver to 'put
it in the boot.' When she was disabused of this idea, her whole being
resolved itself into an absorbing anxiety about her pattens, with which
she played innumerable games at quoits on Mr Pecksniff's legs. It was
not until they were close upon the house of mourning that she had enough
composure to observe--
'And so the gentleman's dead, sir! Ah! The more's the pity.' She didn't
even know his name. 'But it's what we must all come to. It's as certain
as being born, except that we can't make our calculations as exact. Ah!
Poor dear!'
She was a fat old woman, this Mrs Gamp, with a husky voice and a moist
eye, which she had a remarkable power of turning up, and only showing
the white of it. Having very little neck, it cost her some trouble to
look over herself, if one may say so, at those to whom she talked. She
wore a very rusty black gown, rather the worse for snuff, and a shawl
and bonnet to correspond. In these dilapidated articles of dress she
had, on principle, arrayed herself, time out of mind, on such occasions
as the present; for this at once expressed a decent amount of veneration
for the deceased, and invited the next of kin to present her with a
fresher suit of weeds; an appeal so frequently successful, that the very
fetch and ghost of Mrs Gamp, bonnet and all, might be seen hanging up,
any hour in the day, in at least a dozen of the second-hand clothes
shops about Holborn. The face of Mrs Gamp--the nose in particular--was
somewhat red and swollen, and it was difficult to enjoy her society
without becoming conscious of a smell of spirits. Like most persons who
have attained to great eminence in their profession, she took to hers
very kindly; insomuch that, setting aside her natural predilections as
a woman, she went to a lying-in or a laying-out with equal zest and
relish.
'Ah!' repeated Mrs Gamp; for it was always a safe sentiment in cases of
mourning. 'Ah dear! When Gamp was summoned to his long home, and I see
him a-lying in Guy's Hospital with a penny-piece on each eye, and his
wooden leg under his left arm, I thought I should have fainted away. But
I bore up.'
If certain whispers current in the Kingsgate Street circles had any
truth in them, she had indeed borne up surprisingly; and had exerted
such uncommon fortitude as to dispose of Mr Gamp's remains for the
benefit of science. But it should be added, in fairness, that this had
happened twenty years before; and that Mr and Mrs Gamp had long been
separated on the ground of incompatibility of temper in their drink.
'You have become indifferent since then, I suppose?' said Mr Pecksniff.
'Use is second nature, Mrs Gamp.'
'You may well say second nater, sir,' returned that lady. 'One's first
ways is to find sich things a trial to the feelings, and so is one's
lasting custom. If it wasn't for the nerve a little sip of liquor gives
me (I never was able to do more than taste it), I never could go through
with what I sometimes has to do. "Mrs Harris," I says, at the very last
case as ever I acted in, which it was but a young person, "Mrs Harris,"
I says, "leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take
none, but let me put my lips to it when I am so dispoged, and then I
will do what I'm engaged to do, according to the best of my ability."
"Mrs Gamp," she says, in answer, "if ever there was a sober creetur to
be got at eighteen pence a day for working people, and three and six for
gentlefolks--night watching,"' said Mrs Gamp with emphasis, '"being a
extra charge--you are that inwallable person." "Mrs Harris," I says to
her, "don't name the charge, for if I could afford to lay all my feller
creeturs out for nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears
'em. But what I always says to them as has the management of matters,
Mrs Harris"'--here she kept her eye on Mr Pecksniff--'"be they gents or
be they ladies, is, don't ask me whether I won't take none, or whether I
will, but leave the bottle on the chimley-piece, and let me put my lips
to it when I am so dispoged."'
The conclusion of this affecting narrative brought them to the house. In
the passage they encountered Mr Mould the undertaker; a little elderly
gentleman, bald, and in a suit of black; with a notebook in his hand,
a massive gold watch-chain dangling from his fob, and a face in which a
queer attempt at melancholy was at odds with a smirk of satisfaction; so
that he looked as a man might, who, in the very act of smacking his lips
over choice old wine, tried to make believe it was physic.
'Well, Mrs Gamp, and how are YOU, Mrs Gamp?' said this gentleman, in a
voice as soft as his step.
'Pretty well, I thank you, sir,' dropping a curtsey.
'You'll be very particular here, Mrs Gamp. This is not a common case,
Mrs Gamp. Let everything be very nice and comfortable, Mrs Gamp, if you
please,' said the undertaker, shaking his head with a solemn air.
'It shall be, sir,' she replied, curtseying again. 'You knows me of old,
sir, I hope.'
'I hope so, too, Mrs Gamp,' said the undertaker, 'and I think so also.'
Mrs Gamp curtseyed again. 'This is one of the most impressive cases,
sir,' he continued, addressing Mr Pecksniff, 'that I have seen in the
whole course of my professional experience.'
'Indeed, Mr Mould!' cried that gentleman.
'Such affectionate regret, sir, I never saw. There is no limitation,
there is positively NO limitation'--opening his eyes wide, and standing
on tiptoe--'in point of expense! I have orders, sir, to put on my whole
establishment of mutes; and mutes come very dear, Mr Pecksniff; not to
mention their drink. To provide silver-plated handles of the very best
description, ornamented with angels' heads from the most expensive
dies. To be perfectly profuse in feathers. In short, sir, to turn out
something absolutely gorgeous.'
'My friend Mr Jonas is an excellent man,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'I have seen a good deal of what is filial in my time, sir,' retorted
Mould, 'and what is unfilial too. It is our lot. We come into the
knowledge of those secrets. But anything so filial as this; anything so
honourable to human nature; so calculated to reconcile all of us to the
world we live in; never yet came under my observation. It only
proves, sir, what was so forcibly observed by the lamented theatrical
poet--buried at Stratford--that there is good in everything.'
'It is very pleasant to hear you say so, Mr Mould,' observed Pecksniff.
'You are very kind, sir. And what a man Mr Chuzzlewit was, sir! Ah! what
a man he was. You may talk of your lord mayors,' said Mould, waving his
hand at the public in general, 'your sheriffs, your common councilmen,
your trumpery; but show me a man in this city who is worthy to walk
in the shoes of the departed Mr Chuzzlewit. No, no,' cried Mould, with
bitter sarcasm. 'Hang 'em up, hang 'em up; sole 'em and heel 'em, and
have 'em ready for his son against he's old enough to wear 'em; but
don't try 'em on yourselves, for they won't fit you. We knew him,' said
Mould, in the same biting vein, as he pocketed his note-book; 'we
knew him, and are not to be caught with chaff. Mr Pecksniff, sir, good
morning.'
Mr Pecksniff returned the compliment; and Mould, sensible of having
distinguished himself, was going away with a brisk smile, when he
fortunately remembered the occasion. Quickly becoming depressed again,
he sighed; looked into the crown of his hat, as if for comfort; put it
on without finding any; and slowly departed.
Mrs Gamp and Mr Pecksniff then ascended the staircase; and the former,
having been shown to the chamber in which all that remained of Anthony
Chuzzlewit lay covered up, with but one loving heart, and that a halting
one, to mourn it, left the latter free to enter the darkened room below,
and rejoin Mr Jonas, from whom he had now been absent nearly two hours.
He found that example to bereaved sons, and pattern in the eyes of all
performers of funerals, musing over a fragment of writing-paper on the
desk, and scratching figures on it with a pen. The old man's chair, and
hat, and walking-stick, were removed from their accustomed places, and
put out of sight; the window-blinds as yellow as November fogs, were
drawn down close; Jonas himself was so subdued, that he could scarcely
be heard to speak, and only seen to walk across the room.
'Pecksniff,' he said, in a whisper, 'you shall have the regulation of
it all, mind! You shall be able to tell anybody who talks about it that
everything was correctly and nicely done. There isn't any one you'd like
to ask to the funeral, is there?'
'No, Mr Jonas, I think not.'
'Because if there is, you know,' said Jonas, 'ask him. We don't want to
make a secret of it.'
'No,' repeated Mr Pecksniff, after a little reflection. 'I am not
the less obliged to you on that account, Mr Jonas, for your liberal
hospitality; but there really is no one.'
'Very well,' said Jonas; 'then you, and I, and Chuffey, and the doctor,
will be just a coachful. We'll have the doctor, Pecksniff, because he
knows what was the matter with him, and that it couldn't be helped.'
'Where is our dear friend, Mr Chuffey?' asked Pecksniff, looking round
the chamber, and winking both his eyes at once--for he was overcome by
his feelings.
But here he was interrupted by Mrs Gamp, who, divested of her bonnet and
shawl, came sidling and bridling into the room; and with some sharpness
demanded a conference outside the door with Mr Pecksniff.
'You may say whatever you wish to say here, Mrs Gamp,' said that
gentleman, shaking his head with a melancholy expression.
'It is not much as I have to say when people is a-mourning for the dead
and gone,' said Mrs Gamp; 'but what I have to say is TO the pint and
purpose, and no offence intended, must be so considered. I have been at
a many places in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows what my duties
is, and how the same should be performed; in course, if I did not, it
would be very strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as Mr Mould,
which has undertook the highest families in this land, and given every
satisfaction, so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a deal of
trouble my own self,' said Mrs Gamp, laying greater and greater stress
upon her words, 'and I can feel for them as has their feelings tried,
but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan, and consequently cannot suffer
Spies to be set over me.'
Before it was possible that an answer could be returned, Mrs Gamp,
growing redder in the face, went on to say:
'It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live when you are left a widder
woman; particular when your feelings works upon you to that extent that
you often find yourself a-going out on terms which is a certain loss,
and never can repay. But in whatever way you earns your bread, you may
have rules and regulations of your own which cannot be broke through.
Some people,' said Mrs Gamp, again entrenching herself behind her
strong point, as if it were not assailable by human ingenuity, 'may be
Rooshans, and others may be Prooshans; they are born so, and will please
themselves. Them which is of other naturs thinks different.'
'If I understand this good lady,' said Mr Pecksniff, turning to Jonas,
'Mr Chuffey is troublesome to her. Shall I fetch him down?'
'Do,' said Jonas. 'I was going to tell you he was up there, when she
came in. I'd go myself and bring him down, only--only I'd rather you
went, if you don't mind.'
Mr Pecksniff promptly departed, followed by Mrs Gamp, who, seeing that
he took a bottle and glass from the cupboard, and carried it in his
hand, was much softened.
'I am sure,' she said, 'that if it wasn't for his own happiness, I
should no more mind him being there, poor dear, than if he was a
fly. But them as isn't used to these things, thinks so much of 'em
afterwards, that it's a kindness to 'em not to let 'em have their wish.
And even,' said Mrs Gamp, probably in reference to some flowers of
speech she had already strewn on Mr Chuffey, 'even if one calls 'em
names, it's only done to rouse 'em.'
Whatever epithets she had bestowed on the old clerk, they had not
roused HIM. He sat beside the bed, in the chair he had occupied all the
previous night, with his hands folded before him, and his head bowed
down; and neither looked up, on their entrance, nor gave any sign of
consciousness, until Mr Pecksniff took him by the arm, when he meekly
rose.
'Three score and ten,' said Chuffey, 'ought and carry seven. Some men
are so strong that they live to four score--four times ought's an ought,
four times two's an eight--eighty. Oh! why--why--why didn't he live to
four times ought's an ought, and four times two's an eight, eighty?'
'Ah! what a wale of grief!' cried Mrs Gamp, possessing herself of the
bottle and glass.
'Why did he die before his poor old crazy servant?' said Chuffey,
clasping his hands and looking up in anguish. 'Take him from me, and
what remains?'
'Mr Jonas,' returned Pecksniff, 'Mr Jonas, my good friend.'
'I loved him,' cried the old man, weeping. 'He was good to me. We learnt
Tare and Tret together at school. I took him down once, six boys in the
arithmetic class. God forgive me! Had I the heart to take him down!'
'Come, Mr Chuffey,' said Pecksniff. 'Come with me. Summon up your
fortitude, Mr Chuffey.'
'Yes, I will,' returned the old clerk. 'Yes. I'll sum up my forty--How
many times forty--Oh, Chuzzlewit and Son--Your own son Mr Chuzzlewit;
your own son, sir!'
He yielded to the hand that guided him, as he lapsed into this familiar
expression, and submitted to be led away. Mrs Gamp, with the bottle on
one knee, and the glass on the other, sat upon a stool, shaking her head
for a long time, until, in a moment of abstraction, she poured out
a dram of spirits, and raised it to her lips. It was succeeded by a
second, and by a third, and then her eyes--either in the sadness of
her reflections upon life and death, or in her admiration of the
liquor--were so turned up, as to be quite invisible. But she shook her
head still.
Poor Chuffey was conducted to his accustomed corner, and there he
remained, silent and quiet, save at long intervals, when he would rise,
and walk about the room, and wring his hands, or raise some strange and
sudden cry. For a whole week they all three sat about the hearth and
never stirred abroad. Mr Pecksniff would have walked out in the evening
time, but Mr Jonas was so averse to his being absent for a minute, that
he abandoned the idea, and so, from morning until night, they brooded
together in the dark room, without relief or occupation.
The weight of that which was stretched out, stiff and stark, in the
awful chamber above-stairs, so crushed and bore down Jonas, that he bent
beneath the load. During the whole long seven days and nights, he was
always oppressed and haunted by a dreadful sense of its presence in the
house. Did the door move, he looked towards it with a livid face and
starting eye, as if he fully believed that ghostly fingers clutched the
handle. Did the fire flicker in a draught of air, he glanced over his
shoulder, as almost dreading to behold some shrouded figure fanning and
flapping at it with its fearful dress. The lightest noise disturbed him;
and once, in the night, at the sound of a footstep overhead, he cried
out that the dead man was walking--tramp, tramp, tramp--about his
coffin.
He lay at night upon a mattress on the floor of the sitting-room; his
own chamber having been assigned to Mrs Gamp; and Mr Pecksniff was
similarly accommodated. The howling of a dog before the house, filled
him with a terror he could not disguise. He avoided the reflection in
the opposite windows of the light that burned above, as though it had
been an angry eye. He often, in every night, rose up from his fitful
sleep, and looked and longed for dawn; all directions and arrangements,
even to the ordering of their daily meals, he abandoned to Mr Pecksniff.
That excellent gentleman, deeming that the mourner wanted comfort, and
that high feeding was likely to do him infinite service, availed himself
of these opportunities to such good purpose, that they kept quite a
dainty table during this melancholy season; with sweetbreads, stewed
kidneys, oysters, and other such light viands for supper every night;
over which, and sundry jorums of hot punch, Mr Pecksniff delivered such
moral reflections and spiritual consolation as might have converted a
Heathen--especially if he had had but an imperfect acquaintance with the
English tongue.
Nor did Mr Pecksniff alone indulge in the creature comforts during
this sad time. Mrs Gamp proved to be very choice in her eating, and
repudiated hashed mutton with scorn. In her drinking too, she was very
punctual and particular, requiring a pint of mild porter at lunch, a
pint at dinner, half-a-pint as a species of stay or holdfast between
dinner and tea, and a pint of the celebrated staggering ale, or Real Old
Brighton Tipper, at supper; besides the bottle on the chimney-piece,
and such casual invitations to refresh herself with wine as the good
breeding of her employers might prompt them to offer. In like manner, Mr
Mould's men found it necessary to drown their grief, like a young kitten
in the morning of its existence, for which reason they generally fuddled
themselves before they began to do anything, lest it should make head
and get the better of them. In short, the whole of that strange week was
a round of dismal joviality and grim enjoyment; and every one, except
poor Chuffey, who came within the shadow of Anthony Chuzzlewit's grave,
feasted like a Ghoul.
At length the day of the funeral, pious and truthful ceremony that it
was, arrived. Mr Mould, with a glass of generous port between his eye
and the light, leaned against the desk in the little glass office with
his gold watch in his unoccupied hand, and conversed with Mrs Gamp; two
mutes were at the house-door, looking as mournful as could be reasonably
expected of men with such a thriving job in hand; the whole of Mr
Mould's establishment were on duty within the house or without; feathers
waved, horses snorted, silk and velvets fluttered; in a word, as Mr
Mould emphatically said, 'Everything that money could do was done.'
'And what can do more, Mrs Gamp?' exclaimed the undertaker as he emptied
his glass and smacked his lips.
'Nothing in the world, sir.'
'Nothing in the world,' repeated Mr Mould. 'You are right, Mrs Gamp.
Why do people spend more money'--here he filled his glass again--'upon a
death, Mrs Gamp, than upon a birth? Come, that's in your way; you ought
to know. How do you account for that now?'
'Perhaps it is because an undertaker's charges comes dearer than a
nurse's charges, sir,' said Mrs Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down her
new black dress with her hands.
'Ha, ha!' laughed Mr Mould. 'You have been breakfasting at somebody's
expense this morning, Mrs Gamp.' But seeing, by the aid of a little
shaving-glass which hung opposite, that he looked merry, he composed his
features and became sorrowful.
'Many's the time that I've not breakfasted at my own expense along of
your recommending, sir; and many's the time I hope to do the same in
time to come,' said Mrs Gamp, with an apologetic curtsey.
'So be it,' replied Mr Mould, 'please Providence. No, Mrs Gamp;
I'll tell you why it is. It's because the laying out of money with a
well-conducted establishment, where the thing is performed upon the
very best scale, binds the broken heart, and sheds balm upon the wounded
spirit. Hearts want binding, and spirits want balming when people die;
not when people are born. Look at this gentleman to-day; look at him.'
'An open-handed gentleman?' cried Mrs Gamp, with enthusiasm.
'No, no,' said the undertaker; 'not an open-handed gentleman in general,
by any means. There you mistake him; but an afflicted gentleman, an
affectionate gentleman, who knows what it is in the power of money to
do, in giving him relief, and in testifying his love and veneration for
the departed. It can give him,' said Mr Mould, waving his watch-chain
slowly round and round, so that he described one circle after every
item; 'it can give him four horses to each vehicle; it can give him
velvet trappings; it can give him drivers in cloth cloaks and top-boots;
it can give him the plumage of the ostrich, dyed black; it can give him
any number of walking attendants, dressed in the first style of funeral
fashion, and carrying batons tipped with brass; it can give him a
handsome tomb; it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey itself, if
he choose to invest it in such a purchase. Oh! do not let us say that
gold is dross, when it can buy such things as these, Mrs Gamp.'
'But what a blessing, sir,' said Mrs Gamp, 'that there are such as you,
to sell or let 'em out on hire!'
'Aye, Mrs Gamp, you are right,' rejoined the undertaker. 'We should
be an honoured calling. We do good by stealth, and blush to have it
mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation may I--even I,'
cried Mr Mould, 'have diffused among my fellow-creatures by means of my
four long-tailed prancers, never harnessed under ten pund ten!'
Mrs Gamp had begun to make a suitable reply, when she was interrupted
by the appearance of one of Mr Mould's assistants--his chief mourner in
fact--an obese person, with his waistcoat in closer connection with his
legs than is quite reconcilable with the established ideas of grace;
with that cast of feature which is figuratively called a bottle nose;
and with a face covered all over with pimples. He had been a tender
plant once upon a time, but from constant blowing in the fat atmosphere
of funerals, had run to seed.
'Well, Tacker,' said Mr Mould, 'is all ready below?'
'A beautiful show, sir,' rejoined Tacker. 'The horses are prouder and
fresher than ever I see 'em; and toss their heads, they do, as if they
knowed how much their plumes cost. One, two, three, four,' said Mr
Tacker, heaping that number of black cloaks upon his left arm.
'Is Tom there, with the cake and wine?' asked Mr Mould.
'Ready to come in at a moment's notice, sir,' said Tacker.
'Then,' rejoined Mr Mould, putting up his watch, and glancing at himself
in the little shaving-glass, that he might be sure his face had the
right expression on it; 'then I think we may proceed to business. Give
me the paper of gloves, Tacker. Ah, what a man he was! Ah, Tacker,
Tacker, what a man he was!'
Mr Tacker, who from his great experience in the performance of funerals,
would have made an excellent pantomime actor, winked at Mrs Gamp without
at all disturbing the gravity of his countenance, and followed his
master into the next room.
It was a great point with Mr Mould, and a part of his professional
tact, not to seem to know the doctor; though in reality they were near
neighbours, and very often, as in the present instance, worked together.
So he advanced to fit on his black kid gloves as if he had never seen
him in all his life; while the doctor, on his part, looked as distant
and unconscious as if he had heard and read of undertakers, and had
passed their shops, but had never before been brought into communication
with one.
'Gloves, eh?' said the doctor. 'Mr Pecksniff after you.'
'I couldn't think of it,' returned Mr Pecksniff.
'You are very good,' said the doctor, taking a pair. 'Well, sir, as I
was saying--I was called up to attend that case at about half-past one
o'clock. Cake and wine, eh? Which is port? Thank you.'
Mr Pecksniff took some also.
'At about half-past one o'clock in the morning, sir,' resumed the
doctor, 'I was called up to attend that case. At the first pull of
the night-bell I turned out, threw up the window, and put out my head.
Cloak, eh? Don't tie it too tight. That'll do.'
Mr Pecksniff having been likewise inducted into a similar garment, the
doctor resumed.
'And put out my head--hat, eh? My good friend, that is not mine. Mr
Pecksniff, I beg your pardon, but I think we have unintentionally made
an exchange. Thank you. Well, sir, I was going to tell you--'
'We are quite ready,' interrupted Mould in a low voice.
'Ready, eh?' said the doctor. 'Very good, Mr Pecksniff, I'll take an
opportunity of relating the rest in the coach. It's rather curious.
Ready, eh? No rain, I hope?'
'Quite fair, sir,' returned Mould.
'I was afraid the ground would have been wet,' said the doctor, 'for
my glass fell yesterday. We may congratulate ourselves upon our good
fortune.' But seeing by this time that Mr Jonas and Chuffey were going
out at the door, he put a white pocket-handkerchief to his face as if a
violent burst of grief had suddenly come upon him, and walked down side
by side with Mr Pecksniff.
Mr Mould and his men had not exaggerated the grandeur of the
arrangements. They were splendid. The four hearse-horses, especially,
reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as if they knew a
man was dead, and triumphed in it. 'They break us, drive us, ride us;
ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleasure--But they die; Hurrah,
they die!'
So through the narrow streets and winding city ways, went Anthony
Chuzzlewit's funeral; Mr Jonas glancing stealthily out of the
coach-window now and then, to observe its effect upon the crowd;
Mr Mould as he walked along, listening with a sober pride to the
exclamations of the bystanders; the doctor whispering his story to Mr
Pecksniff, without appearing to come any nearer the end of it; and
poor old Chuffey sobbing unregarded in a corner. But he had greatly
scandalized Mr Mould at an early stage of the ceremony by carrying his
handkerchief in his hat in a perfectly informal manner, and wiping his
eyes with his knuckles. And as Mr Mould himself had said already, his
behaviour was indecent, and quite unworthy of such an occasion; and he
never ought to have been there.
There he was, however; and in the churchyard there he was, also,
conducting himself in a no less unbecoming manner, and leaning for
support on Tacker, who plainly told him that he was fit for nothing
better than a walking funeral. But Chuffey, Heaven help him! heard no
sound but the echoes, lingering in his own heart, of a voice for ever
silent.
'I loved him,' cried the old man, sinking down upon the grave when all
was done. 'He was very good to me. Oh, my dear old friend and master!'
'Come, come, Mr Chuffey,' said the doctor, 'this won't do; it's a clayey
soil, Mr Chuffey. You mustn't, really.'
'If it had been the commonest thing we do, and Mr Chuffey had been a
Bearer, gentlemen,' said Mould, casting an imploring glance upon them,
as he helped to raise him, 'he couldn't have gone on worse than this.'
'Be a man, Mr Chuffey,' said Pecksniff.
'Be a gentleman, Mr Chuffey,' said Mould.
'Upon my word, my good friend,' murmured the doctor, in a tone of
stately reproof, as he stepped up to the old man's side, 'this is worse
than weakness. This is bad, selfish, very wrong, Mr Chuffey. You should
take example from others, my good sir. You forget that you were not
connected by ties of blood with our deceased friend; and that he had a
very near and very dear relation, Mr Chuffey.'
'Aye, his own son!' cried the old man, clasping his hands with
remarkable passion. 'His own, own, only son!'
'He's not right in his head, you know,' said Jonas, turning pale.
'You're not to mind anything he says. I shouldn't wonder if he was
to talk some precious nonsense. But don't you mind him, any of you. I
don't. My father left him to my charge; and whatever he says or does,
that's enough. I'll take care of him.'
A hum of admiration rose from the mourners (including Mr Mould and his
merry men) at this new instance of magnanimity and kind feeling on the
part of Jonas. But Chuffey put it to the test no farther. He said not
a word more, and being left to himself for a little while, crept back
again to the coach.
It has been said that Mr Jonas turned pale when the behaviour of the old
clerk attracted general attention; his discomposure, however, was but
momentary, and he soon recovered. But these were not the only changes
he had exhibited that day. The curious eyes of Mr Pecksniff had observed
that as soon as they left the house upon their mournful errand, he began
to mend; that as the ceremonies proceeded he gradually, by little and
little, recovered his old condition, his old looks, his old bearing, his
old agreeable characteristics of speech and manner, and became, in all
respects, his old pleasant self. And now that they were seated in the
coach on their return home; and more when they got there, and found the
windows open, the light and air admitted, and all traces of the late
event removed; he felt so well convinced that Jonas was again the Jonas
he had known a week ago, and not the Jonas of the intervening time, that
he voluntarily gave up his recently-acquired power without one faint
attempt to exercise it, and at once fell back into his former position
of mild and deferential guest.
Mrs Gamp went home to the bird-fancier's, and was knocked up again that
very night for a birth of twins; Mr Mould dined gayly in the bosom of
his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club; the hearse,
after standing for a long time at the door of a roistering public-house,
repaired to its stables with the feathers inside and twelve red-nosed
undertakers on the roof, each holding on by a dingy peg, to which, in
times of state, a waving plume was fitted; the various trappings of
sorrow were carefully laid by in presses for the next hirer; the fiery
steeds were quenched and quiet in their stalls; the doctor got merry
with wine at a wedding-dinner, and forgot the middle of the story which
had no end to it; the pageant of a few short hours ago was written
nowhere half so legibly as in the undertaker's books.
Not in the churchyard? Not even there. The gates were closed; the night
was dark and wet; the rain fell silently, among the stagnant weeds and
nettles. One new mound was there which had not been there last night.
Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had marked his track by
throwing up another heap of earth. And that was all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IS A CHAPTER OF LOVE
'Pecksniff,' said Jonas, taking off his hat, to see that the black
crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on again,
complacently; 'what do you mean to give your daughters when they marry?'
'My dear Mr Jonas,' cried the affectionate parent, with an ingenuous
smile, 'what a very singular inquiry!'
'Now, don't you mind whether it's a singular inquiry or a plural one,'
retorted Jonas, eyeing Mr Pecksniff with no great favour, 'but answer
it, or let it alone. One or the other.'
'Hum! The question, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, laying his hand
tenderly upon his kinsman's knee, 'is involved with many considerations.
What would I give them? Eh?'
'Ah! what would you give 'em?' repeated Jonas.
'Why, that, 'said Mr Pecksniff, 'would naturally depend in a great
measure upon the kind of husbands they might choose, my dear young
friend.'
Mr Jonas was evidently disconcerted, and at a loss how to proceed.
It was a good answer. It seemed a deep one, but such is the wisdom of
simplicity!'
'My standard for the merits I would require in a son-in-law,' said Mr
Pecksniff, after a short silence, 'is a high one. Forgive me, my dear Mr
Jonas,' he added, greatly moved, 'if I say that you have spoiled me, and
made it a fanciful one; an imaginative one; a prismatically tinged one,
if I may be permitted to call it so.'
'What do you mean by that?' growled Jonas, looking at him with increased
disfavour.
'Indeed, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'you may well inquire.
The heart is not always a royal mint, with patent machinery to work its
metal into current coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange forms,
not easily recognized as coin at all. But it is sterling gold. It has at
least that merit. It is sterling gold.'
'Is it?' grumbled Jonas, with a doubtful shake of the head.
'Aye!' said Mr Pecksniff, warming with his subject 'it is. To be plain
with you, Mr Jonas, if I could find two such sons-in-law as you will one
day make to some deserving man, capable of appreciating a nature such as
yours, I would--forgetful of myself--bestow upon my daughters portions
reaching to the very utmost limit of my means.'
This was strong language, and it was earnestly delivered. But who can
wonder that such a man as Mr Pecksniff, after all he had seen and heard
of Mr Jonas, should be strong and earnest upon such a theme; a theme
that touched even the worldly lips of undertakers with the honey of
eloquence!
Mr Jonas was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the landscape. For
they were seated on the outside of the coach, at the back, and were
travelling down into the country. He accompanied Mr Pecksniff home for a
few days' change of air and scene after his recent trials.
'Well,' he said, at last, with captivating bluntness, 'suppose you got
one such son-in-law as me, what then?'
Mr Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then
gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said:
'Then well I know whose husband he would be!'
'Whose?' asked Jonas, drily.
'My eldest girl's, Mr Jonas,' replied Pecksniff, with moistening eyes.
'My dear Cherry's; my staff, my scrip, my treasure, Mr Jonas. A hard
struggle, but it is in the nature of things! I must one day part with
her to a husband. I know it, my dear friend. I am prepared for it.'
'Ecod! you've been prepared for that a pretty long time, I should
think,' said Jonas.
'Many have sought to bear her from me,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'All have
failed. "I never will give my hand, papa"--those were her words--"unless
my heart is won." She has not been quite so happy as she used to be, of
late. I don't know why.'
Again Mr Jonas looked at the landscape; then at the coachman; then at
the luggage on the roof; finally at Mr Pecksniff.
'I suppose you'll have to part with the other one, some of these days?'
he observed, as he caught that gentleman's eye.
'Probably,' said the parent. 'Years will tame down the wildness of my
foolish bird, and then it will be caged. But Cherry, Mr Jonas, Cherry--'
'Oh, ah!' interrupted Jonas. 'Years have made her all right enough.
Nobody doubts that. But you haven't answered what I asked you. Of
course, you're not obliged to do it, you know, if you don't like. You're
the best judge.'
There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of this speech, which
admonished Mr Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled with
or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-forward reply
to his question, or plainly give him to understand that he declined to
enlighten him upon the subject to which it referred. Mindful in this
dilemma of the caution old Anthony had given him almost with his
latest breath, he resolved to speak to the point, and so told Mr Jonas
(enlarging upon the communication as a proof of his great attachment and
confidence), that in the case he had put; to wit, in the event of such
a man as he proposing for his daughter's hand, he would endow her with a
fortune of four thousand pounds.
'I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so,' was his fatherly
remark; 'but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me.
For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there--a
mere trifle, Mr Jonas--but I prize it as a store of value, I assure
you.'
The good man's enemies would have divided upon this question into two
parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr Pecksniff's
conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he must
have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of computation. The other
would have contended that it was a mere fictitious form; a perfectly
blank book; or one in which entries were only made with a peculiar kind
of invisible ink to become legible at some indefinite time; and that he
never troubled it at all.
'It would sadly pinch and cramp me, my dear friend,' repeated Mr
Pecksniff, 'but Providence--perhaps I may be permitted to say a special
Providence--has blessed my endeavours, and I could guarantee to make the
sacrifice.'
A question of philosophy arises here, whether Mr Pecksniff had or had
not good reason to say that he was specially patronized and encouraged
in his undertakings. All his life long he had been walking up and down
the narrow ways and by-places, with a hook in one hand and a crook in
the other, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his pouch.
Now, there being a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, it
follows (so Mr Pecksniff, and only such admirable men, would have
reasoned), that there must also be a special Providence in the alighting
of the stone or stick, or other substance which is aimed at the sparrow.
And Mr Pecksniff's hook, or crook, having invariably knocked the sparrow
on the head and brought him down, that gentleman may have been led to
consider himself as specially licensed to bag sparrows, and as being
specially seized and possessed of all the birds he had got together.
That many undertakings, national as well as individual--but especially
the former--are held to be specially brought to a glorious and
successful issue, which never could be so regarded on any other process
of reasoning, must be clear to all men. Therefore the precedents would
seem to show that Mr Pecksniff had (as things go) good argument for
what he said and might be permitted to say it, and did not say it
presumptuously, vainly, or arrogantly, but in a spirit of high faith and
great wisdom.
Mr Jonas, not being much accustomed to perplex his mind with theories of
this nature, expressed no opinion on the subject. Nor did he receive
his companion's announcement with one solitary syllable, good, bad, or
indifferent. He preserved this taciturnity for a quarter of an hour at
least, and during the whole of that time appeared to be steadily engaged
in subjecting some given amount to the operation of every known rule in
figures; adding to it, taking from it, multiplying it, reducing it by
long and short division; working it by the rule-of-three direct and
inversed; exchange or barter; practice; simple interest; compound
interest; and other means of arithmetical calculation. The result
of these labours appeared to be satisfactory, for when he did break
silence, it was as one who had arrived at some specific result, and
freed himself from a state of distressing uncertainty.
'Come, old Pecksniff!'--Such was his jocose address, as he slapped that
gentleman on the back, at the end of the stage--'let's have something!'
'With all my heart,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'Let's treat the driver,' cried Jonas.
'If you think it won't hurt the man, or render him discontented with his
station--certainly,' faltered Mr Pecksniff.
Jonas only laughed at this, and getting down from the coach-top with
great alacrity, cut a cumbersome kind of caper in the road. After which,
he went into the public-house, and there ordered spirituous drink to
such an extent, that Mr Pecksniff had some doubts of his perfect sanity,
until Jonas set them quite at rest by saying, when the coach could wait
no longer:
'I've been standing treat for a whole week and more, and letting
you have all the delicacies of the season. YOU shall pay for this
Pecksniff.' It was not a joke either, as Mr Pecksniff at first supposed;
for he went off to the coach without further ceremony, and left his
respected victim to settle the bill.
But Mr Pecksniff was a man of meek endurance, and Mr Jonas was his
friend. Moreover, his regard for that gentleman was founded, as we know,
on pure esteem, and a knowledge of the excellence of his character. He
came out from the tavern with a smiling face, and even went so far as
to repeat the performance, on a less expensive scale, at the next
ale-house. There was a certain wildness in the spirits of Mr Jonas (not
usually a part of his character) which was far from being subdued
by these means, and, for the rest of the journey, he was so very
buoyant--it may be said, boisterous--that Mr Pecksniff had some
difficulty in keeping pace with him.
They were not expected--oh dear, no! Mr Pecksniff had proposed in London
to give the girls a surprise, and had said he wouldn't write a word to
prepare them on any account, in order that he and Mr Jonas might take
them unawares, and just see what they were doing, when they thought
their dear papa was miles and miles away. As a consequence of this
playful device, there was nobody to meet them at the finger-post, but
that was of small consequence, for they had come down by the day
coach, and Mr Pecksniff had only a carpetbag, while Mr Jonas had only
a portmanteau. They took the portmanteau between them, put the bag upon
it, and walked off up the lane without delay; Mr Pecksniff already going
on tiptoe as if, without this precaution, his fond children, being then
at a distance of a couple of miles or so, would have some filial sense
of his approach.
It was a lovely evening in the spring-time of the year; and in the soft
stillness of the twilight, all nature was very calm and beautiful. The
day had been fine and warm; but at the coming on of night, the air grew
cool, and in the mellowing distance smoke was rising gently from the
cottage chimneys. There were a thousand pleasant scents diffused around,
from young leaves and fresh buds; the cuckoo had been singing all day
long, and was but just now hushed; the smell of earth newly-upturned,
first breath of hope to the first labourer after his garden withered,
was fragrant in the evening breeze. It was a time when most men cherish
good resolves, and sorrow for the wasted past; when most men, looking
on the shadows as they gather, think of that evening which must close on
all, and that to-morrow which has none beyond.
'Precious dull,' said Mr Jonas, looking about. 'It's enough to make a
man go melancholy mad.'
'We shall have lights and a fire soon,' observed Mr Pecksniff.
'We shall need 'em by the time we get there,' said Jonas. 'Why the devil
don't you talk? What are you thinking of?'
'To tell you the truth, Mr Jonas,' said Pecksniff with great solemnity,
'my mind was running at that moment on our late dear friend, your
departed father.'
Mr Jonas immediately let his burden fall, and said, threatening him with
his hand:
'Drop that, Pecksniff!'
Mr Pecksniff not exactly knowing whether allusion was made to the
subject or the portmanteau, stared at his friend in unaffected surprise.
'Drop it, I say!' cried Jonas, fiercely. 'Do you hear? Drop it, now and
for ever. You had better, I give you notice!'
'It was quite a mistake,' urged Mr Pecksniff, very much dismayed;
'though I admit it was foolish. I might have known it was a tender
string.'
'Don't talk to me about tender strings,' said Jonas, wiping his forehead
with the cuff of his coat. 'I'm not going to be crowed over by you,
because I don't like dead company.'
Mr Pecksniff had got out the words 'Crowed over, Mr Jonas!' when that
young man, with a dark expression in his countenance, cut him short once
more:
'Mind!' he said. 'I won't have it. I advise you not to revive the
subject, neither to me nor anybody else. You can take a hint, if you
choose as well as another man. There's enough said about it. Come
along!'
Taking up his part of the load again, when he had said these words,
he hurried on so fast that Mr Pecksniff, at the other end of the
portmanteau, found himself dragged forward, in a very inconvenient and
ungraceful manner, to the great detriment of what is called by fancy
gentlemen 'the bark' upon his shins, which were most unmercifully bumped
against the hard leather and the iron buckles. In the course of a few
minutes, however, Mr Jonas relaxed his speed, and suffered his companion
to come up with him, and to bring the portmanteau into a tolerably
straight position.
It was pretty clear that he regretted his late outbreak, and that he
mistrusted its effect on Mr Pecksniff; for as often as that gentleman
glanced towards Mr Jonas, he found Mr Jonas glancing at him, which was
a new source of embarrassment. It was but a short-lived one, though, for
Mr Jonas soon began to whistle, whereupon Mr Pecksniff, taking his cue
from his friend, began to hum a tune melodiously.
'Pretty nearly there, ain't we?' said Jonas, when this had lasted some
time.
'Close, my dear friend,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'What'll they be doing, do you suppose?' asked Jonas.
'Impossible to say,' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Giddy truants! They may be
away from home, perhaps. I was going to--he! he! he!--I was going to
propose,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'that we should enter by the back way, and
come upon them like a clap of thunder, Mr Jonas.'
It might not have been easy to decide in respect of which of their
manifold properties, Jonas, Mr Pecksniff, the carpet-bag, and the
portmanteau, could be likened to a clap of thunder. But Mr Jonas giving
his assent to this proposal, they stole round into the back yard, and
softly advanced towards the kitchen window, through which the mingled
light of fire and candle shone upon the darkening night.
Truly Mr Pecksniff is blessed in his children--in one of them, at any
rate. The prudent Cherry--staff and scrip, and treasure of her doting
father--there she sits, at a little table white as driven snow, before
the kitchen fire, making up accounts! See the neat maiden, as with pen
in hand, and calculating look addressed towards the ceiling and bunch
of keys within a little basket at her side, she checks the housekeeping
expenditure! From flat-iron, dish-cover, and warming-pan; from pot and
kettle, face of brass footman, and black-leaded stove; bright glances
of approbation wink and glow upon her. The very onions dangling from the
beam, mantle and shine like cherubs' cheeks. Something of the influence
of those vegetables sinks into Mr Pecksniff's nature. He weeps.
It is but for a moment, and he hides it from the observation of
his friend--very carefully--by a somewhat elaborate use of his
pocket-handkerchief, in fact; for he would not have his weakness known.
'Pleasant,' he murmured, 'pleasant to a father's feelings! My dear girl!
Shall we let her know we are here, Mr Jonas?'
'Why, I suppose you don't mean to spend the evening in the stable, or
the coach-house,' he returned.
'That, indeed, is not such hospitality as I would show to YOU, my
friend,' cried Mr Pecksniff, pressing his hand. And then he took a long
breath, and tapping at the window, shouted with stentorian blandness:
'Boh!'
Cherry dropped her pen and screamed. But innocence is ever bold, or
should be. As they opened the door, the valiant girl exclaimed in a firm
voice, and with a presence of mind which even in that trying moment did
not desert her, 'Who are you? What do you want? Speak! or I will call my
Pa.'
Mr Pecksniff held out his arms. She knew him instantly, and rushed into
his fond embrace.
'It was thoughtless of us, Mr Jonas, it was very thoughtless,' said
Pecksniff, smoothing his daugther's hair. 'My darling, do you see that I
am not alone!'
Not she. She had seen nothing but her father until now. She saw Mr
Jonas now, though; and blushed, and hung her head down, as she gave him
welcome.
But where was Merry? Mr Pecksniff didn't ask the question in reproach,
but in a vein of mildness touched with a gentle sorrow. She was
upstairs, reading on the parlour couch. Ah! Domestic details had no
charms for HER. 'But call her down,' said Mr Pecksniff, with a placid
resignation. 'Call her down, my love.'
She was called and came, all flushed and tumbled from reposing on the
sofa; but none the worse for that. No, not at all. Rather the better, if
anything.
'Oh my goodness me!' cried the arch girl, turning to her cousin when she
had kissed her father on both cheeks, and in her frolicsome nature had
bestowed a supernumerary salute upon the tip of his nose, 'YOU here,
fright! Well, I'm very thankful that you won't trouble ME much!'
'What! you're as lively as ever, are you?' said Jonas. 'Oh! You're a
wicked one!'
'There, go along!' retorted Merry, pushing him away. 'I'm sure I don't
know what I shall ever do, if I have to see much of you. Go along, for
gracious' sake!'
Mr Pecksniff striking in here, with a request that Mr Jonas would
immediately walk upstairs, he so far complied with the young lady's
adjuration as to go at once. But though he had the fair Cherry on his
arm, he could not help looking back at her sister, and exchanging some
further dialogue of the same bantering description, as they all four
ascended to the parlour; where--for the young ladies happened, by good
fortune, to be a little later than usual that night--the tea-board was
at that moment being set out.
Mr Pinch was not at home, so they had it all to themselves, and were
very snug and talkative, Jonas sitting between the two sisters, and
displaying his gallantry in that engaging manner which was peculiar
to him. It was a hard thing, Mr Pecksniff said, when tea was done,
and cleared away, to leave so pleasant a little party, but having some
important papers to examine in his own apartment, he must beg them to
excuse him for half an hour. With this apology he withdrew, singing
a careless strain as he went. He had not been gone five minutes, when
Merry, who had been sitting in the window, apart from Jonas and her
sister, burst into a half-smothered laugh, and skipped towards the door.
'Hallo!' cried Jonas. 'Don't go.'
'Oh, I dare say!' rejoined Merry, looking back. 'You're very anxious I
should stay, fright, ain't you?'
'Yes, I am,' said Jonas. 'Upon my word I am. I want to speak to you.'
But as she left the room notwithstanding, he ran out after her,
and brought her back, after a short struggle in the passage which
scandalized Miss Cherry very much.
'Upon my word, Merry,' urged that young lady, 'I wonder at you! There
are bounds even to absurdity, my dear.'
'Thank you, my sweet,' said Merry, pursing up her rosy Lips. 'Much
obliged to it for its advice. Oh! do leave me alone, you monster, do!'
This entreaty was wrung from her by a new proceeding on the part of
Mr Jonas, who pulled her down, all breathless as she was, into a seat
beside him on the sofa, having at the same time Miss Cherry upon the
other side.
'Now,' said Jonas, clasping the waist of each; 'I have got both arms
full, haven't I?'
'One of them will be black and blue to-morrow, if you don't let me go,'
cried the playful Merry.
'Ah! I don't mind YOUR pinching,' grinned Jonas, 'a bit.'
'Pinch him for me, Cherry, pray,' said Mercy. 'I never did hate anybody
so much as I hate this creature, I declare!'
'No, no, don't say that,' urged Jonas, 'and don't pinch either, because
I want to be serious. I say--Cousin Charity--'
'Well! what?' she answered sharply.
'I want to have some sober talk,' said Jonas; 'I want to prevent any
mistakes, you know, and to put everything upon a pleasant understanding.
That's desirable and proper, ain't it?'
Neither of the sisters spoke a word. Mr Jonas paused and cleared his
throat, which was very dry.
'She'll not believe what I am going to say, will she, cousin?' said
Jonas, timidly squeezing Miss Charity.
'Really, Mr Jonas, I don't know, until I hear what it is. It's quite
impossible!'
'Why, you see,' said Jonas, 'her way always being to make game of
people, I know she'll laugh, or pretend to--I know that, beforehand. But
you can tell her I'm in earnest, cousin; can't you? You'll confess you
know, won't you? You'll be honourable, I'm sure,' he added persuasively.
No answer. His throat seemed to grow hotter and hotter, and to be more
and more difficult of control.
'You see, Cousin Charity,' said Jonas, 'nobody but you can tell her
what pains I took to get into her company when you were both at the
boarding-house in the city, because nobody's so well aware of it, you
know. Nobody else can tell her how hard I tried to get to know you
better, in order that I might get to know her without seeming to wish
it; can they? I always asked you about her, and said where had she gone,
and when would she come, and how lively she was, and all that; didn't I,
cousin? I know you'll tell her so, if you haven't told her so already,
and--and--I dare say you have, because I'm sure you're honourable, ain't
you?'
Still not a word. The right arm of Mr Jonas--the elder sister sat upon
his right--may have been sensible of some tumultuous throbbing which was
not within itself; but nothing else apprised him that his words had had
the least effect.
'Even if you kept it to yourself, and haven't told her,' resumed Jonas,
'it don't much matter, because you'll bear honest witness now; won't
you? We've been very good friends from the first; haven't we? and of
course we shall be quite friends in future, and so I don't mind speaking
before you a bit. Cousin Mercy, you've heard what I've been saying.
She'll confirm it, every word; she must. Will you have me for your
husband? Eh?'
As he released his hold of Charity, to put this question with better
effect, she started up and hurried away to her own room, marking her
progress as she went by such a train of passionate and incoherent sound,
as nothing but a slighted woman in her anger could produce.
'Let me go away. Let me go after her,' said Merry, pushing him off,
and giving him--to tell the truth--more than one sounding slap upon his
outstretched face.
'Not till you say yes. You haven't told me. Will you have me for your
husband?'
'No, I won't. I can't bear the sight of you. I have told you so a
hundred times. You are a fright. Besides, I always thought you liked my
sister best. We all thought so.'
'But that wasn't my fault,' said Jonas.
'Yes it was; you know it was.'
'Any trick is fair in love,' said Jonas. 'She may have thought I liked
her best, but you didn't.'
'I did!'
'No, you didn't. You never could have thought I liked her best, when you
were by.'
'There's no accounting for tastes,' said Merry; 'at least I didn't mean
to say that. I don't know what I mean. Let me go to her.'
'Say "Yes," and then I will.'
'If I ever brought myself to say so, it should only be that I might hate
and tease you all my life.'
'That's as good,' cried Jonas, 'as saying it right out. It's a bargain,
cousin. We're a pair, if ever there was one.'
This gallant speech was succeeded by a confused noise of kissing and
slapping; and then the fair but much dishevelled Merry broke away, and
followed in the footsteps of her sister.
Now whether Mr Pecksniff had been listening--which in one of his
character appears impossible; or divined almost by inspiration what the
matter was--which, in a man of his sagacity is far more probable; or
happened by sheer good fortune to find himself in exactly the
right place, at precisely the right time--which, under the special
guardianship in which he lived might very reasonably happen; it is quite
certain that at the moment when the sisters came together in their own
room, he appeared at the chamber door. And a marvellous contrast it
was--they so heated, noisy, and vehement; he so calm, so self-possessed,
so cool and full of peace, that not a hair upon his head was stirred.
'Children!' said Mr Pecksniff, spreading out his hands in wonder, but
not before he had shut the door, and set his back against it. 'Girls!
Daughters! What is this?'
'The wretch; the apostate; the false, mean, odious villain; has before
my very face proposed to Mercy!' was his eldest daughter's answer.
'Who has proposed to Mercy!' asked Mr Pecksniff.
'HE has. That thing, Jonas, downstairs.'
'Jonas proposed to Mercy?' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Aye, aye! Indeed!'
'Have you nothing else to say?' cried Charity. 'Am I to be driven mad,
papa? He has proposed to Mercy, not to me.'
'Oh, fie! For shame!' said Mr Pecksniff, gravely. 'Oh, for shame! Can
the triumph of a sister move you to this terrible display, my child? Oh,
really this is very sad! I am sorry; I am surprised and hurt to see
you so. Mercy, my girl, bless you! See to her. Ah, envy, envy, what a
passion you are!'
Uttering this apostrophe in a tone full of grief and lamentation, Mr
Pecksniff left the room (taking care to shut the door behind him),
and walked downstairs into the parlour. There he found his intended
son-in-law, whom he seized by both hands.
'Jonas!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Jonas! the dearest wish of my heart is now
fulfilled!'
'Very well; I'm glad to hear it,' said Jonas. 'That'll do. I say! As
it ain't the one you're so fond of, you must come down with another
thousand, Pecksniff. You must make it up five. It's worth that, to keep
your treasure to yourself, you know. You get off very cheap that way,
and haven't a sacrifice to make.'
The grin with which he accompanied this, set off his other attractions
to such unspeakable advantage, that even Mr Pecksniff lost his presence
of mind for a moment, and looked at the young man as if he were quite
stupefied with wonder and admiration. But he quickly regained his
composure, and was in the very act of changing the subject, when a hasty
step was heard without, and Tom Pinch, in a state of great excitement,
came darting into the room.
On seeing a stranger there, apparently engaged with Mr Pecksniff in
private conversation, Tom was very much abashed, though he still looked
as if he had something of great importance to communicate, which would
be a sufficient apology for his intrusion.
'Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, 'this is hardly decent. You will excuse my
saying that I think your conduct scarcely decent, Mr Pinch.'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' replied Tom, 'for not knocking at the door.'
'Rather beg this gentleman's pardon, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'I know
you; he does not.--My young man, Mr Jonas.'
The son-in-law that was to be gave him a slight nod--not actively
disdainful or contemptuous, only passively; for he was in a good humour.
'Could I speak a word with you, sir, if you please?' said Tom. 'It's
rather pressing.'
'It should be very pressing to justify this strange behaviour, Mr
Pinch,' returned his master. 'Excuse me for one moment, my dear friend.
Now, sir, what is the reason of this rough intrusion?'
'I am very sorry, sir, I am sure,' said Tom, standing, cap in hand,
before his patron in the passage; 'and I know it must have a very rude
appearance--'
'It HAS a very rude appearance, Mr Pinch.'
'Yes, I feel that, sir; but the truth is, I was so surprised to see
them, and knew you would be too, that I ran home very fast indeed, and
really hadn't enough command over myself to know what I was doing very
well. I was in the church just now, sir, touching the organ for my own
amusement, when I happened to look round, and saw a gentleman and lady
standing in the aisle listening. They seemed to be strangers, sir, as
well as I could make out in the dusk; and I thought I didn't know
them; so presently I left off, and said, would they walk up into the
organ-loft, or take a seat? No, they said, they wouldn't do that; but
they thanked me for the music they had heard. In fact,' observed Tom,
blushing, 'they said, "Delicious music!" at least, SHE did; and I am
sure that was a greater pleasure and honour to me than any compliment I
could have had. I--I--beg your pardon sir;' he was all in a tremble, and
dropped his hat for the second time 'but I--I'm rather flurried, and I
fear I've wandered from the point.'
'If you will come back to it, Thomas,' said Mr Pecksniff, with an icy
look, 'I shall feel obliged.'
'Yes, sir,' returned Tom, 'certainly. They had a posting carriage at the
porch, sir, and had stopped to hear the organ, they said. And then they
said--SHE said, I mean, "I believe you live with Mr Pecksniff, sir?" I
said I had that honour, and I took the liberty, sir,' added Tom, raising
his eyes to his benefactor's face, 'of saying, as I always will and
must, with your permission, that I was under great obligations to you,
and never could express my sense of them sufficiently.'
'That,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'was very, very wrong. Take your time, Mr
Pinch.'
'Thank you, sir,' cried Tom. 'On that they asked me--she asked, I
mean--"Wasn't there a bridle road to Mr Pecksniff's house?"'
Mr Pecksniff suddenly became full of interest.
'"Without going by the Dragon?" When I said there was, and said how
happy I should be to show it 'em, they sent the carriage on by the road,
and came with me across the meadows. I left 'em at the turnstile to run
forward and tell you they were coming, and they'll be here, sir, in--in
less than a minute's time, I should say,' added Tom, fetching his breath
with difficulty.
'Now, who,' said Mr Pecksniff, pondering, 'who may these people be?'
'Bless my soul, sir!' cried Tom, 'I meant to mention that at first, I
thought I had. I knew them--her, I mean--directly. The gentleman who
was ill at the Dragon, sir, last winter; and the young lady who attended
him.'
Tom's teeth chattered in his head, and he positively staggered with
amazement, at witnessing the extraordinary effect produced on Mr
Pecksniff by these simple words. The dread of losing the old man's
favour almost as soon as they were reconciled, through the mere fact
of having Jonas in the house; the impossibility of dismissing Jonas,
or shutting him up, or tying him hand and foot and putting him in
the coal-cellar, without offending him beyond recall; the horrible
discordance prevailing in the establishment, and the impossibility of
reducing it to decent harmony with Charity in loud hysterics, Mercy in
the utmost disorder, Jonas in the parlour, and Martin Chuzzlewit and his
young charge upon the very doorsteps; the total hopelessness of being
able to disguise or feasibly explain this state of rampant confusion;
the sudden accumulation over his devoted head of every complicated
perplexity and entanglement for his extrication from which he had
trusted to time, good fortune, chance, and his own plotting, so filled
the entrapped architect with dismay, that if Tom could have been a
Gorgon staring at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff could have been a
Gorgon staring at Tom, they could not have horrified each other half so
much as in their own bewildered persons.
'Dear, dear!' cried Tom, 'what have I done? I hoped it would be a
pleasant surprise, sir. I thought you would like to know.'
But at that moment a loud knocking was heard at the hall door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MORE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES, MARTIN TAKES A PARTNER, AND MAKES A PURCHASE.
SOME ACCOUNT OF EDEN, AS IT APPEARED ON PAPER. ALSO OF THE BRITISH LION.
ALSO OF THE KIND OF SYMPATHY PROFESSED AND ENTERTAINED BY THE WATERTOAST
ASSOCIATION OF UNITED SYMPATHISERS
The knocking at Mr Pecksniff's door, though loud enough, bore no
resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at full
speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this frank
admission, lest the reader should imagine that the sounds now deafening
this history's ears have any connection with the knocker on Mr
Pecksniff's door, or with the great amount of agitation pretty equally
divided between that worthy man and Mr Pinch, of which its strong
performance was the cause.
Mr Pecksniff's house is more than a thousand leagues away; and again
this happy chronicle has Liberty and Moral Sensibility for its high
companions. Again it breathes the blessed air of Independence; again it
contemplates with pious awe that moral sense which renders unto Ceasar
nothing that is his; again inhales that sacred atmosphere which was
the life of him--oh noble patriot, with many followers!--who dreamed of
Freedom in a slave's embrace, and waking sold her offspring and his own
in public markets.
How the wheels clank and rattle, and the tram-road shakes, as the train
rushes on! And now the engine yells, as it were lashed and tortured like
a living labourer, and writhed in agony. A poor fancy; for steel and
iron are of infinitely greater account, in this commonwealth, than
flesh and blood. If the cunning work of man be urged beyond its power of
endurance, it has within it the elements of its own revenge; whereas
the wretched mechanism of the Divine Hand is dangerous with no such
property, but may be tampered with, and crushed, and broken, at the
driver's pleasure. Look at that engine! It shall cost a man more dollars
in the way of penalty and fine, and satisfaction of the outraged law,
to deface in wantonness that senseless mass of metal, than to take the
lives of twenty human creatures! Thus the stars wink upon the bloody
stripes; and Liberty pulls down her cap upon her eyes, and owns
Oppression in its vilest aspect, for her sister.
The engine-driver of the train whose noise awoke us to the present
chapter was certainly troubled with no such reflections as these; nor is
it very probable that his mind was disturbed by any reflections at all.
He leaned with folded arms and crossed legs against the side of the
carriage, smoking; and, except when he expressed, by a grunt as short as
his pipe, his approval of some particularly dexterous aim on the part of
his colleague, the fireman, who beguiled his leisure by throwing logs
of wood from the tender at the numerous stray cattle on the line, he
preserved a composure so immovable, and an indifference so complete,
that if the locomotive had been a sucking-pig, he could not have been
more perfectly indifferent to its doings. Notwithstanding the tranquil
state of this officer, and his unbroken peace of mind, the train was
proceeding with tolerable rapidity; and the rails being but poorly laid,
the jolts and bumps it met with in its progress were neither slight nor
few.
There were three great caravans or cars attached. The ladies' car, the
gentlemen's car, and the car for negroes; the latter painted black, as
an appropriate compliment to its company. Martin and Mark Tapley were
in the first, as it was the most comfortable; and, being far from full,
received other gentlemen who, like them, were unblessed by the society
of ladies of their own. They were seated side by side, and were engaged
in earnest conversation.
'And so, Mark,' said Martin, looking at him with an anxious expression,
'and so you are glad we have left New York far behind us, are you?'
'Yes, sir,' said Mark. 'I am. Precious glad.'
'Were you not "jolly" there?' asked Martin.
'On the contrairy, sir,' returned Mark. 'The jolliest week as ever I
spent in my life, was that there week at Pawkins's.'
'What do you think of our prospects?' inquired Martin, with an air that
plainly said he had avoided the question for some time.
'Uncommon bright, sir,' returned Mark. 'Impossible for a place to have
a better name, sir, than the Walley of Eden. No man couldn't think of
settling in a better place than the Walley of Eden. And I'm told,' added
Mark, after a pause, 'as there's lots of serpents there, so we shall
come out, quite complete and reg'lar.'
So far from dwelling upon this agreeable piece of information with the
least dismay, Mark's face grew radiant as he called it to mind; so very
radiant, that a stranger might have supposed he had all his life been
yearning for the society of serpents, and now hailed with delight the
approaching consummation of his fondest wishes.
'Who told you that?' asked Martin, sternly.
'A military officer,' said Mark.
'Confound you for a ridiculous fellow!' cried Martin, laughing heartily
in spite of himself. 'What military officer? You know they spring up in
every field.'
'As thick as scarecrows in England, sir,' interposed Mark, 'which is a
sort of milita themselves, being entirely coat and wescoat, with a stick
inside. Ha, ha!--Don't mind me, sir; it's my way sometimes. I can't help
being jolly. Why it was one of them inwading conquerors at Pawkins's, as
told me. "Am I rightly informed," he says--not exactly through his nose,
but as if he'd got a stoppage in it, very high up--"that you're a-going
to the Walley of Eden?" "I heard some talk on it," I told him. "Oh!"
says he, "if you should ever happen to go to bed there--you MAY, you
know," he says, "in course of time as civilisation progresses--don't
forget to take a axe with you." I looks at him tolerable hard. "Fleas?"
says I. "And more," says he. "Wampires?" says I. "And more," says he.
"Musquitoes, perhaps?" says I. "And more," says he. "What more?" says
I. "Snakes more," says he; "rattle-snakes. You're right to a certain
extent, stranger. There air some catawampous chawers in the small way
too, as graze upon a human pretty strong; but don't mind THEM--they're
company. It's snakes," he says, "as you'll object to; and whenever you
wake and see one in a upright poster on your bed," he says, "like a
corkscrew with the handle off a-sittin' on its bottom ring, cut him
down, for he means wenom."'
'Why didn't you tell me this before!' cried Martin, with an expression
of face which set off the cheerfulness of Mark's visage to great
advantage.
'I never thought on it, sir,' said Mark. 'It come in at one ear, and
went out at the other. But Lord love us, he was one of another Company,
I dare say, and only made up the story that we might go to his Eden, and
not the opposition one.'
'There's some probability in that,' observed Martin. 'I can honestly say
that I hope so, with all my heart.'
'I've not a doubt about it, sir,' returned Mark, who, full of the
inspiriting influence of the anecodote upon himself, had for the moment
forgotten its probable effect upon his master; 'anyhow, we must live,
you know, sir.'
'Live!' cried Martin. 'Yes, it's easy to say live; but if we should
happen not to wake when rattlesnakes are making corkscrews of themselves
upon our beds, it may be not so easy to do it.'
'And that's a fact,' said a voice so close in his ear that it tickled
him. 'That's dreadful true.'
Martin looked round, and found that a gentleman, on the seat behind, had
thrust his head between himself and Mark, and sat with his chin resting
on the back rail of their little bench, entertaining himself with their
conversation. He was as languid and listless in his looks as most of the
gentlemen they had seen; his cheeks were so hollow that he seemed to be
always sucking them in; and the sun had burnt him, not a wholesome red
or brown, but dirty yellow. He had bright dark eyes, which he kept half
closed; only peeping out of the corners, and even then with a glance
that seemed to say, 'Now you won't overreach me; you want to, but you
won't.' His arms rested carelessly on his knees as he leant forward;
in the palm of his left hand, as English rustics have their slice of
cheese, he had a cake of tobacco; in his right a penknife. He struck
into the dialogue with as little reserve as if he had been specially
called in, days before, to hear the arguments on both sides, and favour
them with his opinion; and he no more contemplated or cared for the
possibility of their not desiring the honour of his acquaintance or
interference in their private affairs than if he had been a bear or a
buffalo.
'That,' he repeated, nodding condescendingly to Martin, as to an outer
barbarian and foreigner, 'is dreadful true. Darn all manner of vermin.'
Martin could not help frowning for a moment, as if he were disposed to
insinuate that the gentleman had unconsciously 'darned' himself. But
remembering the wisdom of doing at Rome as Romans do, he smiled with the
pleasantest expression he could assume upon so short a notice.
Their new friend said no more just then, being busily employed in
cutting a quid or plug from his cake of tobacco, and whistling softly to
himself the while. When he had shaped it to his liking, he took out his
old plug, and deposited the same on the back of the seat between Mark
and Martin, while he thrust the new one into the hollow of his cheek,
where it looked like a large walnut, or tolerable pippin. Finding it
quite satisfactory, he stuck the point of his knife into the old plug,
and holding it out for their inspection, remarked with the air of a man
who had not lived in vain, that it was 'used up considerable.' Then
he tossed it away; put his knife into one pocket and his tobacco into
another; rested his chin upon the rail as before; and approving of the
pattern on Martin's waistcoat, reached out his hand to feel the texture
of that garment.
'What do you call this now?' he asked.
'Upon my word' said Martin, 'I don't know what it's called.'
'It'll cost a dollar or more a yard, I reckon?'
'I really don't know.'
'In my country,' said the gentleman, 'we know the cost of our own
pro-duce.'
Martin not discussing the question, there was a pause.
'Well!' resumed their new friend, after staring at them intently during
the whole interval of silence; 'how's the unnat'ral old parent by this
time?'
Mr Tapley regarding this inquiry as only another version of the
impertinent English question, 'How's your mother?' would have resented
it instantly, but for Martin's prompt interposition.
'You mean the old country?' he said.
'Ah!' was the reply. 'How's she? Progressing back'ards, I expect, as
usual? Well! How's Queen Victoria?'
'In good health, I believe,' said Martin.
'Queen Victoria won't shake in her royal shoes at all, when she hears
to-morrow named,' observed the stranger, 'No.'
'Not that I am aware of. Why should she?'
'She won't be taken with a cold chill, when she realises what is being
done in these diggings,' said the stranger. 'No.'
'No,' said Martin. 'I think I could take my oath of that.'
The strange gentleman looked at him as if in pity for his ignorance or
prejudice, and said:
'Well, sir, I tell you this--there ain't a engine with its biler
bust, in God A'mighty's free U-nited States, so fixed, and nipped,
and frizzled to a most e-tarnal smash, as that young critter, in her
luxurious location in the Tower of London will be, when she reads the
next double-extra Watertoast Gazette.'
Several other gentlemen had left their seats and gathered round during
the foregoing dialogue. They were highly delighted with this speech. One
very lank gentleman, in a loose limp white cravat, long white waistcoat,
and a black great-coat, who seemed to be in authority among them, felt
called upon to acknowledge it.
'Hem! Mr La Fayette Kettle,' he said, taking off his hat.
There was a grave murmur of 'Hush!'
'Mr La Fayette Kettle! Sir!'
Mr Kettle bowed.
'In the name of this company, sir, and in the name of our common
country, and in the name of that righteous cause of holy sympathy in
which we are engaged, I thank you. I thank you, sir, in the name of
the Watertoast Sympathisers; and I thank you, sir, in the name of
the Watertoast Gazette; and I thank you, sir, in the name of the
star-spangled banner of the Great United States, for your eloquent and
categorical exposition. And if, sir,' said the speaker, poking Martin
with the handle of his umbrella to bespeak his attention, for he was
listening to a whisper from Mark; 'if, sir, in such a place, and at such
a time, I might venture to con-clude with a sentiment, glancing--however
slantin'dicularly--at the subject in hand, I would say, sir, may
the British Lion have his talons eradicated by the noble bill of the
American Eagle, and be taught to play upon the Irish Harp and the Scotch
Fiddle that music which is breathed in every empty shell that lies upon
the shores of green Co-lumbia!'
Here the lank gentleman sat down again, amidst a great sensation; and
every one looked very grave.
'General Choke,' said Mr La Fayette Kettle, 'you warm my heart; sir, you
warm my heart. But the British Lion is not unrepresented here, sir; and
I should be glad to hear his answer to those remarks.'
'Upon my word,' cried Martin, laughing, 'since you do me the honour to
consider me his representative, I have only to say that I never heard
of Queen Victoria reading the What's-his-name Gazette and that I should
scarcely think it probable.'
General Choke smiled upon the rest, and said, in patient and benignant
explanation:
'It is sent to her, sir. It is sent to her. Her mail.'
'But if it is addressed to the Tower of London, it would hardly come to
hand, I fear,' returned Martin; 'for she don't live there.'
'The Queen of England, gentlemen,' observed Mr Tapley, affecting the
greatest politeness, and regarding them with an immovable face, 'usually
lives in the Mint to take care of the money. She HAS lodgings, in virtue
of her office, with the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House; but don't often
occupy them, in consequence of the parlour chimney smoking.'
'Mark,' said Martin, 'I shall be very much obliged to you if you'll
have the goodness not to interfere with preposterous statements, however
jocose they may appear to you. I was merely remarking gentlemen--though
it's a point of very little import--that the Queen of England does not
happen to live in the Tower of London.'
'General!' cried Mr La Fayette Kettle. 'You hear?'
'General!' echoed several others. 'General!'
'Hush! Pray, silence!' said General Choke, holding up his hand, and
speaking with a patient and complacent benevolence that was quite
touching. 'I have always remarked it as a very extraordinary
circumstance, which I impute to the natur' of British Institutions and
their tendency to suppress that popular inquiry and information which
air so widely diffused even in the trackless forests of this vast
Continent of the Western Ocean; that the knowledge of Britishers
themselves on such points is not to be compared with that possessed
by our intelligent and locomotive citizens. This is interesting, and
confirms my observation. When you say, sir,' he continued, addressing
Martin, 'that your Queen does not reside in the Tower of London, you
fall into an error, not uncommon to your countrymen, even when their
abilities and moral elements air such as to command respect. But, sir,
you air wrong. She DOES live there--'
'When she is at the Court of Saint James's,' interposed Kettle.
'When she is at the Court of Saint James's, of course,' returned the
General, in the same benignant way; 'for if her location was in Windsor
Pavilion it couldn't be in London at the same time. Your Tower of
London, sir,' pursued the General, smiling with a mild consciousness of
his knowledge, 'is nat'rally your royal residence. Being located in
the immediate neighbourhood of your Parks, your Drives, your Triumphant
Arches, your Opera, and your Royal Almacks, it nat'rally suggests
itself as the place for holding a luxurious and thoughtless court.
And, consequently,' said the General, 'consequently, the court is held
there.'
'Have you been in England?' asked Martin.
'In print I have, sir,' said the General, 'not otherwise. We air a
reading people here, sir. You will meet with much information among us
that will surprise you, sir.'
'I have not the least doubt of it,' returned Martin. But here he was
interrupted by Mr La Fayette Kettle, who whispered in his ear:
'You know General Choke?'
'No,' returned Martin, in the same tone.
'You know what he is considered?'
'One of the most remarkable men in the country?' said Martin, at a
venture.
'That's a fact,' rejoined Kettle. 'I was sure you must have heard of
him!'
'I think,' said Martin, addressing himself to the General again, 'that
I have the pleasure of being the bearer of a letter of introduction to
you, sir. From Mr Bevan, of Massachusetts,' he added, giving it to him.
The General took it and read it attentively; now and then stopping to
glance at the two strangers. When he had finished the note, he came over
to Martin, sat down by him, and shook hands.
'Well!' he said, 'and you think of settling in Eden?'
'Subject to your opinion, and the agent's advice,' replied Martin. 'I am
told there is nothing to be done in the old towns.'
'I can introduce you to the agent, sir,' said the General. 'I know him.
In fact, I am a member of the Eden Land Corporation myself.'
This was serious news to Martin, for his friend had laid great stress
upon the General's having no connection, as he thought, with any land
company, and therefore being likely to give him disinterested advice.
The General explained that he had joined the Corporation only a few
weeks ago, and that no communication had passed between himself and Mr
Bevan since.
'We have very little to venture,' said Martin anxiously--'only a
few pounds--but it is our all. Now, do you think that for one of my
profession, this would be a speculation with any hope or chance in it?'
'Well,' observed the General, gravely, 'if there wasn't any hope or
chance in the speculation, it wouldn't have engaged my dollars, I
opinionate.'
'I don't mean for the sellers,' said Martin. 'For the buyers--for the
buyers!'
'For the buyers, sir?' observed the General, in a most impressive
manner. 'Well! you come from an old country; from a country, sir, that
has piled up golden calves as high as Babel, and worshipped 'em for
ages. We are a new country, sir; man is in a more primeval state here,
sir; we have not the excuse of having lapsed in the slow course of time
into degenerate practices; we have no false gods; man, sir, here, is man
in all his dignity. We fought for that or nothing. Here am I, sir,'
said the General, setting up his umbrella to represent himself, and a
villanous-looking umbrella it was; a very bad counter to stand for the
sterling coin of his benevolence, 'here am I with grey hairs sir, and
a moral sense. Would I, with my principles, invest capital in this
speculation if I didn't think it full of hopes and chances for my
brother man?'
Martin tried to look convinced, but he thought of New York, and found it
difficult.
'What are the Great United States for, sir,' pursued the General 'if not
for the regeneration of man? But it is nat'ral in you to make such an
enquerry, for you come from England, and you do not know my country.'
'Then you think,' said Martin, 'that allowing for the hardships we are
prepared to undergo, there is a reasonable--Heaven knows we don't expect
much--a reasonable opening in this place?'
'A reasonable opening in Eden, sir! But see the agent, see the agent;
see the maps and plans, sir; and conclude to go or stay, according to
the natur' of the settlement. Eden hadn't need to go a-begging yet,
sir,' remarked the General.
'It is an awful lovely place, sure-ly. And frightful wholesome,
likewise!' said Mr Kettle, who had made himself a party to this
conversation as a matter of course.
Martin felt that to dispute such testimony, for no better reason
than because he had his secret misgivings on the subject, would be
ungentlemanly and indecent. So he thanked the General for his promise to
put him in personal communication with the agent; and 'concluded' to see
that officer next morning. He then begged the General to inform him who
the Watertoast Sympathisers were, of whom he had spoken in addressing Mr
La Fayette Kettle, and on what grievances they bestowed their Sympathy.
To which the General, looking very serious, made answer, that he might
fully enlighten himself on those points to-morrow by attending a Great
Meeting of the Body, which would then be held at the town to which
they were travelling; 'over which, sir,' said the General, 'my
fellow-citizens have called on me to preside.'
They came to their journey's end late in the evening. Close to the
railway was an immense white edifice, like an ugly hospital, on which
was painted 'NATIONAL HOTEL.' There was a wooden gallery or verandah
in front, in which it was rather startling, when the train stopped, to
behold a great many pairs of boots and shoes, and the smoke of a
great many cigars, but no other evidences of human habitation. By slow
degrees, however, some heads and shoulders appeared, and connecting
themselves with the boots and shoes, led to the discovery that certain
gentlemen boarders, who had a fancy for putting their heels where the
gentlemen boarders in other countries usually put their heads, were
enjoying themselves after their own manner in the cool of the evening.
There was a great bar-room in this hotel, and a great public room
in which the general table was being set out for supper. There were
interminable whitewashed staircases, long whitewashed galleries upstairs
and downstairs, scores of little whitewashed bedrooms, and a four-sided
verandah to every story in the house, which formed a large brick square
with an uncomfortable courtyard in the centre, where some clothes were
drying. Here and there, some yawning gentlemen lounged up and down with
their hands in their pockets; but within the house and without, wherever
half a dozen people were collected together, there, in their looks,
dress, morals, manners, habits, intellect, and conversation, were Mr
Jefferson Brick, Colonel Diver, Major Pawkins, General Choke, and Mr
La Fayette Kettle, over, and over, and over again. They did the same
things; said the same things; judged all subjects by, and reduced all
subjects to, the same standard. Observing how they lived, and how they
were always in the enchanting company of each other, Martin even began
to comprehend their being the social, cheerful, winning, airy men they
were.
At the sounding of a dismal gong, this pleasant company went trooping
down from all parts of the house to the public room; while from the
neighbouring stores other guests came flocking in, in shoals; for half
the town, married folks as well as single, resided at the National
Hotel. Tea, coffee, dried meats, tongue, ham, pickles, cake, toast,
preserves, and bread and butter, were swallowed with the usual ravaging
speed; and then, as before, the company dropped off by degrees, and
lounged away to the desk, the counter, or the bar-room. The ladies had a
smaller ordinary of their own, to which their husbands and brothers
were admitted if they chose; and in all other respects they enjoyed
themselves as at Pawkins's.
'Now, Mark, my good fellow, said Martin, closing the door of his
little chamber, 'we must hold a solemn council, for our fate is decided
to-morrow morning. You are determined to invest these savings of yours
in the common stock, are you?'
'If I hadn't been determined to make that wentur, sir,' answered Mr
Tapley, 'I shouldn't have come.'
'How much is there here, did you say' asked Martin, holding up a little
bag.
'Thirty-seven pound ten and sixpence. The Savings' Bank said so at
least. I never counted it. But THEY know, bless you!' said Mark, with a
shake of the head expressive of his unbounded confidence in the wisdom
and arithmetic of those Institutions.
'The money we brought with us,' said Martin, 'is reduced to a few
shillings less than eight pounds.'
Mr Tapley smiled, and looked all manner of ways, that he might not be
supposed to attach any importance to this fact.
'Upon the ring--HER ring, Mark,' said Martin, looking ruefully at his
empty finger--
'Ah!' sighed Mr Tapley. 'Beg your pardon, sir.'
'--We raised, in English money, fourteen pounds. So, even with that,
your share of the stock is still very much the larger of the two you
see. Now, Mark,' said Martin, in his old way, just as he might have
spoken to Tom Pinch, 'I have thought of a means of making this up
to you--more than making it up to you, I hope--and very materially
elevating your prospects in life.'
'Oh! don't talk of that, you know, sir,' returned Mark. 'I don't want no
elevating, sir. I'm all right enough, sir, I am.'
'No, but hear me,' said Martin, 'because this is very important to you,
and a great satisfaction to me. Mark, you shall be a partner in the
business; an equal partner with myself. I will put in, as my additional
capital, my professional knowledge and ability; and half the annual
profits, as long as it is carried on, shall be yours.'
Poor Martin! For ever building castles in the air. For ever, in his very
selfishness, forgetful of all but his own teeming hopes and sanguine
plans. Swelling, at that instant, with the consciousness of patronizing
and most munificently rewarding Mark!
'I don't know, sir,' Mark rejoined, much more sadly than his custom was,
though from a very different cause than Martin supposed, 'what I can say
to this, in the way of thanking you. I'll stand by you, sir, to the best
of my ability, and to the last. That's all.'
'We quite understand each other, my good fellow,' said Martin rising in
self-approval and condescension. 'We are no longer master and servant,
but friends and partners; and are mutually gratified. If we determine on
Eden, the business shall be commenced as soon as we get there. Under the
name,' said Martin, who never hammered upon an idea that wasn't red hot,
'under the name of Chuzzlewit and Tapley.'
'Lord love you, sir,' cried Mark, 'don't have my name in it. I ain't
acquainted with the business, sir. I must be Co., I must. I've often
thought,' he added, in a low voice, 'as I should like to know a Co.; but
I little thought as ever I should live to be one.'
'You shall have your own way, Mark.'
'Thank'ee, sir. If any country gentleman thereabouts, in the public way,
or otherwise, wanted such a thing as a skittle-ground made, I could take
that part of the bis'ness, sir.'
'Against any architect in the States,' said Martin. 'Get a couple of
sherry-cobblers, Mark, and we'll drink success to the firm.'
Either he forgot already (and often afterwards), that they were no
longer master and servant, or considered this kind of duty to be among
the legitimate functions of the Co. But Mark obeyed with his usual
alacrity; and before they parted for the night, it was agreed between
them that they should go together to the agent's in the morning, but
that Martin should decide the Eden question, on his own sound judgment.
And Mark made no merit, even to himself in his jollity, of this
concession; perfectly well knowing that the matter would come to that in
the end, any way.
The General was one of the party at the public table next day, and after
breakfast suggested that they should wait upon the agent without loss of
time. They, desiring nothing more, agreed; so off they all four
started for the office of the Eden Settlement, which was almost within
rifle-shot of the National Hotel.
It was a small place--something like a turnpike. But a great deal of
land may be got into a dice-box, and why may not a whole territory be
bargained for in a shed? It was but a temporary office too; for the
Edeners were 'going' to build a superb establishment for the transaction
of their business, and had already got so far as to mark out the site.
Which is a great way in America. The office-door was wide open, and in
the doorway was the agent; no doubt a tremendous fellow to get through
his work, for he seemed to have no arrears, but was swinging backwards
and forwards in a rocking-chair, with one of his legs planted high up
against the door-post, and the other doubled up under him, as if he were
hatching his foot.
He was a gaunt man in a huge straw hat, and a coat of green stuff. The
weather being hot, he had no cravat, and wore his shirt collar wide
open; so that every time he spoke something was seen to twitch and jerk
up in his throat, like the little hammers in a harpsichord when the
notes are struck. Perhaps it was the Truth feebly endeavouring to leap
to his lips. If so, it never reached them.
Two grey eyes lurked deep within this agent's head, but one of them had
no sight in it, and stood stock still. With that side of his face he
seemed to listen to what the other side was doing. Thus each profile had
a distinct expression; and when the movable side was most in action, the
rigid one was in its coldest state of watchfulness. It was like
turning the man inside out, to pass to that view of his features in his
liveliest mood, and see how calculating and intent they were.
Each long black hair upon his head hung down as straight as any plummet
line; but rumpled tufts were on the arches of his eyes, as if the crow
whose foot was deeply printed in the corners had pecked and torn them in
a savage recognition of his kindred nature as a bird of prey.
Such was the man whom they now approached, and whom the General saluted
by the name of Scadder.
'Well, Gen'ral,' he returned, 'and how are you?'
'Ac-tive and spry, sir, in my country's service and the sympathetic
cause. Two gentlemen on business, Mr Scadder.'
He shook hands with each of them--nothing is done in America without
shaking hands--then went on rocking.
'I think I know what bis'ness you have brought these strangers here
upon, then, Gen'ral?'
'Well, sir. I expect you may.'
'You air a tongue-y person, Gen'ral. For you talk too much, and that's
fact,' said Scadder. 'You speak a-larming well in public, but you didn't
ought to go ahead so fast in private. Now!'
'If I can realise your meaning, ride me on a rail!' returned the
General, after pausing for consideration.
'You know we didn't wish to sell the lots off right away to any loafer
as might bid,' said Scadder; 'but had con-cluded to reserve 'em for
Aristocrats of Natur'. Yes!'
'And they are here, sir!' cried the General with warmth. 'They are here,
sir!'
'If they air here,' returned the agent, in reproachful accents, 'that's
enough. But you didn't ought to have your dander ris with ME, Gen'ral.'
The General whispered Martin that Scadder was the honestest fellow in
the world, and that he wouldn't have given him offence designedly, for
ten thousand dollars.
'I do my duty; and I raise the dander of my feller critters, as I
wish to serve,' said Scadder in a low voice, looking down the road
and rocking still. 'They rile up rough, along of my objecting to their
selling Eden off too cheap. That's human natur'! Well!'
'Mr Scadder,' said the General, assuming his oratorical deportment.
'Sir! Here is my hand, and here my heart. I esteem you, sir, and ask
your pardon. These gentlemen air friends of mine, or I would not have
brought 'em here, sir, being well aware, sir, that the lots at present
go entirely too cheap. But these air friends, sir; these air partick'ler
friends.'
Mr Scadder was so satisfied by this explanation, that he shook the
General warmly by the hand, and got out of the rocking-chair to do it.
He then invited the General's particular friends to accompany him into
the office. As to the General, he observed, with his usual benevolence,
that being one of the company, he wouldn't interfere in the transaction
on any account; so he appropriated the rocking-chair to himself, and
looked at the prospect, like a good Samaritan waiting for a traveller.
'Heyday!' cried Martin, as his eye rested on a great plan which occupied
one whole side of the office. Indeed, the office had little else in it,
but some geological and botanical specimens, one or two rusty ledgers, a
homely desk, and a stool. 'Heyday! what's that?'
'That's Eden,' said Scadder, picking his teeth with a sort of young
bayonet that flew out of his knife when he touched a spring.
'Why, I had no idea it was a city.'
'Hadn't you? Oh, it's a city.'
A flourishing city, too! An architectural city! There were banks,
churches, cathedrals, market-places, factories, hotels, stores,
mansions, wharves; an exchange, a theatre; public buildings of all
kinds, down to the office of the Eden Stinger, a daily journal; all
faithfully depicted in the view before them.
'Dear me! It's really a most important place!' cried Martin turning
round.
'Oh! it's very important,' observed the agent.
'But, I am afraid,' said Martin, glancing again at the Public Buildings,
'that there's nothing left for me to do.'
'Well! it ain't all built,' replied the agent. 'Not quite.'
This was a great relief.
'The market-place, now,' said Martin. 'Is that built?'
'That?' said the agent, sticking his toothpick into the weathercock on
the top. 'Let me see. No; that ain't built.'
'Rather a good job to begin with--eh, Mark?' whispered Martin nudging
him with his elbow.
Mark, who, with a very stolid countenance had been eyeing the plan and
the agent by turns, merely rejoined 'Uncommon!'
A dead silence ensued, Mr Scadder in some short recesses or vacations of
his toothpick, whistled a few bars of Yankee Doodle, and blew the dust
off the roof of the Theatre.
'I suppose,' said Martin, feigning to look more narrowly at the plan,
but showing by his tremulous voice how much depended, in his mind, upon
the answer; 'I suppose there are--several architects there?'
'There ain't a single one,' said Scadder.
'Mark,' whispered Martin, pulling him by the sleeve, 'do you hear that?
But whose work is all this before us, then?' he asked aloud.
'The soil being very fruitful, public buildings grows spontaneous,
perhaps,' said Mark.
He was on the agent's dark side as he said it; but Scadder instantly
changed his place, and brought his active eye to bear upon him.
'Feel of my hands, young man,' he said.
'What for?' asked Mark, declining.
'Air they dirty, or air they clean, sir?' said Scadder, holding them
out.
In a physical point of view they were decidedly dirty. But it being
obvious that Mr Scadder offered them for examination in a figurative
sense, as emblems of his moral character, Martin hastened to pronounce
them pure as the driven snow.
'I entreat, Mark,' he said, with some irritation, 'that you will
not obtrude remarks of that nature, which, however harmless and
well-intentioned, are quite out of place, and cannot be expected to be
very agreeable to strangers. I am quite surprised.'
'The Co.'s a-putting his foot in it already,' thought Mark. 'He must be
a sleeping partner--fast asleep and snoring--Co. must; I see.'
Mr Scadder said nothing, but he set his back against the plan, and
thrust his toothpick into the desk some twenty times; looking at Mark
all the while as if he were stabbing him in effigy.
'You haven't said whose work it is,' Martin ventured to observe at
length, in a tone of mild propitiation.
'Well, never mind whose work it is, or isn't,' said the agent sulkily.
'No matter how it did eventuate. P'raps he cleared off, handsome, with a
heap of dollars; p'raps he wasn't worth a cent. P'raps he was a loafin'
rowdy; p'raps a ring-tailed roarer. Now!'
'All your doing, Mark!' said Martin.
'P'raps,' pursued the agent, 'them ain't plants of Eden's raising. No!
P'raps that desk and stool ain't made from Eden lumber. No! P'raps no
end of squatters ain't gone out there. No! P'raps there ain't no such
location in the territoary of the Great U-nited States. Oh, no!'
'I hope you're satisfied with the success of your joke, Mark,' said
Martin.
But here, at a most opportune and happy time, the General interposed,
and called out to Scadder from the doorway to give his friends the
particulars of that little lot of fifty acres with the house upon it;
which, having belonged to the company formerly, had lately lapsed again
into their hands.
'You air a deal too open-handed, Gen'ral,' was the answer. 'It is a lot
as should be rose in price. It is.'
He grumblingly opened his books notwithstanding, and always keeping his
bright side towards Mark, no matter at what amount of inconvenience
to himself, displayed a certain leaf for their perusal. Martin read it
greedily, and then inquired:
'Now where upon the plan may this place be?'
'Upon the plan?' said Scadder.
'Yes.'
He turned towards it, and reflected for a short time, as if, having
been put upon his mettle, he was resolved to be particular to the
very minutest hair's breadth of a shade. At length, after wheeling his
toothpick slowly round and round in the air, as if it were a carrier
pigeon just thrown up, he suddenly made a dart at the drawing, and
pierced the very centre of the main wharf, through and through.
'There!' he said, leaving his knife quivering in the wall; 'that's where
it is!'
Martin glanced with sparkling eyes upon his Co., and his Co. saw that
the thing was done.
The bargain was not concluded as easily as might have been expected
though, for Scadder was caustic and ill-humoured, and cast much
unnecessary opposition in the way; at one time requesting them to think
of it, and call again in a week or a fortnight; at another, predicting
that they wouldn't like it; at another, offering to retract and let them
off, and muttering strong imprecations upon the folly of the General.
But the whole of the astoundingly small sum total of purchase-money--it
was only one hundred and fifty dollars, or something more than thirty
pounds of the capital brought by Co. into the architectural concern--was
ultimately paid down; and Martin's head was two inches nearer the roof
of the little wooden office, with the consciousness of being a landed
proprietor in the thriving city of Eden.
'If it shouldn't happen to fit,' said Scadder, as he gave Martin the
necessary credentials on recepit of his money, 'don't blame me.'
'No, no,' he replied merrily. 'We'll not blame you. General, are you
going?'
'I am at your service, sir; and I wish you,' said the General, giving
him his hand with grave cordiality, 'joy of your po-ssession. You air
now, sir, a denizen of the most powerful and highly-civilised dominion
that has ever graced the world; a do-minion, sir, where man is bound to
man in one vast bond of equal love and truth. May you, sir, be worthy of
your a-dopted country!'
Martin thanked him, and took leave of Mr Scadder; who had resumed his
post in the rocking-chair, immediately on the General's rising from it,
and was once more swinging away as if he had never been disturbed.
Mark looked back several times as they went down the road towards the
National Hotel, but now his blighted profile was towards them, and
nothing but attentive thoughtfulness was written on it. Strangely
different to the other side! He was not a man much given to laughing,
and never laughed outright; but every line in the print of the crow's
foot, and every little wiry vein in that division of his head, was
wrinkled up into a grin! The compound figure of Death and the Lady at
the top of the old ballad was not divided with a greater nicety, and
hadn't halves more monstrously unlike each other, than the two profiles
of Zephaniah Scadder.
The General posted along at a great rate, for the clock was on the
stroke of twelve; and at that hour precisely, the Great Meeting of
the Watertoast Sympathisers was to be holden in the public room of the
National Hotel. Being very curious to witness the demonstration, and
know what it was all about, Martin kept close to the General; and,
keeping closer than ever when they entered the Hall, got by that means
upon a little platform of tables at the upper end; where an armchair was
set for the General, and Mr La Fayette Kettle, as secretary, was making
a great display of some foolscap documents. Screamers, no doubt.
'Well, sir!' he said, as he shook hands with Martin, 'here is a
spectacle calc'lated to make the British Lion put his tail between his
legs, and howl with anguish, I expect!'
Martin certainly thought it possible that the British Lion might have
been rather out of his element in that Ark; but he kept the idea to
himself. The General was then voted to the chair, on the motion of a
pallid lad of the Jefferson Brick school; who forthwith set in for a
high-spiced speech, with a good deal about hearths and homes in it, and
unriveting the chains of Tyranny.
Oh but it was a clincher for the British Lion, it was! The indignation
of the glowing young Columbian knew no bounds. If he could only have
been one of his own forefathers, he said, wouldn't he have peppered
that same Lion, and been to him as another Brute Tamer with a wire whip,
teaching him lessons not easily forgotten. 'Lion! (cried that young
Columbian) where is he? Who is he? What is he? Show him to me. Let me
have him here. Here!' said the young Columbian, in a wrestling attitude,
'upon this sacred altar. Here!' cried the young Columbian, idealising
the dining-table, 'upon ancestral ashes, cemented with the glorious
blood poured out like water on our native plains of Chickabiddy Lick!
Bring forth that Lion!' said the young Columbian. 'Alone, I dare him! I
taunt that Lion. I tell that Lion, that Freedom's hand once twisted
in his mane, he rolls a corse before me, and the Eagles of the Great
Republic laugh ha, ha!'
When it was found that the Lion didn't come, but kept out of the way;
that the young Columbian stood there, with folded arms, alone in his
glory; and consequently that the Eagles were no doubt laughing wildly on
the mountain tops; such cheers arose as might have shaken the hands upon
the Horse-Guards' clock, and changed the very mean time of the day in
England's capital.
'Who is this?' Martin telegraphed to La Fayette.
The Secretary wrote something, very gravely, on a piece of paper,
twisted it up, and had it passed to him from hand to hand. It was an
improvement on the old sentiment: 'Perhaps as remarkable a man as any in
our country.'
This young Columbian was succeeded by another, to the full as eloquent
as he, who drew down storms of cheers. But both remarkable youths,
in their great excitement (for your true poetry can never stoop to
details), forgot to say with whom or what the Watertoasters sympathized,
and likewise why or wherefore they were sympathetic. Thus Martin
remained for a long time as completely in the dark as ever; until
at length a ray of light broke in upon him through the medium of the
Secretary, who, by reading the minutes of their past proceedings,
made the matter somewhat clearer. He then learned that the Watertoast
Association sympathized with a certain Public Man in Ireland, who held a
contest upon certain points with England; and that they did so, because
they didn't love England at all--not by any means because they loved
Ireland much; being indeed horribly jealous and distrustful of its
people always, and only tolerating them because of their working hard,
which made them very useful; labour being held in greater indignity in
the simple republic than in any other country upon earth. This
rendered Martin curious to see what grounds of sympathy the Watertoast
Association put forth; nor was he long in suspense, for the General
rose to read a letter to the Public Man, which with his own hands he had
written.
'Thus,' said the General, 'thus, my friends and fellow-citizens, it
runs:
'"SIR--I address you on behalf of the Watertoast Association of United
Sympathisers. It is founded, sir, in the great republic of America! and
now holds its breath, and swells the blue veins in its forehead nigh to
bursting, as it watches, sir, with feverish intensity and sympathetic
ardour, your noble efforts in the cause of Freedom."'
At the name of Freedom, and at every repetition of that name, all the
Sympathisers roared aloud; cheering with nine times nine, and nine times
over.
'"In Freedom's name, sir--holy Freedom--I address you. In Freedom's
name, I send herewith a contribution to the funds of your society.
In Freedom's name, sir, I advert with indignation and disgust to that
accursed animal, with gore-stained whiskers, whose rampant cruelty and
fiery lust have ever been a scourge, a torment to the world. The naked
visitors to Crusoe's Island, sir; the flying wives of Peter Wilkins; the
fruit-smeared children of the tangled bush; nay, even the men of large
stature, anciently bred in the mining districts of Cornwall; alike
bear witness to its savage nature. Where, sir, are the Cormorans,
the Blunderbores, the Great Feefofums, named in History? All, all,
exterminated by its destroying hand.
'"I allude, sir, to the British Lion.
'"Devoted, mind and body, heart and soul, to Freedom, sir--to Freedom,
blessed solace to the snail upon the cellar-door, the oyster in his
pearly bed, the still mite in his home of cheese, the very winkle of
your country in his shelly lair--in her unsullied name, we offer you our
sympathy. Oh, sir, in this our cherished and our happy land, her fires
burn bright and clear and smokeless; once lighted up in yours, the lion
shall be roasted whole.
'"I am, sir, in Freedom's name,
'"Your affectionate friend and faithful Sympathiser,
'"CYRUS CHOKE,
'"General, U.S.M."'
It happened that just as the General began to read this letter, the
railroad train arrived, bringing a new mail from England; and a packet
had been handed in to the Secretary, which during its perusal and
the frequent cheerings in homage to freedom, he had opened. Now, its
contents disturbed him very much, and the moment the General sat down,
he hurried to his side, and placed in his hand a letter and several
printed extracts from English newspapers; to which, in a state of
infinite excitement, he called his immediate attention.
The General, being greatly heated by his own composition, was in a
fit state to receive any inflammable influence; but he had no sooner
possessed himself of the contents of these documents, than a change came
over his face, involving such a huge amount of choler and passion, that
the noisy concourse were silent in a moment, in very wonder at the sight
of him.
'My friends!' cried the General, rising; 'my friends and fellow
citizens, we have been mistaken in this man.'
'In what man?' was the cry.
'In this,' panted the General, holding up the letter he had read aloud
a few minutes before. 'I find that he has been, and is, the
advocate--consistent in it always too--of Nigger emancipation!'
If anything beneath the sky be real, those Sons of Freedom would have
pistolled, stabbed--in some way slain--that man by coward hands and
murderous violence, if he had stood among them at that time. The most
confiding of their own countrymen would not have wagered then--no, nor
would they ever peril--one dunghill straw, upon the life of any man in
such a strait. They tore the letter, cast the fragments in the air, trod
down the pieces as they fell; and yelled, and groaned, and hissed, till
they could cry no longer.
'I shall move,' said the General, when he could make himself heard,
'that the Watertoast Association of United Sympathisers be immediately
dissolved!'
Down with it! Away with it! Don't hear of it! Burn its records! Pull the
room down! Blot it out of human memory!
'But, my fellow-countrymen!' said the General, 'the contributions. We
have funds. What is to be done with the funds?'
It was hastily resolved that a piece of plate should be presented to a
certain constitutional Judge, who had laid down from the Bench the noble
principle that it was lawful for any white mob to murder any black man;
and that another piece of plate, of similar value should be presented
to a certain Patriot, who had declared from his high place in the
Legislature, that he and his friends would hang without trial, any
Abolitionist who might pay them a visit. For the surplus, it was agreed
that it should be devoted to aiding the enforcement of those free and
equal laws, which render it incalculably more criminal and dangerous
to teach a negro to read and write than to roast him alive in a public
city. These points adjusted, the meeting broke up in great disorder, and
there was an end of the Watertoast Sympathy.
As Martin ascended to his bedroom, his eye was attracted by the
Republican banner, which had been hoisted from the house-top in honour
of the occasion, and was fluttering before a window which he passed.
'Tut!' said Martin. 'You're a gay flag in the distance. But let a man
be near enough to get the light upon the other side and see through you;
and you are but sorry fustian!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
FROM WHICH IT WILL BE SEEN THAT MARTIN BECAME A LION OF HIS OWN ACCOUNT.
TOGETHER WITH THE REASON WHY
As soon as it was generally known in the National Hotel, that the young
Englishman, Mr Chuzzlewit, had purchased a 'lo-cation' in the Valley
of Eden, and intended to betake himself to that earthly Paradise by the
next steamboat, he became a popular character. Why this should be, or
how it had come to pass, Martin no more knew than Mrs Gamp, of Kingsgate
Street, High Holborn, did; but that he was for the time being the lion,
by popular election, of the Watertoast community, and that his society
was in rather inconvenient request there could be no kind of doubt.
The first notification he received of this change in his position, was
the following epistle, written in a thin running hand--with here and
there a fat letter or two, to make the general effect more striking--on
a sheet of paper, ruled with blue lines.
'NATIONAL HOTEL,
'MONDAY MORNING.
'Dear Sir--'When I had the privillidge of being your fellow-traveller
in the cars, the day before yesterday, you offered some remarks upon the
subject of the tower of London, which (in common with my fellow-citizens
generally) I could wish to hear repeated to a public audience.
'As secretary to the Young Men's Watertoast Association of this town,
I am requested to inform you that the Society will be proud to hear
you deliver a lecture upon the Tower of London, at their Hall to-morrow
evening, at seven o'clock; and as a large issue of quarter-dollar
tickets may be expected, your answer and consent by bearer will be
considered obliging.
'Dear Sir,
'Yours truly,
'LA FAYETTE KETTLE.
'The Honourable M. Chuzzlewit.
'P.S.--The Society would not be particular in limiting you to the Tower
of London. Permit me to suggest that any remarks upon the Elements of
Geology, or (if more convenient) upon the Writings of your talented and
witty countryman, the honourable Mr Miller, would be well received.'
Very much aghast at this invitation, Martin wrote back, civilly
declining it; and had scarcely done so, when he received another letter.
'No. 47, Bunker Hill Street,
'Monday Morning.
'(Private).
'Sir--I was raised in those interminable solitudes where our mighty
Mississippi (or Father of Waters) rolls his turbid flood.
'I am young, and ardent. For there is a poetry in wildness, and every
alligator basking in the slime is in himself an Epic, self-contained. I
aspirate for fame. It is my yearning and my thirst.
'Are you, sir, aware of any member of Congress in England, who would
undertake to pay my expenses to that country, and for six months after
my arrival?
'There is something within me which gives me the assurance that this
enlightened patronage would not be thrown away. In literature or art;
the bar, the pulpit, or the stage; in one or other, if not all, I feel
that I am certain to succeed.
'If too much engaged to write to any such yourself, please let me have
a list of three or four of those most likely to respond, and I will
address them through the Post Office. May I also ask you to favour me
with any critical observations that have ever presented themselves to
your reflective faculties, on "Cain, a Mystery," by the Right Honourable
Lord Byron?
'I am, Sir,
'Yours (forgive me if I add, soaringly),
'PUTNAM SMIF
'P.S.--Address your answer to America Junior, Messrs. Hancock & Floby,
Dry Goods Store, as above.'
Both of which letters, together with Martin's reply to each, were,
according to a laudable custom, much tending to the promotion of
gentlemanly feeling and social confidence, published in the next number
of the Watertoast Gazette.
He had scarcely got through this correspondence when Captain Kedgick,
the landlord, kindly came upstairs to see how he was getting on. The
Captain sat down upon the bed before he spoke; and finding it rather
hard, moved to the pillow.
'Well, sir!' said the Captain, putting his hat a little more on one
side, for it was rather tight in the crown: 'You're quite a public man I
calc'late.'
'So it seems,' retorted Martin, who was very tired.
'Our citizens, sir,' pursued the Captain, 'intend to pay their respects
to you. You will have to hold a sort of le-vee, sir, while you're here.'
'Powers above!' cried Martin, 'I couldn't do that, my good fellow!'
'I reckon you MUST then,' said the Captain.
'Must is not a pleasant word, Captain,' urged Martin.
'Well! I didn't fix the mother language, and I can't unfix it,' said the
Captain coolly; 'else I'd make it pleasant. You must re-ceive. That's
all.'
'But why should I receive people who care as much for me as I care for
them?' asked Martin.
'Well! because I have had a muniment put up in the bar,' returned the
Captain.
'A what?' cried Martin.
'A muniment,' rejoined the Captain.
Martin looked despairingly at Mark, who informed him that the
Captain meant a written notice that Mr Chuzzlewit would receive the
Watertoasters that day, at and after two o'clock which was in effect
then hanging in the bar, as Mark, from ocular inspection of the same,
could testify.
'You wouldn't be unpop'lar, I know,' said the Captain, paring his nails.
'Our citizens an't long of riling up, I tell you; and our Gazette could
flay you like a wild cat.'
Martin was going to be very wroth, but he thought better of it, and
said:
'In Heaven's name let them come, then.'
'Oh, THEY'll come,' returned the Captain. 'I have seen the big room
fixed a'purpose, with my eyes.'
'But will you,' said Martin, seeing that the Captain was about to go;
'will you at least tell me this? What do they want to see me for? what
have I done? and how do they happen to have such a sudden interest in
me?'
Captain Kedgick put a thumb and three fingers to each side of the
brim of his hat; lifted it a little way off his head; put it on again
carefully; passed one hand all down his face, beginning at the forehead
and ending at the chin; looked at Martin; then at Mark; then at Martin
again; winked, and walked out.
'Upon my life, now!' said Martin, bringing his hand heavily upon the
table; 'such a perfectly unaccountable fellow as that, I never saw.
Mark, what do you say to this?'
'Why, sir,' returned his partner, 'my opinion is that we must have got
to the MOST remarkable man in the country at last. So I hope there's an
end to the breed, sir.'
Although this made Martin laugh, it couldn't keep off two o'clock.
Punctually, as the hour struck, Captain Kedgick returned to hand him
to the room of state; and he had no sooner got him safe there, than
he bawled down the staircase to his fellow-citizens below, that Mr
Chuzzlewit was 'receiving.'
Up they came with a rush. Up they came until the room was full, and,
through the open door, a dismal perspective of more to come, was shown
upon the stairs. One after another, one after another, dozen after
dozen, score after score, more, more, more, up they came; all shaking
hands with Martin. Such varieties of hands, the thick, the thin,
the short, the long, the fat, the lean, the coarse, the fine; such
differences of temperature, the hot, the cold, the dry, the moist,
the flabby; such diversities of grasp, the tight, the loose, the
short-lived, and the lingering! Still up, up, up, more, more, more; and
ever and anon the Captain's voice was heard above the crowd--'There's
more below! there's more below. Now, gentlemen you that have been
introduced to Mr Chuzzlewit, will you clear gentlemen? Will you clear?
Will you be so good as clear, gentlemen, and make a little room for
more?'
Regardless of the Captain's cries, they didn't clear at all, but stood
there, bolt upright and staring. Two gentlemen connected with the
Watertoast Gazette had come express to get the matter for an article on
Martin. They had agreed to divide the labour. One of them took him below
the waistcoat. One above. Each stood directly in front of his subject
with his head a little on one side, intent on his department. If Martin
put one boot before the other, the lower gentleman was down upon him;
he rubbed a pimple on his nose, and the upper gentleman booked it. He
opened his mouth to speak, and the same gentleman was on one knee before
him, looking in at his teeth, with the nice scrutiny of a dentist.
Amateurs in the physiognomical and phrenological sciences roved about
him with watchful eyes and itching fingers, and sometimes one, more
daring than the rest, made a mad grasp at the back of his head, and
vanished in the crowd. They had him in all points of view: in front, in
profile, three-quarter face, and behind. Those who were not professional
or scientific, audibly exchanged opinions on his looks. New lights shone
in upon him, in respect of his nose. Contradictory rumours were abroad
on the subject of his hair. And still the Captain's voice was heard--so
stifled by the concourse, that he seemed to speak from underneath a
feather-bed--exclaiming--'Gentlemen, you that have been introduced to Mr
Chuzzlewit, WILL you clear?'
Even when they began to clear it was no better; for then a stream of
gentlemen, every one with a lady on each arm (exactly like the chorus
to the National Anthem when Royalty goes in state to the play), came
gliding in--every new group fresher than the last, and bent on staying
to the latest moment. If they spoke to him, which was not often, they
invariably asked the same questions, in the same tone; with no more
remorse, or delicacy, or consideration, than if he had been a figure of
stone, purchased, and paid for, and set up there for their delight. Even
when, in the slow course of time, these died off, it was as bad as ever,
if not worse; for then the boys grew bold, and came in as a class
of themselves, and did everything that the grown-up people had done.
Uncouth stragglers, too, appeared; men of a ghostly kind, who being in,
didn't know how to get out again; insomuch that one silent gentleman
with glazed and fishy eyes and only one button on his waistcoat (which
was a very large metal one, and shone prodigiously), got behind the
door, and stood there, like a clock, long after everybody else was gone.
Martin felt, from pure fatigue, and heat, and worry, as if he could have
fallen on the ground and willingly remained there, if they would but
have had the mercy to leave him alone. But as letters and messages,
threatening his public denouncement if he didn't see the senders, poured
in like hail; and as more visitors came while he took his coffee by
himself; and as Mark, with all his vigilance, was unable to keep them
from the door; he resolved to go to bed--not that he felt at all sure
of bed being any protection, but that he might not leave a forlorn hope
untried.
He had communicated this design to Mark, and was on the eve of escaping,
when the door was thrown open in a great hurry, and an elderly gentleman
entered; bringing with him a lady who certainly could not be considered
young--that was matter of fact; and probably could not be considered
handsome--but that was matter of opinion. She was very straight, very
tall, and not at all flexible in face or figure. On her head she wore a
great straw bonnet, with trimmings of the same, in which she looked as
if she had been thatched by an unskillful labourer; and in her hand she
held a most enormous fan.
'Mr Chuzzlewit, I believe?' said the gentleman.
'That is my name.'
'Sir,' said the gentleman, 'I am pressed for time.'
'Thank God!' thought Martin.
'I go back Toe my home, sir,' pursued the gentleman, 'by the return
train, which starts immediate. Start is not a word you use in your
country, sir.'
'Oh yes, it is,' said Martin.
'You air mistaken, sir,' returned the gentleman, with great decision:
'but we will not pursue the subject, lest it should awake your
preju--dice. Sir, Mrs Hominy.'
Martin bowed.
'Mrs Hominy, sir, is the lady of Major Hominy, one of our chicest
spirits; and belongs Toe one of our most aristocratic families. You air,
p'raps, acquainted, sir, with Mrs Hominy's writings.'
Martin couldn't say he was.
'You have much Toe learn, and Toe enjoy, sir,' said the gentleman.
'Mrs Hominy is going Toe stay until the end of the Fall, sir, with her
married daughter at the settlement of New Thermopylae, three days this
side of Eden. Any attention, sir, that you can show Toe Mrs Hominy
upon the journey, will be very grateful Toe the Major and our
fellow-citizens. Mrs Hominy, I wish you good night, ma'am, and a
pleasant pro-gress on your route!'
Martin could scarcely believe it; but he had gone, and Mrs Hominy was
drinking the milk.
'A'most used-up I am, I do declare!' she observed. 'The jolting in
the cars is pretty nigh as bad as if the rail was full of snags and
sawyers.'
'Snags and sawyers, ma'am?' said Martin.
'Well, then, I do suppose you'll hardly realise my meaning, sir,' said
Mrs Hominy. 'My! Only think! DO tell!'
It did not appear that these expressions, although they seemed to
conclude with an urgent entreaty, stood in need of any answer; for Mrs
Hominy, untying her bonnet-strings, observed that she would withdraw to
lay that article of dress aside, and would return immediately.
'Mark!' said Martin. 'Touch me, will you. Am I awake?'
'Hominy is, sir,' returned his partner--'Broad awake! Just the sort of
woman, sir, as would be discovered with her eyes wide open, and her mind
a-working for her country's good, at any hour of the day or night.'
They had no opportunity of saying more, for Mrs Hominy stalked in
again--very erect, in proof of her aristocratic blood; and holding in
her clasped hands a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, perhaps a parting
gift from that choice spirit, the Major. She had laid aside her bonnet,
and now appeared in a highly aristocratic and classical cap, meeting
beneath her chin: a style of headdress so admirably adapted to her
countenance, that if the late Mr Grimaldi had appeared in the lappets of
Mrs Siddons, a more complete effect could not have been produced.
Martin handed her to a chair. Her first words arrested him before he
could get back to his own seat.
'Pray, sir!' said Mrs Hominy, 'where do you hail from?'
'I am afraid I am dull of comprehension,' answered Martin, 'being
extremely tired; but upon my word I don't understand you.'
Mrs Hominy shook her head with a melancholy smile that said, not
inexpressively, 'They corrupt even the language in that old country!'
and added then, as coming down a step or two to meet his low capacity,
'Where was you rose?'
'Oh!' said Martin 'I was born in Kent.'
'And how do you like our country, sir?' asked Mrs Hominy.
'Very much indeed,' said Martin, half asleep. 'At least--that is--pretty
well, ma'am.'
'Most strangers--and partick'larly Britishers--are much surprised by
what they see in the U-nited States,' remarked Mrs Hominy.
'They have excellent reason to be so, ma'am,' said Martin. 'I never was
so much surprised in all my life.'
'Our institutions make our people smart much, sir,' Mrs Hominy remarked.
'The most short-sighted man could see that at a glance, with his naked
eye,' said Martin.
Mrs Hominy was a philosopher and an authoress, and consequently had a
pretty strong digestion; but this coarse, this indecorous phrase,
was almost too much for her. For a gentleman sitting alone with a
lady--although the door WAS open--to talk about a naked eye!
A long interval elapsed before even she--woman of masculine and towering
intellect though she was--could call up fortitude enough to resume the
conversation. But Mrs Hominy was a traveller. Mrs Hominy was a writer
of reviews and analytical disquisitions. Mrs Hominy had had her letters
from abroad, beginning 'My ever dearest blank,' and signed 'The Mother
of the Modern Gracchi' (meaning the married Miss Hominy), regularly
printed in a public journal, with all the indignation in capitals, and
all the sarcasm in italics. Mrs Hominy had looked on foreign countries
with the eye of a perfect republican hot from the model oven; and Mrs
Hominy could talk (or write) about them by the hour together. So Mrs
Hominy at last came down on Martin heavily, and as he was fast asleep,
she had it all her own way, and bruised him to her heart's content.
It is no great matter what Mrs Hominy said, save that she had learnt it
from the cant of a class, and a large class, of her fellow countrymen,
who in their every word, avow themselves to be as senseless to the high
principles on which America sprang, a nation, into life, as any Orson in
her legislative halls. Who are no more capable of feeling, or of caring
if they did feel, that by reducing their own country to the ebb of
honest men's contempt, they put in hazard the rights of nations yet
unborn, and very progress of the human race, than are the swine who
wallow in their streets. Who think that crying out to other nations,
old in their iniquity, 'We are no worse than you!' (No worse!) is high
defence and 'vantage-ground enough for that Republic, but yesterday let
loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lame, so full
of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense,
that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust.
Who, having by their ancestors declared and won their Independence,
because they would not bend the knee to certain Public vices and
corruptions, and would not abrogate the truth, run riot in the Bad,
and turn their backs upon the Good; and lying down contented with the
wretched boast that other Temples also are of glass, and stones which
batter theirs may be flung back; show themselves, in that alone, as
immeasurably behind the import of the trust they hold, and as unworthy
to possess it as if the sordid hucksterings of all their little
governments--each one a kingdom in its small depravity--were brought
into a heap for evidence against them.
Martin by degrees became so far awake, that he had a sense of a terrible
oppression on his mind; an imperfect dream that he had murdered a
particular friend, and couldn't get rid of the body. When his eyes
opened it was staring him full in the face. There was the horrible
Hominy talking deep truths in a melodious snuffle, and pouring forth her
mental endowments to such an extent that the Major's bitterest enemy,
hearing her, would have forgiven him from the bottom of his heart.
Martin might have done something desperate if the gong had not sounded
for supper; but sound it did most opportunely; and having stationed Mrs
Hominy at the upper end of the table he took refuge at the lower end
himself; whence, after a hasty meal he stole away, while the lady was
yet busied with dried beef and a saucer-full of pickled fixings.
It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of Mrs Hominy's freshness
next day, or of the avidity with which she went headlong into moral
philosophy at breakfast. Some little additional degree of asperity,
perhaps, was visible in her features, but not more than the pickles
would have naturally produced. All that day she clung to Martin. She
sat beside him while he received his friends (for there was another
Reception, yet more numerous than the former), propounded theories, and
answered imaginary objections, so that Martin really began to think he
must be dreaming, and speaking for two; she quoted interminable passages
from certain essays on government, written by herself; used the Major's
pocket-handkerchief as if the snuffle were a temporary malady, of which
she was determined to rid herself by some means or other; and, in short,
was such a remarkable companion, that Martin quite settled it between
himself and his conscience, that in any new settlement it would be
absolutely necessary to have such a person knocked on the head for the
general peace of society.
In the meantime Mark was busy, from early in the morning until late
at night, in getting on board the steamboat such provisions, tools and
other necessaries, as they had been forewarned it would be wise to take.
The purchase of these things, and the settlement of their bill at the
National, reduced their finances to so low an ebb, that if the captain
had delayed his departure any longer, they would have been in almost as
bad a plight as the unfortunate poorer emigrants, who (seduced on board
by solemn advertisement) had been living on the lower deck a whole week,
and exhausting their miserable stock of provisions before the voyage
commenced. There they were, all huddled together with the engine and the
fires. Farmers who had never seen a plough; woodmen who had never used
an axe; builders who couldn't make a box; cast out of their own land,
with not a hand to aid them: newly come into an unknown world, children
in helplessness, but men in wants--with younger children at their backs,
to live or die as it might happen!
The morning came, and they would start at noon. Noon came, and they
would start at night. But nothing is eternal in this world; not even the
procrastination of an American skipper; and at night all was ready.
Dispirited and weary to the last degree, but a greater lion than
ever (he had done nothing all the afternoon but answer letters from
strangers; half of them about nothing; half about borrowing money, and
all requiring an instantaneous reply), Martin walked down to the wharf,
through a concourse of people, with Mrs Hominy upon his arm; and went on
board. But Mark was bent on solving the riddle of this lionship, if he
could; and so, not without the risk of being left behind, ran back to
the hotel.
Captain Kedgick was sitting in the colonnade, with a julep on his knee,
and a cigar in his mouth. He caught Mark's eye, and said:
'Why, what the 'Tarnal brings you here?'
'I'll tell you plainly what it is, Captain,' said Mark. 'I want to ask
you a question.'
'A man may ASK a question, so he may,' returned Kedgick; strongly
implying that another man might not answer a question, so he mightn't.
'What have they been making so much of him for, now?' said Mark, slyly.
'Come!'
'Our people like ex-citement,' answered Kedgick, sucking his cigar.
'But how has he excited 'em?' asked Mark.
The Captain looked at him as if he were half inclined to unburden his
mind of a capital joke.
'You air a-going?' he said.
'Going!' cried Mark. 'Ain't every moment precious?'
'Our people like ex-citement,' said the Captain, whispering. 'He ain't
like emigrants in gin'ral; and he excited 'em along of this;' he winked
and burst into a smothered laugh; 'along of this. Scadder is a smart
man, and--and--nobody as goes to Eden ever comes back alive!'
The wharf was close at hand, and at that instant Mark could hear them
shouting out his name; could even hear Martin calling to him to make
haste, or they would be separated. It was too late to mend the matter,
or put any face upon it but the best. He gave the Captain a parting
benediction, and ran off like a race-horse.
'Mark! Mark!' cried Martin.
'Here am I, sir!' shouted Mark, suddenly replying from the edge of the
quay, and leaping at a bound on board. 'Never was half so jolly, sir.
All right. Haul in! Go ahead!'
The sparks from the wood fire streamed upward from the two chimneys, as
if the vessel were a great firework just lighted; and they roared away
upon the dark water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MARTIN AND HIS PARTNER TAKE POSSESSION OF THEIR ESTATE. THE JOYFUL
OCCASION INVOLVES SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF EDEN
There happened to be on board the steamboat several gentlemen
passengers, of the same stamp as Martin's New York friend Mr Bevan; and
in their society he was cheerful and happy. They released him as well
as they could from the intellectual entanglements of Mrs Hominy;
and exhibited, in all they said and did, so much good sense and high
feeling, that he could not like them too well. 'If this were a republic
of Intellect and Worth,' he said, 'instead of vapouring and jobbing,
they would not want the levers to keep it in motion.'
'Having good tools, and using bad ones,' returned Mr Tapley, 'would look
as if they was rather a poor sort of carpenters, sir, wouldn't it?'
Martin nodded. 'As if their work were infinitely above their powers and
purpose, Mark; and they botched it in consequence.'
'The best on it is,' said Mark, 'that when they do happen to make a
decent stroke; such as better workmen, with no such opportunities, make
every day of their lives and think nothing of--they begin to sing out
so surprising loud. Take notice of my words, sir. If ever the defaulting
part of this here country pays its debts--along of finding that not
paying 'em won't do in a commercial point of view, you see, and is
inconvenient in its consequences--they'll take such a shine out of it,
and make such bragging speeches, that a man might suppose no borrowed
money had ever been paid afore, since the world was first begun. That's
the way they gammon each other, sir. Bless you, I know 'em. Take notice
of my words, now!'
'You seem to be growing profoundly sagacious!' cried Martin, laughing.
'Whether that is,' thought Mark, 'because I'm a day's journey nearer
Eden, and am brightening up afore I die, I can't say. P'rhaps by the
time I get there I shall have growed into a prophet.'
He gave no utterance to these sentiments; but the excessive joviality
they inspired within him, and the merriment they brought upon his
shining face, were quite enough for Martin. Although he might sometimes
profess to make light of his partner's inexhaustible cheerfulness,
and might sometimes, as in the case of Zephaniah Scadder, find him
too jocose a commentator, he was always sensible of the effect of his
example in rousing him to hopefulness and courage. Whether he were in
the humour to profit by it, mattered not a jot. It was contagious, and
he could not choose but be affected.
At first they parted with some of their passengers once or twice a day,
and took in others to replace them. But by degrees, the towns upon their
route became more thinly scattered; and for many hours together they
would see no other habitations than the huts of the wood-cutters, where
the vessel stopped for fuel. Sky, wood, and water all the livelong day;
and heat that blistered everything it touched.
On they toiled through great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks
grew thick and close; and floated in the stream; and held up shrivelled
arms from out the river's depths; and slid down from the margin of the
land, half growing, half decaying, in the miry water. On through the
weary day and melancholy night; beneath the burning sun, and in the mist
and vapour of the evening; on, until return appeared impossible, and
restoration to their home a miserable dream.
They had now but few people on board, and these few were as flat, as
dull, and stagnant, as the vegetation that oppressed their eyes. No
sound of cheerfulness or hope was heard; no pleasant talk beguiled
the tardy time; no little group made common cause against the full
depression of the scene. But that, at certain periods, they swallowed
food together from a common trough, it might have been old Charon's
boat, conveying melancholy shades to judgment.
At length they drew near New Thermopylae; where, that same evening, Mrs
Hominy would disembark. A gleam of comfort sunk into Martin's bosom when
she told him this. Mark needed none; but he was not displeased.
It was almost night when they came alongside the landing-place. A steep
bank with an hotel like a barn on the top of it; a wooden store or two;
and a few scattered sheds.
'You sleep here to-night, and go on in the morning, I suppose, ma'am?'
said Martin.
'Where should I go on to?' cried the mother of the modern Gracchi.
'To New Thermopylae.'
'My! ain't I there?' said Mrs Hominy.
Martin looked for it all round the darkening panorama; but he couldn't
see it, and was obliged to say so.
'Why that's it!' cried Mrs Hominy, pointing to the sheds just mentioned.
'THAT!' exclaimed Martin.
'Ah! that; and work it which way you will, it whips Eden,' said Mrs
Hominy, nodding her head with great expression.
The married Miss Hominy, who had come on board with her husband, gave to
this statement her most unqualified support, as did that gentleman also.
Martin gratefully declined their invitation to regale himself at their
house during the half hour of the vessel's stay; and having escorted
Mrs Hominy and the red pocket-handkerchief (which was still on active
service) safely across the gangway, returned in a thoughtful mood to
watch the emigrants as they removed their goods ashore.
Mark, as he stood beside him, glanced in his face from time to time;
anxious to discover what effect this dialogue had had upon him, and
not unwilling that his hopes should be dashed before they reached their
destination, so that the blow he feared might be broken in its fall. But
saving that he sometimes looked up quickly at the poor erections on the
hill, he gave him no clue to what was passing in his mind, until they
were again upon their way.
'Mark,' he said then, 'are there really none but ourselves on board this
boat who are bound for Eden?'
'None at all, sir. Most of 'em, as you know, have stopped short; and
the few that are left are going further on. What matters that! More room
there for us, sir.'
'Oh, to be sure!' said Martin. 'But I was thinking--' and there he
paused.
'Yes, sir?' observed Mark.
'How odd it was that the people should have arranged to try their
fortune at a wretched hole like that, for instance, when there is such
a much better, and such a very different kind of place, near at hand, as
one may say.'
He spoke in a tone so very different from his usual confidence, and with
such an obvious dread of Mark's reply, that the good-natured fellow was
full of pity.
'Why, you know, sir,' said Mark, as gently as he could by any means
insinuate the observation, 'we must guard against being too sanguine.
There's no occasion for it, either, because we're determined to make the
best of everything, after we know the worst of it. Ain't we, sir?'
Martin looked at him, but answered not a word.
'Even Eden, you know, ain't all built,' said Mark.
'In the name of Heaven, man,' cried Martin angrily, 'don't talk of Eden
in the same breath with that place. Are you mad? There--God forgive
me!--don't think harshly of me for my temper!'
After that, he turned away, and walked to and fro upon the deck full two
hours. Nor did he speak again, except to say 'Good night,' until next
day; nor even then upon this subject, but on other topics quite foreign
to the purpose.
As they proceeded further on their track, and came more and more towards
their journey's end, the monotonous desolation of the scene increased to
that degree, that for any redeeming feature it presented to their eyes,
they might have entered, in the body, on the grim domains of Giant
Despair. A flat morass, bestrewn with fallen timber; a marsh on which
the good growth of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and cast away,
that from its decomposing ashes vile and ugly things might rise; where
the very trees took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the slime
from which they sprung, by the hot sun that burnt them up; where fatal
maladies, seeking whom they might infect, came forth at night in misty
shapes, and creeping out upon the water, hunted them like spectres until
day; where even the blessed sun, shining down on festering elements
of corruption and disease, became a horror; this was the realm of Hope
through which they moved.
At last they stopped. At Eden too. The waters of the Deluge might have
left it but a week before; so choked with slime and matted growth was
the hideous swamp which bore that name.
There being no depth of water close in shore, they landed from the
vessel's boat, with all their goods beside them. There were a few
log-houses visible among the dark trees; the best, a cow-shed or a rude
stable; but for the wharves, the market-place, the public buildings--
'Here comes an Edener,' said Mark. 'He'll get us help to carry these
things up. Keep a good heart, sir. Hallo there!'
The man advanced toward them through the thickening gloom, very slowly;
leaning on a stick. As he drew nearer, they observed that he was pale
and worn, and that his anxious eyes were deeply sunken in his head. His
dress of homespun blue hung about him in rags; his feet and head were
bare. He sat down on a stump half-way, and beckoned them to come to him.
When they complied, he put his hand upon his side as if in pain, and
while he fetched his breath stared at them, wondering.
'Strangers!' he exclaimed, as soon as he could speak.
'The very same,' said Mark. 'How are you, sir?'
'I've had the fever very bad,' he answered faintly. 'I haven't stood
upright these many weeks. Those are your notions I see,' pointing to
their property.
'Yes, sir,' said Mark, 'they are. You couldn't recommend us some one as
would lend a hand to help carry 'em up to the--to the town, could you,
sir?'
'My eldest son would do it if he could,' replied the man; 'but today
he has his chill upon him, and is lying wrapped up in the blankets. My
youngest died last week.'
'I'm sorry for it, governor, with all my heart,' said Mark, shaking him
by the hand. 'Don't mind us. Come along with me, and I'll give you an
arm back. The goods is safe enough, sir'--to Martin--'there ain't many
people about, to make away with 'em. What a comfort that is!'
'No,' cried the man. 'You must look for such folk here,' knocking his
stick upon the ground, 'or yonder in the bush, towards the north. We've
buried most of 'em. The rest have gone away. Them that we have here,
don't come out at night.'
'The night air ain't quite wholesome, I suppose?' said Mark.
'It's deadly poison,' was the settler's answer.
Mark showed no more uneasiness than if it had been commended to him as
ambrosia; but he gave the man his arm, and as they went along explained
to him the nature of their purchase, and inquired where it lay. Close to
his own log-house, he said; so close that he had used their dwelling
as a store-house for some corn; they must excuse it that night, but he
would endeavour to get it taken out upon the morrow. He then gave them
to understand, as an additional scrap of local chit-chat, that he had
buried the last proprietor with his own hands; a piece of information
which Mark also received without the least abatement of his equanimity.
In a word, he conducted them to a miserable cabin, rudely constructed
of the trunks of trees; the door of which had either fallen down or
been carried away long ago; and which was consequently open to the
wild landscape and the dark night. Saving for the little store he had
mentioned, it was perfectly bare of all furniture; but they had left a
chest upon the landing-place, and he gave them a rude torch in lieu
of candle. This latter acquisition Mark planted in the earth, and then
declaring that the mansion 'looked quite comfortable,' hurried
Martin off again to help bring up the chest. And all the way to the
landing-place and back, Mark talked incessantly; as if he would infuse
into his partner's breast some faint belief that they had arrived under
the most auspicious and cheerful of all imaginable circumstances.
But many a man who would have stood within a home dismantled, strong in
his passion and design of vengeance, has had the firmness of his
nature conquered by the razing of an air-built castle. When the log-hut
received them for the second time, Martin laid down upon the ground, and
wept aloud.
'Lord love you, sir!' cried Mr Tapley, in great terror; 'Don't do that!
Don't do that, sir! Anything but that! It never helped man, woman, or
child, over the lowest fence yet, sir, and it never will. Besides its
being of no use to you, it's worse than of no use to me, for the least
sound of it will knock me flat down. I can't stand up agin it, sir.
Anything but that!'
There is no doubt he spoke the truth, for the extraordinary alarm with
which he looked at Martin as he paused upon his knees before the chest,
in the act of unlocking it, to say these words, sufficiently confirmed
him.
'I ask your forgiveness a thousand times, my dear fellow,' said Martin.
'I couldn't have helped it, if death had been the penalty.'
'Ask my forgiveness!' said Mark, with his accustomed cheerfulness, as he
proceeded to unpack the chest. 'The head partner a-asking forgiveness of
Co., eh? There must be something wrong in the firm when that happens. I
must have the books inspected and the accounts gone over immediate. Here
we are. Everything in its proper place. Here's the salt pork. Here's the
biscuit. Here's the whiskey. Uncommon good it smells too. Here's the
tin pot. This tin pot's a small fortun' in itself! Here's the blankets.
Here's the axe. Who says we ain't got a first-rate fit out? I feel as if
I was a cadet gone out to Indy, and my noble father was chairman of the
Board of Directors. Now, when I've got some water from the stream afore
the door and mixed the grog,' cried Mark, running out to suit the action
to the word, 'there's a supper ready, comprising every delicacy of
the season. Here we are, sir, all complete. For what we are going to
receive, et cetrer. Lord bless you, sir, it's very like a gipsy party!'
It was impossible not to take heart, in the company of such a man as
this. Martin sat upon the ground beside the box; took out his knife; and
ate and drank sturdily.
'Now you see,' said Mark, when they had made a hearty meal; 'with your
knife and mine, I sticks this blanket right afore the door. Or where, in
a state of high civilization, the door would be. And very neat it looks.
Then I stops the aperture below, by putting the chest agin it. And very
neat THAT looks. Then there's your blanket, sir. Then here's mine. And
what's to hinder our passing a good night?'
For all his light-hearted speaking, it was long before he slept himself.
He wrapped his blanket round him, put the axe ready to his hand, and lay
across the threshold of the door; too anxious and too watchful to close
his eyes. The novelty of their dreary situation, the dread of some
rapacious animal or human enemy, the terrible uncertainty of their means
of subsistence, the apprehension of death, the immense distance and the
hosts of obstacles between themselves and England, were fruitful sources
of disquiet in the deep silence of the night. Though Martin would have
had him think otherwise, Mark felt that he was waking also, and a prey
to the same reflections. This was almost worse than all, for if he began
to brood over their miseries instead of trying to make head against them
there could be little doubt that such a state of mind would powerfully
assist the influence of the pestilent climate. Never had the light of
day been half so welcome to his eyes, as when awaking from a fitful
doze, Mark saw it shining through the blanket in the doorway.
He stole out gently, for his companion was sleeping now; and having
refreshed himself by washing in the river, where it snowed before the
door, took a rough survey of the settlement. There were not above a
score of cabins in the whole; half of these appeared untenanted; all
were rotten and decayed. The most tottering, abject, and forlorn among
them was called, with great propriety, the Bank, and National Credit
Office. It had some feeble props about it, but was settling deep down in
the mud, past all recovery.
Here and there an effort had been made to clear the land, and something
like a field had been marked out, where, among the stumps and ashes of
burnt trees, a scanty crop of Indian corn was growing. In some quarters,
a snake or zigzag fence had been begun, but in no instance had it been
completed; and the felled logs, half hidden in the soil, lay mouldering
away. Three or four meagre dogs, wasted and vexed with hunger; some
long-legged pigs, wandering away into the woods in search of food; some
children, nearly naked, gazing at him from the huts; were all the living
things he saw. A fetid vapour, hot and sickening as the breath of an
oven, rose up from the earth, and hung on everything around; and as his
foot-prints sunk into the marshy ground, a black ooze started forth to
blot them out.
Their own land was mere forest. The trees had grown so think and close
that they shouldered one another out of their places, and the weakest,
forced into shapes of strange distortion, languished like cripples.
The best were stunted, from the pressure and the want of room; and high
about the stems of all grew long rank grass, dank weeds, and frowsy
underwood; not divisible into their separate kinds, but tangled all
together in a heap; a jungle deep and dark, with neither earth nor water
at its roots, but putrid matter, formed of the pulpy offal of the two,
and of their own corruption.
He went down to the landing-place where they had left their goods last
night; and there he found some half-dozen men--wan and forlorn to look
at, but ready enough to assist--who helped him to carry them to the
log-house. They shook their heads in speaking of the settlement, and had
no comfort to give him. Those who had the means of going away had all
deserted it. They who were left had lost their wives, their children,
friends, or brothers there, and suffered much themselves. Most of
them were ill then; none were the men they had been once. They frankly
offered their assistance and advice, and, leaving him for that time,
went sadly off upon their several tasks.
Martin was by this time stirring; but he had greatly changed, even in
one night. He was very pale and languid; he spoke of pains and weakness
in his limbs, and complained that his sight was dim, and his voice
feeble. Increasing in his own briskness as the prospect grew more and
more dismal, Mark brought away a door from one of the deserted houses,
and fitted it to their own habitation; then went back again for a rude
bench he had observed, with which he presently returned in triumph;
and having put this piece of furniture outside the house, arranged the
notable tin pot and other such movables upon it, that it might represent
a dresser or a sideboard. Greatly satisfied with this arrangement, he
next rolled their cask of flour into the house and set it up on end in
one corner, where it served for a side-table. No better dining-table
could be required than the chest, which he solemnly devoted to that
useful service thenceforth. Their blankets, clothes, and the like, he
hung on pegs and nails. And lastly, he brought forth a great placard
(which Martin in the exultation of his heart had prepared with his own
hands at the National Hotel) bearing the inscription, CHUZZLEWIT & CO.,
ARCHITECTS AND SURVEYORS, which he displayed upon the most conspicuous
part of the premises, with as much gravity as if the thriving city of
Eden had a real existence, and they expected to be overwhelmed with
business.
'These here tools,' said Mark, bringing forward Martin's case of
instruments and sticking the compasses upright in a stump before the
door, 'shall be set out in the open air to show that we come provided.
And now, if any gentleman wants a house built, he'd better give his
orders, afore we're other ways bespoke.'
Considering the intense heat of the weather, this was not a bad
morning's work; but without pausing for a moment, though he was
streaming at every pore, Mark vanished into the house again, and
presently reappeared with a hatchet; intent on performing some
impossibilities with that implement.
'Here's ugly old tree in the way, sir,' he observed, 'which'll be all
the better down. We can build the oven in the afternoon. There never was
such a handy spot for clay as Eden is. That's convenient, anyhow.'
But Martin gave him no answer. He had sat the whole time with his head
upon his hands, gazing at the current as it rolled swiftly by; thinking,
perhaps, how fast it moved towards the open sea, the high road to the
home he never would behold again.
Not even the vigorous strokes which Mark dealt at the tree awoke him
from his mournful meditation. Finding all his endeavours to rouse him of
no use, Mark stopped in his work and came towards him.
'Don't give in, sir,' said Mr Tapley.
'Oh, Mark,' returned his friend, 'what have I done in all my life that
has deserved this heavy fate?'
'Why, sir,' returned Mark, 'for the matter of that, everybody as is here
might say the same thing; many of 'em with better reason p'raps than
you or me. Hold up, sir. Do something. Couldn't you ease your mind, now,
don't you think, by making some personal obserwations in a letter to
Scadder?'
'No,' said Martin, shaking his head sorrowfully: 'I am past that.'
'But if you're past that already,' returned Mark, 'you must be ill, and
ought to be attended to.'
'Don't mind me,' said Martin. 'Do the best you can for yourself. You'll
soon have only yourself to consider. And then God speed you home, and
forgive me for bringing you here! I am destined to die in this place. I
felt it the instant I set foot upon the shore. Sleeping or waking, Mark,
I dreamed it all last night.'
'I said you must be ill,' returned Mark, tenderly, 'and now I'm sure of
it. A touch of fever and ague caught on these rivers, I dare say; but
bless you, THAT'S nothing. It's only a seasoning, and we must all be
seasoned, one way or another. That's religion that is, you know,' said
Mark.
He only sighed and shook his head.
'Wait half a minute,' said Mark cheerily, 'till I run up to one of our
neighbours and ask what's best to be took, and borrow a little of it to
give you; and to-morrow you'll find yourself as strong as ever again. I
won't be gone a minute. Don't give in while I'm away, whatever you do!'
Throwing down his hatchet, he sped away immediately, but stopped when he
had got a little distance, and looked back; then hurried on again.
'Now, Mr Tapley,' said Mark, giving himself a tremendous blow in the
chest by way of reviver, 'just you attend to what I've got to say.
Things is looking about as bad as they CAN look, young man. You'll not
have such another opportunity for showing your jolly disposition, my
fine fellow, as long as you live. And therefore, Tapley, Now's your time
to come out strong; or Never!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
REPORTS PROGRESS IN CERTAIN HOMELY MATTERS OF LOVE, HATRED, JEALOUSY,
AND REVENGE
'Hallo, Pecksniff!' cried Mr Jonas from the parlour. 'Isn't somebody
a-going to open that precious old door of yours?'
'Immediately, Mr Jonas. Immediately.'
'Ecod,' muttered the orphan, 'not before it's time neither. Whoever it
is, has knocked three times, and each one loud enough to wake the--' he
had such a repugnance to the idea of waking the Dead, that he stopped
even then with the words upon his tongue, and said, instead, 'the Seven
Sleepers.'
'Immediately, Mr Jonas; immediately,' repeated Pecksniff. 'Thomas
Pinch'--he couldn't make up his mind, in his great agitation, whether to
call Tom his dear friend or a villain, so he shook his fist at him
PRO TEM--'go up to my daughters' room, and tell them who is here. Say,
Silence. Silence! Do you hear me, sir?
'Directly, sir!' cried Tom, departing, in a state of much amazement, on
his errand.
'You'll--ha, ha, ha!--you'll excuse me, Mr Jonas, if I close this door
a moment, will you?' said Pecksniff. 'This may be a professional call.
Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.' Then Mr Pecksniff, gently
warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and
opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold, as if he
thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not quite
certain.
Seeing a gentleman and lady before him, he started back in as much
confusion as a good man with a crystal conscience might betray in mere
surprise. Recognition came upon him the next moment, and he cried:
'Mr Chuzzlewit! Can I believe my eyes! My dear sir; my good sir! A
joyful hour, a happy hour indeed. Pray, my dear sir, walk in. You find
me in my garden-dress. You will excuse it, I know. It is an ancient
pursuit, gardening. Primitive, my dear sir. Or, if I am not mistaken,
Adam was the first of our calling. MY Eve, I grieve to say is no more,
sir; but'--here he pointed to his spade, and shook his head as if he
were not cheerful without an effort--'but I do a little bit of Adam
still.'
He had by this time got them into the best parlour, where the portrait
by Spiller, and the bust by Spoker, were.
'My daughters,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'will be overjoyed. If I could feel
weary upon such a theme, I should have been worn out long ago, my dear
sir, by their constant anticipation of this happiness and their repeated
allusions to our meeting at Mrs Todgers's. Their fair young friend,
too,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'whom they so desire to know and love--indeed
to know her, is to love--I hope I see her well. I hope in saying,
"Welcome to my humble roof!" I find some echo in her own sentiments.
If features are an index to the heart, I have no fears of that. An
extremely engaging expression of countenance, Mr Chuzzlewit, my dear
sir--very much so!'
'Mary,' said the old man, 'Mr Pecksniff flatters you. But flattery from
him is worth the having. He is not a dealer in it, and it comes from his
heart. We thought Mr--'
'Pinch,' said Mary.
'Mr Pinch would have arrived before us, Pecksniff.'
'He did arrive before you, my dear sir,' retorted Pecksniff, raising his
voice for the edification of Tom upon the stairs, 'and was about, I dare
say, to tell me of your coming, when I begged him first to knock at my
daughters' chamber, and inquire after Charity, my dear child, who is not
so well as I could wish. No,' said Mr Pecksniff, answering their looks,
'I am sorry to say, she is not. It is merely an hysterical affection;
nothing more, I am not uneasy. Mr Pinch! Thomas!' exclaimed Pecksniff,
in his kindest accents. 'Pray come in. I shall make no stranger of you.
Thomas is a friend of mine, of rather long-standing, Mr Chuzzlewit, you
must know.'
'Thank you, sir,' said Tom. 'You introduce me very kindly, and speak of
me in terms of which I am very proud.'
'Old Thomas!' cried his master, pleasantly 'God bless you!'
Tom reported that the young ladies would appear directly, and that
the best refreshments which the house afforded were even then in
preparation, under their joint superintendence. While he was speaking,
the old man looked at him intently, though with less harshness than was
common to him; nor did the mutual embarrassment of Tom and the
young lady, to whatever cause he attributed it, seem to escape his
observation.
'Pecksniff,' he said after a pause, rising and taking him aside towards
the window, 'I was much shocked on hearing of my brother's death. We
had been strangers for many years. My only comfort is that he must
have lived the happier and better man for having associated no hopes or
schemes with me. Peace to his memory! We were play-fellows once; and it
would have been better for us both if we had died then.'
Finding him in this gentle mood, Mr Pecksniff began to see another way
out of his difficulties, besides the casting overboard of Jonas.
'That any man, my dear sir, could possibly be the happier for not
knowing you,' he returned, 'you will excuse my doubting. But that Mr
Anthony, in the evening of his life, was happier in the affection of his
excellent son--a pattern, my dear sir, a pattern to all sons--and in the
care of a distant relation who, however lowly in his means of serving
him, had no bounds to his inclination; I can inform you.'
'How's this?' said the old man. 'You are not a legatee?'
'You don't,' said Mr Pecksniff, with a melancholy pressure of his hand,
'quite understand my nature yet, I find. No, sir, I am not a legatee. I
am proud to say I am not a legatee. I am proud to say that neither of my
children is a legatee. And yet, sir, I was with him at his own request.
HE understood me somewhat better, sir. He wrote and said, "I am sick. I
am sinking. Come to me!" I went to him. I sat beside his bed, sir, and
I stood beside his grave. Yes, at the risk of offending even you, I did
it, sir. Though the avowal should lead to our instant separation, and
to the severing of those tender ties between us which have recently been
formed, I make it. But I am not a legatee,' said Mr Pecksniff, smiling
dispassionately; 'and I never expected to be a legatee. I knew better!'
'His son a pattern!' cried old Martin. 'How can you tell me that? My
brother had in his wealth the usual doom of wealth, and root of misery.
He carried his corrupting influence with him, go where he would; and
shed it round him, even on his hearth. It made of his own child a
greedy expectant, who measured every day and hour the lessening distance
between his father and the grave, and cursed his tardy progress on that
dismal road.'
'No!' cried Mr Pecksniff, boldly. 'Not at all, sir!'
'But I saw that shadow in his house,' said Martin Chuzzlewit, 'the last
time we met, and warned him of its presence. I know it when I see it, do
I not? I, who have lived within it all these years!'
'I deny it,' Mr Pecksniff answered, warmly. 'I deny it altogether. That
bereaved young man is now in this house, sir, seeking in change of scene
the peace of mind he has lost. Shall I be backward in doing justice to
that young man, when even undertakers and coffin-makers have been moved
by the conduct he has exhibited; when even mutes have spoken in his
praise, and the medical man hasn't known what to do with himself in
the excitement of his feelings! There is a person of the name of Gamp,
sir--Mrs Gamp--ask her. She saw Mr Jonas in a trying time. Ask HER, sir.
She is respectable, but not sentimental, and will state the fact. A line
addressed to Mrs Gamp, at the Bird Shop, Kingsgate Street, High Holborn,
London, will meet with every attention, I have no doubt. Let her be
examined, my good sir. Strike, but hear! Leap, Mr Chuzzlewit, but look!
Forgive me, my dear sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, taking both his hands, 'if
I am warm; but I am honest, and must state the truth.'
In proof of the character he gave himself, Mr Pecksniff suffered tears
of honesty to ooze out of his eyes.
The old man gazed at him for a moment with a look of wonder, repeating
to himself, 'Here now! In this house!' But he mastered his surprise, and
said, after a pause:
'Let me see him.'
'In a friendly spirit, I hope?' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Forgive me, sir but
he is in the receipt of my humble hospitality.'
'I said,' replied the old man, 'let me see him. If I were disposed to
regard him in any other than a friendly spirit, I should have said keep
us apart.'
'Certainly, my dear sir. So you would. You are frankness itself, I know.
I will break this happiness to him,' said Mr Pecksniff, as he left the
room, 'if you will excuse me for a minute--gently.'
He paved the way to the disclosure so very gently, that a quarter of an
hour elapsed before he returned with Mr Jonas. In the meantime the young
ladies had made their appearance, and the table had been set out for the
refreshment of the travellers.
Now, however well Mr Pecksniff, in his morality, had taught Jonas the
lesson of dutiful behaviour to his uncle, and however perfectly Jonas,
in the cunning of his nature, had learnt it, that young man's bearing,
when presented to his father's brother, was anything but manly or
engaging. Perhaps, indeed, so singular a mixture of defiance and
obsequiousness, of fear and hardihood, of dogged sullenness and an
attempt at enraging and propitiation, never was expressed in any one
human figure as in that of Jonas, when, having raised his downcast
eyes to Martin's face, he let them fall again, and uneasily closing
and unclosing his hands without a moment's intermission, stood swinging
himself from side to side, waiting to be addressed.
'Nephew,' said the old man. 'You have been a dutiful son, I hear.'
'As dutiful as sons in general, I suppose,' returned Jonas, looking up
and down once more. 'I don't brag to have been any better than other
sons; but I haven't been any worse, I dare say.'
'A pattern to all sons, I am told,' said the old man, glancing towards
Mr Pecksniff.
'Ecod!' said Jonas, looking up again for a moment, and shaking his head,
'I've been as good a son as ever you were a brother. It's the pot and
the kettle, if you come to that.'
'You speak bitterly, in the violence of your regret,' said Martin, after
a pause. 'Give me your hand.'
Jonas did so, and was almost at his ease. 'Pecksniff,' he whispered,
as they drew their chairs about the table; 'I gave him as good as he
brought, eh? He had better look at home, before he looks out of window,
I think?'
Mr Pecksniff only answered by a nudge of the elbow, which might either
be construed into an indignant remonstrance or a cordial assent; but
which, in any case, was an emphatic admonition to his chosen son-in-law
to be silent. He then proceeded to do the honours of the house with his
accustomed ease and amiability.
But not even Mr Pecksniff's guileless merriment could set such a
party at their ease, or reconcile materials so utterly discordant
and conflicting as those with which he had to deal. The unspeakable
jealously and hatred which that night's explanation had sown in
Charity's breast, was not to be so easily kept down; and more than
once it showed itself in such intensity, as seemed to render a full
disclosure of all the circumstances then and there, impossible to be
avoided. The beauteous Merry, too, with all the glory of her conquest
fresh upon her, so probed and lanced the rankling disappointment of her
sister by her capricious airs and thousand little trials of Mr Jonas's
obedience, that she almost goaded her into a fit of madness, and obliged
her to retire from table in a burst of passion, hardly less vehement
than that to which she had abandoned herself in the first tumult of her
wrath. The constraint imposed upon the family by the presence among
them for the first time of Mary Graham (for by that name old Martin
Chuzzlewit had introduced her) did not at all improve this state of
things; gentle and quiet though her manner was. Mr Pecksniff's situation
was peculiarly trying; for, what with having constantly to keep the
peace between his daughters; to maintain a reasonable show of affection
and unity in his household; to curb the growing ease and gaiety of
Jonas, which vented itself in sundry insolences towards Mr Pinch, and
an indefinable coarseness of manner in reference to Mary (they being the
two dependants); to make no mention at all of his having perpetually to
conciliate his rich old relative, and to smooth down, or explain
away, some of the ten thousand bad appearances and combinations of bad
appearances, by which they were surrounded on that unlucky evening--what
with having to do this, and it would be difficult to sum up how much
more, without the least relief or assistance from anybody, it may be
easily imagined that Mr Pecksniff had in his enjoyment something more
than that usual portion of alloy which is mixed up with the best of
men's delights. Perhaps he had never in his life felt such relief as
when old Martin, looking at his watch, announced that it was time to go.
'We have rooms,' he said, 'at the Dragon, for the present. I have a
fancy for the evening walk. The nights are dark just now; perhaps Mr
Pinch would not object to light us home?'
'My dear sir!' cried Pecksniff, 'I shall be delighted. Merry, my child,
the lantern.'
'The lantern, if you please, my dear,' said Martin; 'but I couldn't
think of taking your father out of doors to-night; and, to be brief, I
won't.'
Mr Pecksniff already had his hat in his hand, but it was so emphatically
said that he paused.
'I take Mr Pinch, or go alone,' said Martin. 'Which shall it be?'
'It shall be Thomas, sir,' cried Pecksniff, 'since you are so resolute
upon it. Thomas, my friend, be very careful, if you please.'
Tom was in some need of this injunction, for he felt so nervous, and
trembled to such a degree, that he found it difficult to hold the
lantern. How much more difficult when, at the old man's bidding she drew
her hand through his--Tom Pinch's--arm!
'And so, Mr Pinch,' said Martin, on the way, 'you are very comfortably
situated here; are you?'
Tom answered, with even more than his usual enthusiasm, that he was
under obligations to Mr Pecksniff which the devotion of a lifetime would
but imperfectly repay.
'How long have you known my nephew?' asked Martin.
'Your nephew, sir?' faltered Tom.
'Mr Jonas Chuzzlewit,' said Mary.
'Oh dear, yes,' cried Tom, greatly relieved, for his mind was running
upon Martin. 'Certainly. I never spoke to him before to-night, sir!'
'Perhaps half a lifetime will suffice for the acknowledgment of HIS
kindness,' observed the old man.
Tom felt that this was a rebuff for him, and could not but understand it
as a left-handed hit at his employer. So he was silent. Mary felt that
Mr Pinch was not remarkable for presence of mind, and that he could not
say too little under existing circumstances. So SHE was silent. The
old man, disgusted by what in his suspicious nature he considered a
shameless and fulsome puff of Mr Pecksniff, which was a part of Tom's
hired service and in which he was determined to persevere, set him down
at once for a deceitful, servile, miserable fawner. So HE was silent.
And though they were all sufficiently uncomfortable, it is fair to say
that Martin was perhaps the most so; for he had felt kindly towards Tom
at first, and had been interested by his seeming simplicity.
'You're like the rest,' he thought, glancing at the face of the
unconscious Tom. 'You had nearly imposed upon me, but you have lost
your labour. You are too zealous a toad-eater, and betray yourself, Mr
Pinch.'
During the whole remainder of the walk, not another word was spoken.
First among the meetings to which Tom had long looked forward with
a beating heart, it was memorable for nothing but embarrassment
and confusion. They parted at the Dragon door; and sighing as he
extinguished the candle in the lantern, Tom turned back again over the
gloomy fields.
As he approached the first stile, which was in a lonely part, made very
dark by a plantation of young firs, a man slipped past him and went on
before. Coming to the stile he stopped, and took his seat upon it.
Tom was rather startled, and for a moment stood still, but he stepped
forward again immediately, and went close up to him.
It was Jonas; swinging his legs to and fro, sucking the head of a stick,
and looking with a sneer at Tom.
'Good gracious me!' cried Tom, 'who would have thought of its being you!
You followed us, then?'
'What's that to you?' said Jonas. 'Go to the devil!'
'You are not very civil, I think,' remarked Tom.
'Civil enough for YOU,' retorted Jonas. 'Who are you?'
'One who has as good a right to common consideration as another,' said
Tom mildly.
'You're a liar,' said Jonas. 'You haven't a right to any consideration.
You haven't a right to anything. You're a pretty sort of fellow to talk
about your rights, upon my soul! Ha, ha!--Rights, too!'
'If you proceed in this way,' returned Tom, reddening, 'you will oblige
me to talk about my wrongs. But I hope your joke is over.'
'It's the way with you curs,' said Mr Jonas, 'that when you know a man's
in real earnest, you pretend to think he's joking, so that you may turn
it off. But that won't do with me. It's too stale. Now just attend to me
for a bit, Mr Pitch, or Witch, or Stitch, or whatever your name is.'
'My name is Pinch,' observed Tom. 'Have the goodness to call me by it.'
'What! You mustn't even be called out of your name, mustn't you!' cried
Jonas. 'Pauper' prentices are looking up, I think. Ecod, we manage 'em a
little better in the city!'
'Never mind what you do in the city,' said Tom. 'What have you got to
say to me?'
'Just this, Mister Pinch,' retorted Jonas, thrusting his face so close
to Tom's that Tom was obliged to retreat a step. 'I advise you to keep
your own counsel, and to avoid title-tattle, and not to cut in where
you're not wanted. I've heard something of you, my friend, and your
meek ways; and I recommend you to forget 'em till I am married to one
of Pecksniff's gals, and not to curry favour among my relations, but
to leave the course clear. You know, when curs won't leave the course
clear, they're whipped off; so this is kind advice. Do you understand?
Eh? Damme, who are you,' cried Jonas, with increased contempt, 'that
you should walk home with THEM, unless it was behind 'em, like any other
servant out of livery?'
'Come!' cried Tom, 'I see that you had better get off the stile, and let
me pursue my way home. Make room for me, if you please.'
'Don't think it!' said Jonas, spreading out his legs. 'Not till I
choose. And I don't choose now. What! You're afraid of my making you
split upon some of your babbling just now, are you, Sneak?'
'I am not afraid of many things, I hope,' said Tom; 'and certainly not
of anything that you will do. I am not a tale-bearer, and I despise all
meanness. You quite mistake me. Ah!' cried Tom, indignantly. 'Is this
manly from one in your position to one in mine? Please to make room for
me to pass. The less I say, the better.'
'The less you say!' retorted Jonas, dangling his legs the more, and
taking no heed of this request. 'You say very little, don't you? Ecod, I
should like to know what goes on between you and a vagabond member of my
family. There's very little in that too, I dare say!'
'I know no vagabond member of your family,' cried Tom, stoutly.
'You do!' said Jonas.
'I don't,' said Tom. 'Your uncle's namesake, if you mean him, is no
vagabond. Any comparison between you and him'--Tom snapped his fingers
at him, for he was rising fast in wrath--'is immeasurably to your
disadvantage.'
'Oh indeed!' sneered Jonas. 'And what do you think of his deary--his
beggarly leavings, eh, Mister Pinch?'
'I don't mean to say another word, or stay here another instant,'
replied Tom.
'As I told you before, you're a liar,' said Jonas, coolly. 'You'll stay
here till I give you leave to go. Now, keep where you are, will you?'
He flourished his stick over Tom's head; but in a moment it was spinning
harmlessly in the air, and Jonas himself lay sprawling in the ditch. In
the momentary struggle for the stick, Tom had brought it into violent
contact with his opponent's forehead; and the blood welled out profusely
from a deep cut on the temple. Tom was first apprised of this by seeing
that he pressed his handkerchief to the wounded part, and staggered as
he rose, being stunned.
'Are you hurt?' said Tom. 'I am very sorry. Lean on me for a moment.
You can do that without forgiving me, if you still bear me malice. But I
don't know why; for I never offended you before we met on this spot.'
He made him no answer; not appearing at first to understand him, or even
to know that he was hurt, though he several times took his handkerchief
from the cut to look vacantly at the blood upon it. After one of these
examinations, he looked at Tom, and then there was an expression in
his features, which showed that he understood what had taken place, and
would remember it.
Nothing more passed between them as they went home. Jonas kept a little
in advance, and Tom Pinch sadly followed, thinking of the grief which
the knowledge of this quarrel must occasion his excellent benefactor.
When Jonas knocked at the door, Tom's heart beat high; higher when Miss
Mercy answered it, and seeing her wounded lover, shireked aloud; higher,
when he followed them into the family parlour; higher than at any other
time, when Jonas spoke.
'Don't make a noise about it,' he said. 'It's nothing worth mentioning.
I didn't know the road; the night's very dark; and just as I came up
with Mr Pinch'--he turned his face towards Tom, but not his eyes--'I ran
against a tree. It's only skin deep.'
'Cold water, Merry, my child!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Brown paper!
Scissors! A piece of old linen! Charity, my dear, make a bandage. Bless
me, Mr Jonas!'
'Oh, bother YOUR nonsense,' returned the gracious son-in-law elect. 'Be
of some use if you can. If you can't, get out!'
Miss Charity, though called upon to lend her aid, sat upright in one
corner, with a smile upon her face, and didn't move a finger. Though
Mercy laved the wound herself; and Mr Pecksniff held the patient's head
between his two hands, as if without that assistance it must inevitably
come in half; and Tom Pinch, in his guilty agitation, shook a bottle of
Dutch Drops until they were nothing but English Froth, and in his other
hand sustained a formidable carving-knife, really intended to reduce the
swelling, but apparently designed for the ruthless infliction of another
wound as soon as that was dressed; Charity rendered not the least
assistance, nor uttered a word. But when Mr Jonas's head was bound up,
and he had gone to bed, and everybody else had retired, and the house
was quiet, Mr Pinch, as he sat mournfully on his bedstead, ruminating,
heard a gentle tap at his door; and opening it, saw her, to his great
astonishment, standing before him with her finger on her lip.
'Mr Pinch,' she whispered. 'Dear Mr Pinch! Tell me the truth! You did
that? There was some quarrel between you, and you struck him? I am sure
of it!'
It was the first time she had ever spoken kindly to Tom, in all the many
years they had passed together. He was stupefied with amazement.
'Was it so, or not?' she eagerly demanded.
'I was very much provoked,' said Tom.
'Then it was?' cried Charity, with sparkling eyes.
'Ye-yes. We had a struggle for the path,' said Tom. 'But I didn't mean
to hurt him so much.'
'Not so much!' she repeated, clenching her hand and stamping her foot,
to Tom's great wonder. 'Don't say that. It was brave of you. I honour
you for it. If you should ever quarrel again, don't spare him for the
world, but beat him down and set your shoe upon him. Not a word of this
to anybody. Dear Mr Pinch, I am your friend from tonight. I am always
your friend from this time.'
She turned her flushed face upon Tom to confirm her words by its
kindling expression; and seizing his right hand, pressed it to her
breast, and kissed it. And there was nothing personal in this to render
it at all embarrassing, for even Tom, whose power of observation was by
no means remarkable, knew from the energy with which she did it that she
would have fondled any hand, no matter how bedaubed or dyed, that had
broken the head of Jonas Chuzzlewit.
Tom went into his room, and went to bed, full of uncomfortable thoughts.
That there should be any such tremendous division in the family as he
knew must have taken place to convert Charity Pecksniff into his friend,
for any reason, but, above all, for that which was clearly the real one;
that Jonas, who had assailed him with such exceeding coarseness, should
have been sufficiently magnanimous to keep the secret of their quarrel;
and that any train of circumstances should have led to the commission of
an assault and battery by Thomas Pinch upon any man calling himself
the friend of Seth Pecksniff; were matters of such deep and painful
cogitation that he could not close his eyes. His own violence, in
particular, so preyed upon the generous mind of Tom, that coupling it
with the many former occasions on which he had given Mr Pecksniff pain
and anxiety (occasions of which that gentleman often reminded him), he
really began to regard himself as destined by a mysterious fate to be
the evil genius and bad angel of his patron. But he fell asleep at last,
and dreamed--new source of waking uneasiness--that he had betrayed his
trust, and run away with Mary Graham.
It must be acknowledged that, asleep or awake, Tom's position in
reference to this young lady was full of uneasiness. The more he saw
of her, the more he admired her beauty, her intelligence, the amiable
qualities that even won on the divided house of Pecksniff, and in a
few days restored, at all events, the semblance of harmony and kindness
between the angry sisters. When she spoke, Tom held his breath, so
eagerly he listened; when she sang, he sat like one entranced. She
touched his organ, and from that bright epoch even it, the old companion
of his happiest hours, incapable as he had thought of elevation, began a
new and deified existence.
God's love upon thy patience, Tom! Who, that had beheld thee, for three
summer weeks, poring through half the deadlong night over the jingling
anatomy of that inscrutable old harpsichord in the back parlour, could
have missed the entrance to thy secret heart: albeit it was dimly known
to thee? Who that had seen the glow upon thy cheek when leaning down to
listen, after hours of labour, for the sound of one incorrigible note,
thou foundest that it had a voice at last, and wheezed out a flat
something, distantly akin to what it ought to be, would not have known
that it was destined for no common touch, but one that smote, though
gently as an angel's hand, upon the deepest chord within thee! And if
a friendly glance--aye, even though it were as guileless as thine own,
Dear Tom--could have but pierced the twilight of that evening, when, in
a voice well tempered to the time, sad, sweet, and low, yet hopeful, she
first sang to the altered instrument, and wondered at the change;
and thou, sitting apart at the open window, kept a glad silence and a
swelling heart--must not that glance have read perforce the dawning of a
story, Tom, that it were well for thee had never been begun!
Tom Pinch's situation was not made the less dangerous or difficult by
the fact of no one word passing between them in reference to Martin.
Honourably mindful of his promise, Tom gave her opportunities of all
kinds. Early and late he was in the church; in her favourite walks; in
the village, in the garden, in the meadows; and in any or all of these
places he might have spoken freely. But no; at all such times she
carefully avoided him, or never came in his way unaccompanied. It could
not be that she disliked or distrusted him, for by a thousand little
delicate means, too slight for any notice but his own, she singled
him out when others were present, and showed herself the very soul of
kindness. Could it be that she had broken with Martin, or had never
returned his affection, save in his own bold and heightened fancy? Tom's
cheek grew red with self-reproach as he dismissed the thought.
All this time old Martin came and went in his own strange manner, or sat
among the rest absorbed within himself, and holding little intercourse
with any one. Although he was unsocial, he was not willful in other
things, or troublesome, or morose; being never better pleased than
when they left him quite unnoticed at his book, and pursued their own
amusements in his presence, unreserved. It was impossible to discern in
whom he took an interest, or whether he had an interest in any of them.
Unless they spoke to him directly, he never showed that he had ears or
eyes for anything that passed.
One day the lively Merry, sitting with downcast eyes under a shady tree
in the churchyard, whither she had retired after fatiguing herself by
the imposition of sundry trials on the temper of Mr Jonas, felt that
a new shadow came between her and the sun. Raising her eyes in the
expectation of seeing her betrothed, she was not a little surprised to
see old Martin instead. Her surprise was not diminished when he took his
seat upon the turf beside her, and opened a conversation thus:
'When are you to be married?'
'Oh! dear Mr Chuzzlewit, my goodness me! I'm sure I don't know. Not yet
awhile, I hope.'
'You hope?' said the old man.
It was very gravely said, but she took it for banter, and giggled
excessively.
'Come!' said the old man, with unusual kindness, 'you are young,
good-looking, and I think good-natured! Frivolous you are, and love to
be, undoubtedly; but you must have some heart.'
'I have not given it all away, I can tell you,' said Merry, nodding her
head shrewdly, and plucking up the grass.
'Have you parted with any of it?'
She threw the grass about, and looked another way, but said nothing.
Martin repeated his question.
'Lor, my dear Mr Chuzzlewit! really you must excuse me! How very odd you
are.'
'If it be odd in me to desire to know whether you love the young man
whom I understand you are to marry, I AM very odd,' said Martin. 'For
that is certainly my wish.'
'He's such a monster, you know,' said Merry, pouting.
'Then you don't love him?' returned the old man. 'Is that your meaning?'
'Why, my dear Mr Chuzzlewit, I'm sure I tell him a hundred times a day
that I hate him. You must have heard me tell him that.'
'Often,' said Martin.
'And so I do,' cried Merry. 'I do positively.'
'Being at the same time engaged to marry him,' observed the old man.
'Oh yes,' said Merry. 'But I told the wretch--my dear Mr Chuzzlewit, I
told him when he asked me--that if I ever did marry him, it should only
be that I might hate and tease him all my life.'
She had a suspicion that the old man regarded Jonas with anything but
favour, and intended these remarks to be extremely captivating. He did
not appear, however, to regard them in that light by any means; for when
he spoke again, it was in a tone of severity.
'Look about you,' he said, pointing to the graves; 'and remember that
from your bridal hour to the day which sees you brought as low as these,
and laid in such a bed, there will be no appeal against him. Think, and
speak, and act, for once, like an accountable creature. Is any control
put upon your inclinations? Are you forced into this match? Are you
insidiously advised or tempted to contract it, by any one? I will not
ask by whom; by any one?'
'No,' said Merry, shrugging her shoulders. 'I don't know that I am.'
'Don't know that you are! Are you?'
'No,' replied Merry. 'Nobody ever said anything to me about it. If any
one had tried to make me have him, I wouldn't have had him at all.'
'I am told that he was at first supposed to be your sister's admirer,'
said Martin.
'Oh, good gracious! My dear Mr Chuzzlewit, it would be very hard to make
him, though he IS a monster, accountable for other people's vanity,'
said Merry. 'And poor dear Cherry is the vainest darling!'
'It was her mistake, then?'
'I hope it was,' cried Merry; 'but, all along, the dear child has been
so dreadfully jealous, and SO cross, that, upon my word and honour, it's
impossible to please her, and it's of no use trying.'
'Not forced, persuaded, or controlled,' said Martin, thoughtfully. 'And
that's true, I see. There is one chance yet. You may have lapsed into
this engagement in very giddiness. It may have been the wanton act of a
light head. Is that so?'
'My dear Mr Chuzzlewit,' simpered Merry, 'as to light-headedness, there
never was such a feather of a head as mine. It's perfect balloon, I
declare! You never DID, you know!'
He waited quietly till she had finished, and then said, steadily
and slowly, and in a softened voice, as if he would still invite her
confidence:
'Have you any wish--or is there anything within your breast that
whispers you may form the wish, if you have time to think--to be
released from this engagement?'
Again Miss Merry pouted, and looked down, and plucked the grass, and
shrugged her shoulders. No. She didn't know that she had. She was pretty
sure she hadn't. Quite sure, she might say. She 'didn't mind it.'
'Has it ever occurred to you,' said Martin, 'that your married life may
perhaps be miserable, full of bitterness, and most unhappy?'
Merry looked down again; and now she tore the grass up by the roots.
'My dear Mr Chuzzlewit, what shocking words! Of course, I shall quarrel
with him. I should quarrel with any husband. Married people always
quarrel, I believe. But as to being miserable, and bitter, and all those
dreadful things, you know, why I couldn't be absolutely that, unless he
always had the best of it; and I mean to have the best of it myself. I
always do now,' cried Merry, nodding her head and giggling very much;
'for I make a perfect slave of the creature.'
'Let it go on,' said Martin, rising. 'Let it go on! I sought to know
your mind, my dear, and you have shown it me. I wish you joy. Joy!' he
repeated, looking full upon her, and pointing to the wicket-gate where
Jonas entered at the moment. And then, without waiting for his nephew,
he passed out at another gate, and went away.
'Oh, you terrible old man!' cried the facetious Merry to herself. 'What
a perfectly hideous monster to be wandering about churchyards in the
broad daylight, frightening people out of their wits! Don't come here,
Griffin, or I'll go away directly.'
Mr Jonas was the Griffin. He sat down upon the grass at her side, in
spite of this warning, and sulkily inquired:
'What's my uncle been a-talking about?'
'About you,' rejoined Merry. 'He says you're not half good enough for
me.'
'Oh, yes, I dare say! We all know that. He means to give you some
present worth having, I hope. Did he say anything that looked like it?'
'THAT he didn't!' cried Merry, most decisively.
'A stingy old dog he is,' said Jonas. 'Well?'
'Griffin!' cried Miss Mercy, in counterfeit amazement; 'what are you
doing, Griffin?'
'Only giving you a squeeze,' said the discomfited Jonas. 'There's no
harm in that, I suppose?'
'But there is great deal of harm in it, if I don't consider it
agreeable,' returned his cousin. 'Do go along, will you? You make me so
hot!'
Mr Jonas withdrew his arm, and for a moment looked at her more like a
murderer than a lover. But he cleared his brow by degrees, and broke
silence with:
'I say, Mel!'
'What do you say, you vulgar thing--you low savage?' cried his fair
betrothed.
'When is it to be? I can't afford to go on dawdling about here half
my life, I needn't tell you, and Pecksniff says that father's being so
lately dead makes very little odds; for we can be married as quiet as we
please down here, and my being lonely is a good reason to the neighbours
for taking a wife home so soon, especially one that he knew. As to
crossbones (my uncle, I mean), he's sure not to put a spoke in the
wheel, whatever we settle on, for he told Pecksniff only this morning,
that if YOU liked it he'd nothing at all to say. So, Mel,' said Jonas,
venturing on another squeeze; 'when shall it be?'
'Upon my word!' cried Merry.
'Upon my soul, if you like,' said Jonas. 'What do you say to next week,
now?'
'To next week! If you had said next quarter, I should have wondered at
your impudence.'
'But I didn't say next quarter,' retorted Jonas. 'I said next week.'
'Then, Griffin,' cried Miss Merry, pushing him off, and rising. 'I say
no! not next week. It shan't be till I choose, and I may not choose it
to be for months. There!'
He glanced up at her from the ground, almost as darkly as he had looked
at Tom Pinch; but held his peace.
'No fright of a Griffin with a patch over his eye shall dictate to me or
have a voice in the matter,' said Merry. 'There!'
Still Mr Jonas held his peace.
'If it's next month, that shall be the very earliest; but I won't say
when it shall be till to-morrow; and if you don't like that, it shall
never be at all,' said Merry; 'and if you follow me about and won't
leave me alone, it shall never be at all. There! And if you don't do
everything I order you to do, it shall never be at all. So don't follow
me. There, Griffin!'
And with that, she skipped away, among the trees.
'Ecod, my lady!' said Jonas, looking after her, and biting a piece
of straw, almost to powder; 'you'll catch it for this, when you ARE
married. It's all very well now--it keeps one on, somehow, and you know
it--but I'll pay you off scot and lot by-and-bye. This is a plaguey dull
sort of a place for a man to be sitting by himself in. I never could
abide a mouldy old churchyard.'
As he turned into the avenue himself, Miss Merry, who was far ahead,
happened to look back.
'Ah!' said Jonas, with a sullen smile, and a nod that was not addressed
to her. 'Make the most of it while it lasts. Get in your hay while the
sun shines. Take your own way as long as it's in your power, my lady!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IS IN PART PROFESSIONAL, AND FURNISHES THE READER WITH SOME VALUABLE
HINTS IN RELATION TO THE MANAGEMENT OF A SICK CHAMBER
Mr Mould was surrounded by his household gods. He was enjoying the
sweets of domestic repose, and gazing on them with a calm delight. The
day being sultry, and the window open, the legs of Mr Mould were on the
window-seat, and his back reclined against the shutter. Over his shining
head a handkerchief was drawn, to guard his baldness from the flies. The
room was fragrant with the smell of punch, a tumbler of which grateful
compound stood upon a small round table, convenient to the hand of
Mr Mould; so deftly mixed that as his eye looked down into the cool
transparent drink, another eye, peering brightly from behind the crisp
lemon-peel, looked up at him, and twinkled like a star.
Deep in the City, and within the ward of Cheap, stood Mr Mould's
establishment. His Harem, or, in other words, the common sitting room
of Mrs Mould and family, was at the back, over the little counting-house
behind the shop; abutting on a churchyard small and shady. In this
domestic chamber Mr Mould now sat; gazing, a placid man, upon his punch
and home. If, for a moment at a time, he sought a wider prospect, whence
he might return with freshened zest to these enjoyments, his moist
glance wandered like a sunbeam through a rural screen of scarlet
runners, trained on strings before the window, and he looked down, with
an artist's eye, upon the graves.
The partner of his life, and daughters twain, were Mr Mould's
companions. Plump as any partridge was each Miss Mould, and Mrs M.
was plumper than the two together. So round and chubby were their fair
proportions, that they might have been the bodies once belonging to the
angels' faces in the shop below, grown up, with other heads attached
to make them mortal. Even their peachy cheeks were puffed out and
distended, as though they ought of right to be performing on celestial
trumpets. The bodiless cherubs in the shop, who were depicted as
constantly blowing those instruments for ever and ever without any
lungs, played, it is to be presumed, entirely by ear.
Mr Mould looked lovingly at Mrs Mould, who sat hard by, and was a
helpmate to him in his punch as in all other things. Each seraph
daughter, too, enjoyed her share of his regards, and smiled upon him in
return. So bountiful were Mr Mould's possessions, and so large his
stock in trade, that even there, within his household sanctuary, stood
a cumbrous press, whose mahogany maw was filled with shrouds, and
winding-sheets, and other furniture of funerals. But, though the Misses
Mould had been brought up, as one may say, beneath his eye, it had cast
no shadow on their timid infancy or blooming youth. Sporting behind
the scenes of death and burial from cradlehood, the Misses Mould knew
better. Hat-bands, to them, were but so many yards of silk or crape; the
final robe but such a quantity of linen. The Misses Mould could idealise
a player's habit, or a court-lady's petticoat, or even an act of
parliament. But they were not to be taken in by palls. They made them
sometimes.
The premises of Mr Mould were hard of hearing to the boisterous noises
in the great main streets, and nestled in a quiet corner, where the City
strife became a drowsy hum, that sometimes rose and sometimes fell and
sometimes altogether ceased; suggesting to a thoughtful mind a stoppage
in Cheapside. The light came sparkling in among the scarlet runners,
as if the churchyard winked at Mr Mould, and said, 'We understand
each other;' and from the distant shop a pleasant sound arose of
coffin-making with a low melodious hammer, rat, tat, tat, tat, alike
promoting slumber and digestion.
'Quite the buzz of insects,' said Mr Mould, closing his eyes in a
perfect luxury. 'It puts one in mind of the sound of animated nature in
the agricultural districts. It's exactly like the woodpecker tapping.'
'The woodpecker tapping the hollow ELM tree,' observed Mrs Mould,
adapting the words of the popular melody to the description of wood
commonly used in the trade.
'Ha, ha!' laughed Mr Mould. 'Not at all bad, my dear. We shall be glad
to hear from you again, Mrs M. Hollow elm tree, eh! Ha, ha! Very good
indeed. I've seen worse than that in the Sunday papers, my love.'
Mrs Mould, thus encouraged, took a little more of the punch, and handed
it to her daughters, who dutifully followed the example of their mother.
'Hollow ELM tree, eh?' said Mr Mould, making a slight motion with his
legs in his enjoyment of the joke. 'It's beech in the song. Elm, eh?
Yes, to be sure. Ha, ha, ha! Upon my soul, that's one of the best things
I know?' He was so excessively tickled by the jest that he couldn't
forget it, but repeated twenty times, 'Elm, eh? Yes, to be sure. Elm,
of course. Ha, ha, ha! Upon my life, you know, that ought to be sent to
somebody who could make use of it. It's one of the smartest things that
ever was said. Hollow ELM tree, eh? of course. Very hollow. Ha, ha, ha!'
Here a knock was heard at the room door.
'That's Tacker, I know,' said Mrs Mould, 'by the wheezing he makes. Who
that hears him now, would suppose he'd ever had wind enough to carry the
feathers on his head! Come in, Tacker.'
'Beg your pardon, ma'am,' said Tacker, looking in a little way. 'I
thought our Governor was here.'
'Well! so he is,' cried Mould.
'Oh! I didn't see you, I'm sure,' said Tacker, looking in a little
farther. 'You wouldn't be inclined to take a walking one of two, with
the plain wood and a tin plate, I suppose?'
'Certainly not,' replied Mr Mould, 'much too common. Nothing to say to
it.'
'I told 'em it was precious low,' observed Mr Tacker.
'Tell 'em to go somewhere else. We don't do that style of business
here,' said Mr Mould. 'Like their impudence to propose it. Who is it?'
'Why,' returned Tacker, pausing, 'that's where it is, you see. It's the
beadle's son-in-law.'
'The beadle's son-in-law, eh?' said Mould. 'Well! I'll do it if the
beadle follows in his cocked hat; not else. We carry it off that way, by
looking official, but it'll be low enough, then. His cocked hat, mind!'
'I'll take care, sir,' rejoined Tacker. 'Oh! Mrs Gamp's below, and wants
to speak to you.'
'Tell Mrs Gamp to come upstairs,' said Mould. 'Now Mrs Gamp, what's YOUR
news?'
The lady in question was by this time in the doorway, curtseying to
Mrs Mould. At the same moment a peculiar fragrance was borne upon the
breeze, as if a passing fairy had hiccoughed, and had previously been to
a wine-vaults.
Mrs Gamp made no response to Mr Mould, but curtseyed to Mrs Mould again,
and held up her hands and eyes, as in a devout thanksgiving that she
looked so well. She was neatly, but not gaudily attired, in the
weeds she had worn when Mr Pecksniff had the pleasure of making her
acquaintance; and was perhaps the turning of a scale more snuffy.
'There are some happy creeturs,' Mrs Gamp observed, 'as time runs
back'ards with, and you are one, Mrs Mould; not that he need do nothing
except use you in his most owldacious way for years to come, I'm
sure; for young you are and will be. I says to Mrs Harris,' Mrs Gamp
continued, 'only t'other day; the last Monday evening fortnight as
ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss of a mortal wale; I says to Mrs
Harris when she says to me, "Years and our trials, Mrs Gamp, sets marks
upon us all."--"Say not the words, Mrs Harris, if you and me is to be
continual friends, for sech is not the case. Mrs Mould," I says, making
so free, I will confess, as use the name,' (she curtseyed here), '"is
one of them that goes agen the obserwation straight; and never, Mrs
Harris, whilst I've a drop of breath to draw, will I set by, and not
stand up, don't think it."--"I ast your pardon, ma'am," says Mrs Harris,
"and I humbly grant your grace; for if ever a woman lived as would see
her feller creeturs into fits to serve her friends, well do I know that
woman's name is Sairey Gamp."'
At this point she was fain to stop for breath; and advantage may be
taken of the circumstance, to state that a fearful mystery surrounded
this lady of the name of Harris, whom no one in the circle of Mrs Gamp's
acquaintance had ever seen; neither did any human being know her place
of residence, though Mrs Gamp appeared on her own showing to be in
constant communication with her. There were conflicting rumours on the
subject; but the prevalent opinion was that she was a phantom of Mrs
Gamp's brain--as Messrs. Doe and Roe are fictions of the law--created
for the express purpose of holding visionary dialogues with her on all
manner of subjects, and invariably winding up with a compliment to the
excellence of her nature.
'And likeways what a pleasure,' said Mrs Gamp, turning with a tearful
smile towards the daughters, 'to see them two young ladies as I know'd
afore a tooth in their pretty heads was cut, and have many a day
seen--ah, the sweet creeturs!--playing at berryins down in the shop, and
follerin' the order-book to its long home in the iron safe! But that's
all past and over, Mr Mould;' as she thus got in a carefully regulated
routine to that gentleman, she shook her head waggishly; 'That's all
past and over now, sir, an't it?'
'Changes, Mrs Gamp, changes!' returned the undertaker.
'More changes too, to come, afore we've done with changes, sir,' said
Mrs Gamp, nodding yet more waggishly than before. 'Young ladies with
such faces thinks of something else besides berryins, don't they, sir?'
'I am sure I don't know, Mrs Gamp,' said Mould, with a chuckle--'Not bad
in Mrs Gamp, my dear?'
'Oh yes, you do know, sir!' said Mrs Gamp, 'and so does Mrs Mould,
your 'ansome pardner too, sir; and so do I, although the blessing of a
daughter was deniged me; which, if we had had one, Gamp would certainly
have drunk its little shoes right off its feet, as with our precious boy
he did, and arterward send the child a errand to sell his wooden leg for
any money it would fetch as matches in the rough, and bring it home
in liquor; which was truly done beyond his years, for ev'ry individgle
penny that child lost at toss or buy for kidney ones; and come home
arterwards quite bold, to break the news, and offering to drown himself
if sech would be a satisfaction to his parents.--Oh yes, you do know,
sir,' said Mrs Gamp, wiping her eye with her shawl, and resuming the
thread of her discourse. 'There's something besides births and berryins
in the newspapers, an't there, Mr Mould?'
Mr Mould winked at Mrs Mould, whom he had by this time taken on his
knee, and said: 'No doubt. A good deal more, Mrs Gamp. Upon my life, Mrs
Gamp is very far from bad, my dear!'
'There's marryings, an't there, sir?' said Mrs Gamp, while both the
daughters blushed and tittered. 'Bless their precious hearts, and well
they knows it! Well you know'd it too, and well did Mrs Mould, when you
was at their time of life! But my opinion is, you're all of one age now.
For as to you and Mrs Mould, sir, ever having grandchildren--'
'Oh! Fie, fie! Nonsense, Mrs Gamp,' replied the undertaker. 'Devilish
smart, though. Ca-pi-tal!'--this was in a whisper. 'My dear'--aloud
again--'Mrs Gamp can drink a glass of rum, I dare say. Sit down, Mrs
Gamp, sit down.'
Mrs Gamp took the chair that was nearest the door, and casting up her
eyes towards the ceiling, feigned to be wholly insensible to the fact of
a glass of rum being in preparation, until it was placed in her hand by
one of the young ladies, when she exhibited the greatest surprise.
'A thing,' she said, 'as hardly ever, Mrs Mould, occurs with me unless
it is when I am indispoged, and find my half a pint of porter settling
heavy on the chest. Mrs Harris often and often says to me, "Sairey
Gamp," she says, "you raly do amaze me!" "Mrs Harris," I says to her,
"why so? Give it a name, I beg." "Telling the truth then, ma'am," says
Mrs Harris, "and shaming him as shall be nameless betwixt you and me,
never did I think till I know'd you, as any woman could sick-nurse and
monthly likeways, on the little that you takes to drink." "Mrs Harris,"
I says to her, "none on us knows what we can do till we tries; and
wunst, when me and Gamp kept 'ouse, I thought so too. But now," I says,
"my half a pint of porter fully satisfies; perwisin', Mrs Harris, that
it is brought reg'lar, and draw'd mild. Whether I sicks or monthlies,
ma'am, I hope I does my duty, but I am but a poor woman, and I earns my
living hard; therefore I DO require it, which I makes confession, to be
brought reg'lar and draw'd mild."'
The precise connection between these observations and the glass of rum,
did not appear; for Mrs Gamp proposing as a toast 'The best of lucks
to all!' took off the dram in quite a scientific manner, without any
further remarks.
'And what's your news, Mrs Gamp?' asked Mould again, as that lady wiped
her lips upon her shawl, and nibbled a corner off a soft biscuit, which
she appeared to carry in her pocket as a provision against contingent
drams. 'How's Mr Chuffey?'
'Mr Chuffey, sir,' she replied, 'is jest as usual; he an't no better and
he an't no worse. I take it very kind in the gentleman to have wrote up
to you and said, "let Mrs Gamp take care of him till I come home;" but
ev'rythink he does is kind. There an't a many like him. If there was, we
shouldn't want no churches.'
'What do you want to speak to me about, Mrs Gamp?' said Mould, coming to
the point.
'Jest this, sir,' Mrs Gamp returned, 'with thanks to you for asking.
There IS a gent, sir, at the Bull in Holborn, as has been took ill
there, and is bad abed. They have a day nurse as was recommended from
Bartholomew's; and well I knows her, Mr Mould, her name bein' Mrs Prig,
the best of creeturs. But she is otherways engaged at night, and they
are in wants of night-watching; consequent she says to them, having
reposed the greatest friendliness in me for twenty year, "The soberest
person going, and the best of blessings in a sick room, is Mrs Gamp.
Send a boy to Kingsgate Street," she says, "and snap her up at any
price, for Mrs Gamp is worth her weight and more in goldian guineas."
My landlord brings the message down to me, and says, "bein' in a light
place where you are, and this job promising so well, why not unite the
two?" "No, sir," I says, "not unbeknown to Mr Mould, and therefore do
not think it. But I will go to Mr Mould," I says, "and ast him, if you
like."' Here she looked sideways at the undertaker, and came to a stop.
'Night-watching, eh?' said Mould, rubbing his chin.
'From eight o'clock till eight, sir. I will not deceive you,' Mrs Gamp
rejoined.
'And then go back, eh?' said would.
'Quite free, then, sir, to attend to Mr Chuffey. His ways bein' quiet,
and his hours early, he'd be abed, sir, nearly all the time. I will not
deny,' said Mrs Gamp with meekness, 'that I am but a poor woman, and
that the money is a object; but do not let that act upon you, Mr Mould.
Rich folks may ride on camels, but it an't so easy for 'em to see out of
a needle's eye. That is my comfort, and I hope I knows it.'
'Well, Mrs Gamp,' observed Mould, 'I don't see any particular objection
to your earning an honest penny under such circumstances. I should keep
it quiet, I think, Mrs Gamp. I wouldn't mention it to Mr Chuzzlewit
on his return, for instance, unless it were necessary, or he asked you
pointblank.'
'The very words was on my lips, sir,' Mrs Gamp rejoined. 'Suppoging
that the gent should die, I hope I might take the liberty of saying as I
know'd some one in the undertaking line, and yet give no offence to you,
sir?'
'Certainly, Mrs Gamp,' said Mould, with much condescension. 'You may
casually remark, in such a case, that we do the thing pleasantly and in
a great variety of styles, and are generally considered to make it
as agreeable as possible to the feelings of the survivors. But don't
obtrude it, don't obtrude it. Easy, easy! My dear, you may as well give
Mrs Gamp a card or two, if you please.'
Mrs Gamp received them, and scenting no more rum in the wind (for the
bottle was locked up again) rose to take her departure.
'Wishing ev'ry happiness to this happy family,' said Mrs Gamp 'with
all my heart. Good arternoon, Mrs Mould! If I was Mr would I should be
jealous of you, ma'am; and I'm sure, if I was you, I should be jealous
of Mr Mould.'
'Tut, tut! Bah, bah! Go along, Mrs Gamp!' cried the delighted
undertaker.
'As to the young ladies,' said Mrs Gamp, dropping a curtsey, 'bless
their sweet looks--how they can ever reconsize it with their duties to
be so grown up with such young parents, it an't for sech as me to give a
guess at.'
'Nonsense, nonsense. Be off, Mrs Gamp!' cried Mould. But in the height
of his gratification he actually pinched Mrs Mould as he said it.
'I'll tell you what, my dear,' he observed, when Mrs Gamp had at last
withdrawn and shut the door, 'that's a ve-ry shrewd woman. That's a
woman whose intellect is immensely superior to her station in life.
That's a woman who observes and reflects in an uncommon manner. She's
the sort of woman now,' said Mould, drawing his silk handkerchief over
his head again, and composing himself for a nap 'one would almost feel
disposed to bury for nothing; and do it neatly, too!'
Mrs Mould and her daughters fully concurred in these remarks; the
subject of which had by this time reached the street, where she
experienced so much inconvenience from the air, that she was obliged to
stand under an archway for a short time, to recover herself. Even
after this precaution, she walked so unsteadily as to attract the
compassionate regards of divers kind-hearted boys, who took the
liveliest interest in her disorder; and in their simple language bade
her be of good cheer, for she was 'only a little screwed.'
Whatever she was, or whatever name the vocabulary of medical science
would have bestowed upon her malady, Mrs Gamp was perfectly acquainted
with the way home again; and arriving at the house of Anthony Chuzzlewit
& Son, lay down to rest. Remaining there until seven o'clock in the
evening, and then persuading poor old Chuffey to betake himself to
bed, she sallied forth upon her new engagement. First, she went to
her private lodgings in Kingsgate Street, for a bundle of robes and
wrappings comfortable in the night season; and then repaired to the Bull
in Holborn, which she reached as the clocks were striking eight.
As she turned into the yard, she stopped; for the landlord, landlady,
and head chambermaid, were all on the threshold together talking
earnestly with a young gentleman who seemed to have just come or to
be just going away. The first words that struck upon Mrs Gamp's ear
obviously bore reference to the patient; and it being expedient that all
good attendants should know as much as possible about the case on which
their skill is brought to bear, Mrs Gamp listened as a matter of duty.
'No better, then?' observed the gentleman.
'Worse!' said the landlord.
'Much worse,' added the landlady.
'Oh! a deal badder,' cried the chambermaid from the background, opening
her eyes very wide, and shaking her head.
'Poor fellow!' said the gentleman, 'I am sorry to hear it. The worst of
it is, that I have no idea what friends or relations he has, or where
they live, except that it certainly is not in London.'
The landlord looked at the landlady; the landlady looked at the
landlord; and the chambermaid remarked, hysterically, 'that of all the
many wague directions she had ever seen or heerd of (and they wasn't few
in an hotel), THAT was the waguest.'
'The fact is, you see,' pursued the gentleman, 'as I told you yesterday
when you sent to me, I really know very little about him. We were
school-fellows together; but since that time I have only met him twice.
On both occasions I was in London for a boy's holiday (having come up
for a week or so from Wiltshire), and lost sight of him again directly.
The letter bearing my name and address which you found upon his table,
and which led to your applying to me, is in answer, you will observe,
to one he wrote from this house the very day he was taken ill, making an
appointment with him at his own request. Here is his letter, if you wish
to see it.'
The landlord read it; the landlady looked over him. The chambermaid, in
the background, made out as much of it as she could, and invented the
rest; believing it all from that time forth as a positive piece of
evidence.
'He has very little luggage, you say?' observed the gentleman, who was
no other than our old friend, John Westlock.
'Nothing but a portmanteau,' said the landlord; 'and very little in it.'
'A few pounds in his purse, though?'
'Yes. It's sealed up, and in the cash-box. I made a memorandum of the
amount, which you're welcome to see.'
'Well!' said John, 'as the medical gentleman says the fever must take
its course, and nothing can be done just now beyond giving him his
drinks regularly and having him carefully attended to, nothing more
can be said that I know of, until he is in a condition to give us some
information. Can you suggest anything else?'
'N-no,' replied the landlord, 'except--'
'Except, who's to pay, I suppose?' said John.
'Why,' hesitated the landlord, 'it would be as well.'
'Quite as well,' said the landlady.
'Not forgetting to remember the servants,' said the chambermaid in a
bland whisper.
'It is but reasonable, I fully admit,' said John Westlock. 'At all
events, you have the stock in hand to go upon for the present; and I
will readily undertake to pay the doctor and the nurses.'
'Ah!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'A rayal gentleman!'
She groaned her admiration so audibly, that they all turned round. Mrs
Gamp felt the necessity of advancing, bundle in hand, and introducing
herself.
'The night-nurse,' she observed, 'from Kingsgate Street, well beknown to
Mrs Prig the day-nurse, and the best of creeturs. How is the poor dear
gentleman to-night? If he an't no better yet, still that is what must
be expected and prepared for. It an't the fust time by a many score,
ma'am,' dropping a curtsey to the landlady, 'that Mrs Prig and me has
nussed together, turn and turn about, one off, one on. We knows each
other's ways, and often gives relief when others fail. Our charges
is but low, sir'--Mrs Gamp addressed herself to John on this
head--'considerin' the nater of our painful dooty. If they wos made
accordin' to our wishes, they would be easy paid.'
Regarding herself as having now delivered her inauguration address, Mrs
Gamp curtseyed all round, and signified her wish to be conducted to the
scene of her official duties. The chambermaid led her, through a variety
of intricate passages, to the top of the house; and pointing at length
to a solitary door at the end of a gallery, informed her that yonder was
the chamber where the patient lay. That done, she hurried off with all
the speed she could make.
Mrs Gamp traversed the gallery in a great heat from having carried
her large bundle up so many stairs, and tapped at the door which was
immediately opened by Mrs Prig, bonneted and shawled and all impatience
to be gone. Mrs Prig was of the Gamp build, but not so fat; and her
voice was deeper and more like a man's. She had also a beard.
'I began to think you warn't a-coming!' Mrs Prig observed, in some
displeasure.
'It shall be made good to-morrow night,' said Mrs Gamp 'Honorable. I had
to go and fetch my things.' She had begun to make signs of inquiry in
reference to the position of the patient and his overhearing them--for
there was a screen before the door--when Mrs Prig settled that point
easily.
'Oh!' she said aloud, 'he's quiet, but his wits is gone. It an't no
matter wot you say.'
'Anythin' to tell afore you goes, my dear?' asked Mrs Gamp, setting her
bundle down inside the door, and looking affectionately at her partner.
'The pickled salmon,' Mrs Prig replied, 'is quite delicious. I can
partlck'ler recommend it. Don't have nothink to say to the cold meat,
for it tastes of the stable. The drinks is all good.'
Mrs Gamp expressed herself much gratified.
'The physic and them things is on the drawers and mankleshelf,' said
Mrs Prig, cursorily. 'He took his last slime draught at seven. The
easy-chair an't soft enough. You'll want his piller.'
Mrs Gamp thanked her for these hints, and giving her a friendly good
night, held the door open until she had disappeared at the other end
of the gallery. Having thus performed the hospitable duty of seeing her
safely off, she shut it, locked it on the inside, took up her bundle,
walked round the screen, and entered on her occupation of the sick
chamber.
'A little dull, but not so bad as might be,' Mrs Gamp remarked.
'I'm glad to see a parapidge, in case of fire, and lots of roofs and
chimley-pots to walk upon.'
It will be seen from these remarks that Mrs Gamp was looking out of
window. When she had exhausted the prospect, she tried the easy-chair,
which she indignantly declared was 'harder than a brickbadge.' Next
she pursued her researches among the physic-bottles, glasses, jugs, and
tea-cups; and when she had entirely satisfied her curiosity on all these
subjects of investigation, she untied her bonnet-strings and strolled up
to the bedside to take a look at the patient.
A young man--dark and not ill-looking--with long black hair, that seemed
the blacker for the whiteness of the bed-clothes. His eyes were partly
open, and he never ceased to roll his head from side to side upon the
pillow, keeping his body almost quiet. He did not utter words; but
every now and then gave vent to an expression of impatience or fatigue,
sometimes of surprise; and still his restless head--oh, weary, weary
hour!--went to and fro without a moment's intermission.
Mrs Gamp solaced herself with a pinch of snuff, and stood looking at him
with her head inclined a little sideways, as a connoisseur might gaze
upon a doubtful work of art. By degrees, a horrible remembrance of one
branch of her calling took possession of the woman; and stooping down,
she pinned his wandering arms against his sides, to see how he would
look if laid out as a dead man. Her fingers itched to compose his limbs
in that last marble attitude.
'Ah!' said Mrs Gamp, walking away from the bed, 'he'd make a lovely
corpse.'
She now proceeded to unpack her bundle; lighted a candle with the aid
of a fire-box on the drawers; filled a small kettle, as a preliminary
to refreshing herself with a cup of tea in the course of the night;
laid what she called 'a little bit of fire,' for the same philanthropic
purpose; and also set forth a small tea-board, that nothing might be
wanting for her comfortable enjoyment. These preparations occupied so
long, that when they were brought to a conclusion it was high time to
think about supper; so she rang the bell and ordered it.
'I think, young woman,' said Mrs Gamp to the assistant chambermaid, in a
tone expressive of weakness, 'that I could pick a little bit of pickled
salmon, with a nice little sprig of fennel, and a sprinkling of white
pepper. I takes new bread, my dear, with just a little pat of fresh
butter, and a mossel of cheese. In case there should be such a thing
as a cowcumber in the 'ouse, will you be so kind as bring it, for I'm
rather partial to 'em, and they does a world of good in a sick room. If
they draws the Brighton Old Tipper here, I takes THAT ale at night, my
love, it bein' considered wakeful by the doctors. And whatever you
do, young woman, don't bring more than a shilling's-worth of gin and
water-warm when I rings the bell a second time; for that is always my
allowance, and I never takes a drop beyond!'
Having preferred these moderate requests, Mrs Gamp observed that she
would stand at the door until the order was executed, to the end that
the patient might not be disturbed by her opening it a second time; and
therefore she would thank the young woman to 'look sharp.'
A tray was brought with everything upon it, even to the cucumber and
Mrs Gamp accordingly sat down to eat and drink in high good humour. The
extent to which she availed herself of the vinegar, and supped up that
refreshing fluid with the blade of her knife, can scarcely be expressed
in narrative.
'Ah!' sighed Mrs Gamp, as she meditated over the warm shilling's-worth,
'what a blessed thing it is--living in a wale--to be contented! What a
blessed thing it is to make sick people happy in their beds, and never
mind one's self as long as one can do a service! I don't believe a finer
cowcumber was ever grow'd. I'm sure I never see one!'
She moralised in the same vein until her glass was empty, and then
administered the patient's medicine, by the simple process of clutching
his windpipe to make him gasp, and immediately pouring it down his
throat.
'I a'most forgot the piller, I declare!' said Mrs Gamp, drawing it away.
'There! Now he's comfortable as he can be, I'm sure! I must try to make
myself as much so as I can.'
With this view, she went about the construction of an extemporaneous bed
in the easy-chair, with the addition of the next easy one for her feet.
Having formed the best couch that the circumstances admitted of, she
took out of her bundle a yellow night-cap, of prodigious size, in shape
resembling a cabbage; which article of dress she fixed and tied on with
the utmost care, previously divesting herself of a row of bald old
curls that could scarcely be called false, they were so very innocent of
anything approaching to deception. From the same repository she brought
forth a night-jacket, in which she also attired herself. Finally, she
produced a watchman's coat which she tied round her neck by the sleeves,
so that she become two people; and looked, behind, as if she were in the
act of being embraced by one of the old patrol.
All these arrangements made, she lighted the rush-light, coiled herself
up on her couch, and went to sleep. Ghostly and dark the room became,
and full of lowering shadows. The distant noises in the streets were
gradually hushed; the house was quiet as a sepulchre; the dead of night
was coffined in the silent city.
Oh, weary, weary hour! Oh, haggard mind, groping darkly through the
past; incapable of detaching itself from the miserable present; dragging
its heavy chain of care through imaginary feasts and revels, and scenes
of awful pomp; seeking but a moment's rest among the long-forgotten
haunts of childhood, and the resorts of yesterday; and dimly finding
fear and horror everywhere! Oh, weary, weary hour! What were the
wanderings of Cain, to these!
Still, without a moment's interval, the burning head tossed to and fro.
Still, from time to time, fatigue, impatience, suffering, and surprise,
found utterance upon that rack, and plainly too, though never once in
words. At length, in the solemn hour of midnight, he began to talk;
waiting awfully for answers sometimes; as though invisible companions
were about his bed; and so replying to their speech and questioning
again.
Mrs Gamp awoke, and sat up in her bed; presenting on the wall the shadow
of a gigantic night constable, struggling with a prisoner.
'Come! Hold your tongue!' she cried, in sharp reproof. 'Don't make none
of that noise here.'
There was no alteration in the face, or in the incessant motion of the
head, but he talked on wildly.
'Ah!' said Mrs Gamp, coming out of the chair with an impatient shiver;
'I thought I was a-sleepin' too pleasant to last! The devil's in the
night, I think, it's turned so chilly!'
'Don't drink so much!' cried the sick man. 'You'll ruin us all. Don't
you see how the fountain sinks? Look at the mark where the sparkling
water was just now!'
'Sparkling water, indeed!' said Mrs Gamp. 'I'll have a sparkling cup o'
tea, I think. I wish you'd hold your noise!'
He burst into a laugh, which, being prolonged, fell off into a dismal
wail. Checking himself, with fierce inconstancy he began to count--fast.
'One--two--three--four--five--six.'
"One, two, buckle my shoe,"' said Mrs Gamp, who was now on her knees,
lighting the fire, "three, four, shut the door,"--I wish you'd shut
your mouth, young man--"five, six, picking up sticks." If I'd got a few
handy, I should have the kettle boiling all the sooner.'
Awaiting this desirable consummation, she sat down so close to the
fender (which was a high one) that her nose rested upon it; and for some
time she drowsily amused herself by sliding that feature backwards and
forwards along the brass top, as far as she could, without changing her
position to do it. She maintained, all the while, a running commentary
upon the wanderings of the man in bed.
'That makes five hundred and twenty-one men, all dressed alike, and with
the same distortion on their faces, that have passed in at the window,
and out at the door,' he cried, anxiously. 'Look there! Five hundred and
twenty-two--twenty-three--twenty-four. Do you see them?'
'Ah! I see 'em,' said Mrs Gamp; 'all the whole kit of 'em numbered like
hackney-coaches, an't they?'
'Touch me! Let me be sure of this. Touch me!'
'You'll take your next draught when I've made the kettle bile,' retorted
Mrs Gamp, composedly, 'and you'll be touched then. You'll be touched up,
too, if you don't take it quiet.'
'Five hundred and twenty-eight, five hundred and twenty-nine, five
hundred and thirty.--Look here!'
'What's the matter now?' said Mrs Gamp.
'They're coming four abreast, each man with his arm entwined in the next
man's, and his hand upon his shoulder. What's that upon the arm of every
man, and on the flag?'
'Spiders, p'raps,' said Mrs Gamp.
'Crape! Black crape! Good God! why do they wear it outside?'
'Would you have 'em carry black crape in their insides?' Mrs Gamp
retorted. 'Hold your noise, hold your noise.'
The fire beginning by this time to impart a grateful warmth, Mrs Gamp
became silent; gradually rubbed her nose more and more slowly along the
top of the fender; and fell into a heavy doze. She was awakened by the
room ringing (as she fancied) with a name she knew:
'Chuzzlewit!'
The sound was so distinct and real, and so full of agonised entreaty,
that Mrs Gamp jumped up in terror, and ran to the door. She expected to
find the passage filled with people, come to tell her that the house in
the city had taken fire. But the place was empty; not a soul was there.
She opened the window, and looked out. Dark, dull, dingy, and desolate
house-tops. As she passed to her seat again, she glanced at the patient.
Just the same; but silent. Mrs Gamp was so warm now, that she threw off
the watchman's coat, and fanned herself.
'It seemed to make the wery bottles ring,' she said. 'What could I have
been a-dreaming of? That dratted Chuffey, I'll be bound.'
The supposition was probable enough. At any rate, a pinch of snuff, and
the song of the steaming kettle, quite restored the tone of Mrs Gamp's
nerves, which were none of the weakest. She brewed her tea; made some
buttered toast; and sat down at the tea-board, with her face to the
fire.
When once again, in a tone more terrible than that which had vibrated in
her slumbering ear, these words were shrieked out:
'Chuzzlewit! Jonas! No!'
Mrs Gamp dropped the cup she was in the act of raising to her lips, and
turned round with a start that made the little tea-board leap. The cry
had come from the bed.
It was bright morning the next time Mrs Gamp looked out of the window,
and the sun was rising cheerfully. Lighter and lighter grew the sky, and
noisier the streets; and high into the summer air uprose the smoke of
newly kindled fires, until the busy day was broad awake.
Mrs Prig relieved punctually, having passed a good night at her other
patient's. Mr Westlock came at the same time, but he was not admitted,
the disorder being infectious. The doctor came too. The doctor shook
his head. It was all he could do, under the circumstances, and he did it
well.
'What sort of a night, nurse?'
'Restless, sir,' said Mrs Gamp.
'Talk much?'
'Middling, sir,' said Mrs Gamp.
'Nothing to the purpose, I suppose?'
'Oh bless you, no, sir. Only jargon.'
'Well!' said the doctor, 'we must keep him quiet; keep the room cool;
give him his draughts regularly; and see that he's carefully looked to.
That's all!'
'And as long as Mrs Prig and me waits upon him, sir, no fear of that,'
said Mrs Gamp.
'I suppose,' observed Mrs Prig, when they had curtseyed the doctor out;
'there's nothin' new?'
'Nothin' at all, my dear,' said Mrs Gamp. 'He's rather wearin' in his
talk from making up a lot of names; elseways you needn't mind him.'
'Oh, I shan't mind him,' Mrs Prig returned. 'I have somethin' else to
think of.'
'I pays my debts to-night, you know, my dear, and comes afore my time,'
said Mrs Gamp. 'But, Betsy Prig'--speaking with great feeling, and
laying her hand upon her arm--'try the cowcumbers, God bless you!'
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING, AND A PROMISING PROSPECT
The laws of sympathy between beards and birds, and the secret source
of that attraction which frequently impels a shaver of the one to be
a dealer in the other, are questions for the subtle reasoning of
scientific bodies; not the less so, because their investigation would
seem calculated to lead to no particular result. It is enough to know
that the artist who had the honour of entertaining Mrs Gamp as
his first-floor lodger, united the two pursuits of barbering and
bird-fancying; and that it was not an original idea of his, but one in
which he had, dispersed about the by-streets and suburbs of the town, a
host of rivals.
The name of the householder was Paul Sweedlepipe. But he was commonly
called Poll Sweedlepipe; and was not uncommonly believed to have been so
christened, among his friends and neighbours.
With the exception of the staircase, and his lodger's private apartment,
Poll Sweedlepipe's house was one great bird's nest. Gamecocks resided in
the kitchen; pheasants wasted the brightness of their golden plumage on
the garret; bantams roosted in the cellar; owls had possession of the
bedroom; and specimens of all the smaller fry of birds chirrupped and
twittered in the shop. The staircase was sacred to rabbits. There in
hutches of all shapes and kinds, made from old packing-cases, boxes,
drawers, and tea-chests, they increased in a prodigious degree, and
contributed their share towards that complicated whiff which, quite
impartially, and without distinction of persons, saluted every nose that
was put into Sweedlepipe's easy shaving-shop.
Many noses found their way there, for all that, especially on Sunday
morning, before church-time. Even archbishops shave, or must be shaved,
on a Sunday, and beards WILL grow after twelve o'clock on Saturday
night, though it be upon the chins of base mechanics; who, not being
able to engage their valets by the quarter, hire them by the job, and
pay them--oh, the wickedness of copper coin!--in dirty pence. Poll
Sweedlepipe, the sinner, shaved all comers at a penny each, and cut the
hair of any customer for twopence; and being a lone unmarried man, and
having some connection in the bird line, Poll got on tolerably well.
He was a little elderly man, with a clammy cold right hand, from which
even rabbits and birds could not remove the smell of shaving-soap. Poll
had something of the bird in his nature; not of the hawk or eagle, but
of the sparrow, that builds in chimney-stacks and inclines to human
company. He was not quarrelsome, though, like the sparrow; but peaceful,
like the dove. In his walk he strutted; and, in this respect, he bore
a faint resemblance to the pigeon, as well as in a certain prosiness of
speech, which might, in its monotony, be likened to the cooing of that
bird. He was very inquisitive; and when he stood at his shop-door in the
evening-tide, watching the neighbours, with his head on one side, and
his eye cocked knowingly, there was a dash of the raven in him. Yet
there was no more wickedness in Poll than in a robin. Happily, too, when
any of his ornithological properties were on the verge of going too
far, they were quenched, dissolved, melted down, and neutralised in
the barber; just as his bald head--otherwise, as the head of a shaved
magpie--lost itself in a wig of curly black ringlets, parted on one
side, and cut away almost to the crown, to indicate immense capacity of
intellect.
Poll had a very small, shrill treble voice, which might have led
the wags of Kingsgate Street to insist the more upon his feminine
designation. He had a tender heart, too; for, when he had a good
commission to provide three or four score sparrows for a shooting-match,
he would observe, in a compassionate tone, how singular it was that
sparrows should have been made expressly for such purposes. The
question, whether men were made to shoot them, never entered into Poll's
philosophy.
Poll wore, in his sporting character, a velveteen coat, a great deal of
blue stocking, ankle boots, a neckerchief of some bright colour, and
a very tall hat. Pursuing his more quiet occupation of barber, he
generally subsided into an apron not over-clean, a flannel jacket, and
corduroy knee-shorts. It was in this latter costume, but with his apron
girded round his waist, as a token of his having shut up shop for
the night, that he closed the door one evening, some weeks after the
occurrences detailed in the last chapter, and stood upon the steps in
Kingsgate Street, listening until the little cracked bell within
should leave off ringing. For until it did--this was Mr Sweedlepipe's
reflection--the place never seemed quiet enough to be left to itself.
'It's the greediest little bell to ring,' said Poll, 'that ever was. But
it's quiet at last.'
He rolled his apron up a little tighter as he said these words, and
hastened down the street. Just as he was turning into Holborn, he ran
against a young gentleman in a livery. This youth was bold, though
small, and with several lively expressions of displeasure, turned upon
him instantly.
'Now, STOO-PID!' cried the young gentleman. 'Can't you look where you're
a-going to--eh? Can't you mind where you're a-coming to--eh? What do you
think your eyes was made for--eh? Ah! Yes. Oh! Now then!'
The young gentleman pronounced the two last words in a very loud tone
and with frightful emphasis, as though they contained within themselves
the essence of the direst aggravation. But he had scarcely done so, when
his anger yielded to surprise, and he cried, in a milder tone:
'What! Polly!'
'Why, it an't you, sure!' cried Poll. 'It can't be you!'
'No. It an't me,' returned the youth. 'It's my son, my oldest one. He's
a credit to his father, an't he, Polly?' With this delicate little
piece of banter, he halted on the pavement, and went round and round
in circles, for the better exhibition of his figure; rather to the
inconvenience of the passengers generally, who were not in an equal
state of spirits with himself.
'I wouldn't have believed it,' said Poll. 'What! You've left your old
place, then? Have you?'
'Have I!' returned his young friend, who had by this time stuck his
hands into the pockets of his white cord breeches, and was swaggering
along at the barber's side. 'D'ye know a pair of top-boots when you see
'em, Polly?--look here!'
'Beau-ti-ful' cried Mr Sweedlepipe.
'D'ye know a slap-up sort of button, when you see it?' said the youth.
'Don't look at mine, if you ain't a judge, because these lions' heads
was made for men of taste; not snobs.'
'Beau-ti-ful!' cried the barber again. 'A grass-green frock-coat, too,
bound with gold; and a cockade in your hat!'
'I should hope so,' replied the youth. 'Blow the cockade, though; for,
except that it don't turn round, it's like the wentilator that used to
be in the kitchen winder at Todgers's. You ain't seen the old lady's
name in the Gazette, have you?'
'No,' returned the barber. 'Is she a bankrupt?'
'If she ain't, she will be,' retorted Bailey. 'That bis'ness never can
be carried on without ME. Well! How are you?'
'Oh! I'm pretty well,' said Poll. 'Are you living at this end of the
town, or were you coming to see me? Was that the bis'ness that brought
you to Holborn?'
'I haven't got no bis'ness in Holborn,' returned Bailey, with some
displeasure. 'All my bis'ness lays at the West End. I've got the right
sort of governor now. You can't see his face for his whiskers, and can't
see his whiskers for the dye upon 'em. That's a gentleman ain't it? You
wouldn't like a ride in a cab, would you? Why, it wouldn't be safe to
offer it. You'd faint away, only to see me a-comin' at a mild trot round
the corner.'
To convey a slight idea of the effect of this approach, Mr Bailey
counterfeited in his own person the action of a high-trotting horse and
threw up his head so high, in backing against a pump, that he shook his
hat off.
'Why, he's own uncle to Capricorn,' said Bailey, 'and brother to
Cauliflower. He's been through the winders of two chaney shops since
we've had him, and was sold for killin' his missis. That's a horse, I
hope?'
'Ah! you'll never want to buy any more red polls, now,' observed Poll,
looking on his young friend with an air of melancholy. 'You'll never
want to buy any more red polls now, to hang up over the sink, will you?'
'I should think not,' replied Bailey. 'Reether so. I wouldn't have
nothin' to say to any bird below a Peacock; and HE'd be wulgar. Well,
how are you?'
'Oh! I'm pretty well,' said Poll. He answered the question again because
Mr Bailey asked it again; Mr Bailey asked it again, because--accompanied
with a straddling action of the white cords, a bend of the knees, and a
striking forth of the top-boots--it was an easy horse-fleshy, turfy sort
of thing to do.
'Wot are you up to, old feller?' added Mr Bailey, with the same graceful
rakishness. He was quite the man-about-town of the conversation, while
the easy-shaver was the child.
'Why, I am going to fetch my lodger home,' said Paul.
'A woman!' cried Mr Bailey, 'for a twenty-pun' note!'
The little barber hastened to explain that she was neither a young
woman, nor a handsome woman, but a nurse, who had been acting as a kind
of house-keeper to a gentleman for some weeks past, and left her place
that night, in consequence of being superseded by another and a more
legitimate house-keeper--to wit, the gentleman's bride.
'He's newly married, and he brings his young wife home to-night,' said
the barber. 'So I'm going to fetch my lodger away--Mr Chuzzlewit's,
close behind the Post Office--and carry her box for her.'
'Jonas Chuzzlewit's?' said Bailey.
'Ah!' returned Paul: 'that's the name sure enough. Do you know him?'
'Oh, no!' cried Mr Bailey; 'not at all. And I don't know her! Not
neither! Why, they first kept company through me, a'most.'
'Ah?' said Paul.
'Ah!' said Mr Bailey, with a wink; 'and she ain't bad looking mind you.
But her sister was the best. SHE was the merry one. I often used to have
a bit of fun with her, in the hold times!'
Mr Bailey spoke as if he already had a leg and three-quarters in
the grave, and this had happened twenty or thirty years ago. Paul
Sweedlepipe, the meek, was so perfectly confounded by his precocious
self-possession, and his patronizing manner, as well as by his boots,
cockade, and livery, that a mist swam before his eyes, and he saw--not
the Bailey of acknowledged juvenility from Todgers's Commercial
Boarding House, who had made his acquaintance within a twelvemonth,
by purchasing, at sundry times, small birds at twopence each--but a
highly-condensed embodiment of all the sporting grooms in London; an
abstract of all the stable-knowledge of the time; a something at a
high-pressure that must have had existence many years, and was fraught
with terrible experiences. And truly, though in the cloudy atmosphere
of Todgers's, Mr Bailey's genius had ever shone out brightly in this
particular respect, it now eclipsed both time and space, cheated
beholders of their senses, and worked on their belief in defiance of all
natural laws. He walked along the tangible and real stones of Holborn
Hill, an undersized boy; and yet he winked the winks, and thought the
thoughts, and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an ancient man.
There was an old principle within him, and a young surface without. He
became an inexplicable creature; a breeched and booted Sphinx. There was
no course open to the barber, but to go distracted himself, or to take
Bailey for granted; and he wisely chose the latter.
Mr Bailey was good enough to continue to bear him company, and to
entertain him, as they went, with easy conversation on various sporting
topics; especially on the comparative merits, as a general principle, of
horses with white stockings, and horses without. In regard to the style
of tail to be preferred, Mr Bailey had opinions of his own, which he
explained, but begged they might by no means influence his friend's,
as here he knew he had the misfortune to differ from some excellent
authorities. He treated Mr Sweedlepipe to a dram, compounded agreeably
to his own directions, which he informed him had been invented by a
member of the Jockey Club; and, as they were by this time near the
barber's destination, he observed that, as he had an hour to spare, and
knew the parties, he would, if quite agreeable, be introduced to Mrs
Gamp.
Paul knocked at Jonas Chuzzlewit's; and, on the door being opened by
that lady, made the two distinguished persons known to one another. It
was a happy feature in Mrs Gamp's twofold profession, that it gave her
an interest in everything that was young as well as in everything that
was old. She received Mr Bailey with much kindness.
'It's very good, I'm sure, of you to come,' she said to her landlord,
'as well as bring so nice a friend. But I'm afraid that I must trouble
you so far as to step in, for the young couple has not yet made
appearance.'
'They're late, ain't they?' inquired her landlord, when she had
conducted them downstairs into the kitchen.
'Well, sir, considern' the Wings of Love, they are,' said Mrs Gamp.
Mr Bailey inquired whether the Wings of Love had ever won a plate, or
could be backed to do anything remarkable; and being informed that it
was not a horse, but merely a poetical or figurative expression, evinced
considerable disgust. Mrs Gamp was so very much astonished by his
affable manners and great ease, that she was about to propound to her
landlord in a whisper the staggering inquiry, whether he was a man or
a boy, when Mr Sweedlepipe, anticipating her design, made a timely
diversion.
'He knows Mrs Chuzzlewit,' said Paul aloud.
'There's nothin' he don't know; that's my opinion,' observed Mrs Gamp.
'All the wickedness of the world is Print to him.'
Mr Bailey received this as a compliment, and said, adjusting his cravat,
'reether so.'
'As you knows Mrs Chuzzlewit, you knows, p'raps, what her chris'en name
is?' Mrs Gamp observed.
'Charity,' said Bailey.
'That it ain't!' cried Mrs Gamp.
'Cherry, then,' said Bailey. 'Cherry's short for it. It's all the same.'
'It don't begin with a C at all,' retorted Mrs Gamp, shaking her head.
'It begins with a M.'
'Whew!' cried Mr Bailey, slapping a little cloud of pipe-clay out of his
left leg, 'then he's been and married the merry one!'
As these words were mysterious, Mrs Gamp called upon him to explain,
which Mr Bailey proceeded to do; that lady listening greedily to
everything he said. He was yet in the fullness of his narrative when the
sound of wheels, and a double knock at the street door, announced the
arrival of the newly married couple. Begging him to reserve what more he
had to say for her hearing on the way home, Mrs Gamp took up the candle,
and hurried away to receive and welcome the young mistress of the house.
'Wishing you appiness and joy with all my art,' said Mrs Gamp, dropping
a curtsey as they entered the hall; 'and you, too, sir. Your lady looks
a little tired with the journey, Mr Chuzzlewit, a pretty dear!'
'She has bothered enough about it,' grumbled Mr Jonas. 'Now, show a
light, will you?'
'This way, ma'am, if you please,' said Mrs Gamp, going upstairs before
them. 'Things has been made as comfortable as they could be, but there's
many things you'll have to alter your own self when you gets time
to look about you! Ah! sweet thing! But you don't,' added Mrs Gamp,
internally, 'you don't look much like a merry one, I must say!'
It was true; she did not. The death that had gone before the bridal
seemed to have left its shade upon the house. The air was heavy and
oppressive; the rooms were dark; a deep gloom filled up every chink and
corner. Upon the hearthstone, like a creature of ill omen, sat the aged
clerk, with his eyes fixed on some withered branches in the stove. He
rose and looked at her.
'So there you are, Mr Chuff,' said Jonas carelessly, as he dusted his
boots; 'still in the land of the living, eh?'
'Still in the land of the living, sir,' retorted Mrs Gamp. 'And Mr
Chuffey may thank you for it, as many and many a time I've told him.'
Mr Jonas was not in the best of humours, for he merely said, as he
looked round, 'We don't want you any more, you know, Mrs Gamp.'
'I'm a-going immediate, sir,' returned the nurse; 'unless there's
nothink I can do for you, ma'am. Ain't there,' said Mrs Gamp, with
a look of great sweetness, and rummaging all the time in her pocket;
'ain't there nothink I can do for you, my little bird?'
'No,' said Merry, almost crying. 'You had better go away, please!'
With a leer of mingled sweetness and slyness; with one eye on the
future, one on the bride, and an arch expression in her face, partly
spiritual, partly spirituous, and wholly professional and peculiar
to her art; Mrs Gamp rummaged in her pocket again, and took from it a
printed card, whereon was an inscription copied from her signboard.
'Would you be so good, my darling dovey of a dear young married lady,'
Mrs Gamp observed, in a low voice, 'as put that somewheres where you can
keep it in your mind? I'm well beknown to many ladies, and it's my card.
Gamp is my name, and Gamp my nater. Livin' quite handy, I will make
so bold as call in now and then, and make inquiry how your health and
spirits is, my precious chick!'
And with innumerable leers, winks, coughs, nods, smiles, and curtseys,
all leading to the establishment of a mysterious and confidential
understanding between herself and the bride, Mrs Gamp, invoking a
blessing upon the house, leered, winked, coughed, nodded, smiled, and
curtseyed herself out of the room.
'But I will say, and I would if I was led a Martha to the Stakes for
it,' Mrs Gamp remarked below stairs, in a whisper, 'that she don't look
much like a merry one at this present moment of time.'
'Ah! wait till you hear her laugh!' said Bailey.
'Hem!' cried Mrs Gamp, in a kind of groan. 'I will, child.'
They said no more in the house, for Mrs Gamp put on her bonnet, Mr
Sweedlepipe took up her box; and Mr Bailey accompanied them towards
Kingsgate Street; recounting to Mrs Gamp as they went along, the origin
and progress of his acquaintance with Mrs Chuzzlewit and her sister. It
was a pleasant instance of this youth's precocity, that he fancied Mrs
Gamp had conceived a tenderness for him, and was much tickled by her
misplaced attachment.
As the door closed heavily behind them, Mrs Jonas sat down in a chair,
and felt a strange chill creep upon her, whilst she looked about the
room. It was pretty much as she had known it, but appeared more dreary.
She had thought to see it brightened to receive her.
'It ain't good enough for you, I suppose?' said Jonas, watching her
looks.
'Why, it IS dull,' said Merry, trying to be more herself.
'It'll be duller before you're done with it,' retorted Jonas, 'if you
give me any of your airs. You're a nice article, to turn sulky on first
coming home! Ecod, you used to have life enough, when you could plague
me with it. The gal's downstairs. Ring the bell for supper, while I take
my boots off!'
She roused herself from looking after him as he left the room, to do
what he had desired; when the old man Chuffey laid his hand softly on
her arm.
'You are not married?' he said eagerly. 'Not married?'
'Yes. A month ago. Good Heaven, what is the matter?'
He answered nothing was the matter; and turned from her. But in her fear
and wonder, turning also, she saw him raise his trembling hands above
his head, and heard him say:
'Oh! woe, woe, woe, upon this wicked house!'
It was her welcome--HOME.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SHOWING THAT OLD FRIENDS MAY NOT ONLY APPEAR WITH NEW FACES, BUT IN
FALSE COLOURS. THAT PEOPLE ARE PRONE TO BITE, AND THAT BITERS MAY
SOMETIMES BE BITTEN.
Mr Bailey, Junior--for the sporting character, whilom of general utility
at Todgers's, had now regularly set up in life under that name, without
troubling himself to obtain from the legislature a direct licence in
the form of a Private Bill, which of all kinds and classes of bills
is without exception the most unreasonable in its charges--Mr Bailey,
Junior, just tall enough to be seen by an inquiring eye, gazing
indolently at society from beneath the apron of his master's cab, drove
slowly up and down Pall Mall, about the hour of noon, in waiting for his
'Governor.' The horse of distinguished family, who had Capricorn for his
nephew, and Cauliflower for his brother, showed himself worthy of his
high relations by champing at the bit until his chest was white with
foam, and rearing like a horse in heraldry; the plated harness and the
patent leather glittered in the sun; pedestrians admired; Mr Bailey was
complacent, but unmoved. He seemed to say, 'A barrow, good people, a
mere barrow; nothing to what we could do, if we chose!' and on he went,
squaring his short green arms outside the apron, as if he were hooked on
to it by his armpits.
Mr Bailey had a great opinion of Brother to Cauliflower, and estimated
his powers highly. But he never told him so. On the contrary, it was his
practice, in driving that animal, to assail him with disrespectful,
if not injurious, expressions, as, 'Ah! would you!' 'Did you think
it, then?' 'Where are you going to now?' 'No, you won't, my lad!' and
similar fragmentary remarks. These being usually accompanied by a jerk
of the rein, or a crack of the whip, led to many trials of strength
between them, and to many contentions for the upper-hand, terminating,
now and then, in china-shops, and other unusual goals, as Mr Bailey had
already hinted to his friend Poll Sweedlepipe.
On the present occasion Mr Bailey, being in spirits, was more than
commonly hard upon his charge; in consequence of which that fiery animal
confined himself almost entirely to his hind legs in displaying his
paces, and constantly got himself into positions with reference to the
cabriolet that very much amazed the passengers in the street. But Mr
Bailey, not at all disturbed, had still a shower of pleasantries to
bestow on any one who crossed his path; as, calling to a full-grown
coal-heaver in a wagon, who for a moment blocked the way, 'Now, young
'un, who trusted YOU with a cart?' inquiring of elderly ladies who
wanted to cross, and ran back again, 'Why they didn't go to the
workhouse and get an order to be buried?' tempting boys, with friendly
words, to get up behind, and immediately afterwards cutting them down;
and the like flashes of a cheerful humour, which he would occasionally
relieve by going round St. James's Square at a hand gallop, and coming
slowly into Pall Mall by another entry, as if, in the interval, his pace
had been a perfect crawl.
It was not until these amusements had been very often repeated, and the
apple-stall at the corner had sustained so many miraculous escapes as to
appear impregnable, that Mr Bailey was summoned to the door of a certain
house in Pall Mall, and turning short, obeyed the call and jumped out.
It was not until he had held the bridle for some minutes longer, every
jerk of Cauliflower's brother's head, and every twitch of Cauliflower's
brother's nostril, taking him off his legs in the meanwhile, that
two persons entered the vehicle, one of whom took the reins and drove
rapidly off. Nor was it until Mr Bailey had run after it some hundreds
of yards in vain, that he managed to lift his short leg into the iron
step, and finally to get his boots upon the little footboard behind.
Then, indeed, he became a sight to see; and--standing now on one foot
and now upon the other, now trying to look round the cab on this side,
now on that, and now endeavouring to peep over the top of it, as it went
dashing in among the carts and coaches--was from head to heel Newmarket.
The appearance of Mr Bailey's governor as he drove along fully justified
that enthusiastic youth's description of him to the wondering Poll. He
had a world of jet-black shining hair upon his head, upon his cheeks,
upon his chin, upon his upper lip. His clothes, symmetrically made, were
of the newest fashion and the costliest kind. Flowers of gold and blue,
and green and blushing red, were on his waistcoat; precious chains
and jewels sparkled on his breast; his fingers, clogged with brilliant
rings, were as unwieldly as summer flies but newly rescued from a
honey-pot. The daylight mantled in his gleaming hat and boots as in
a polished glass. And yet, though changed his name, and changed his
outward surface, it was Tigg. Though turned and twisted upside down,
and inside out, as great men have been sometimes known to be; though
no longer Montague Tigg, but Tigg Montague; still it was Tigg; the same
Satanic, gallant, military Tigg. The brass was burnished, lacquered,
newly stamped; yet it was the true Tigg metal notwithstanding.
Beside him sat a smiling gentleman, of less pretensions and of business
looks, whom he addressed as David. Surely not the David of the--how
shall it be phrased?--the triumvirate of golden balls? Not David,
tapster at the Lombards' Arms? Yes. The very man.
'The secretary's salary, David,' said Mr Montague, 'the office being
now established, is eight hundred pounds per annum, with his house-rent,
coals, and candles free. His five-and-twenty shares he holds, of course.
Is that enough?'
David smiled and nodded, and coughed behind a little locked portfolio
which he carried; with an air that proclaimed him to be the secretary in
question.
'If that's enough,' said Montague, 'I will propose it at the Board
to-day, in my capacity as chairman.'
The secretary smiled again; laughed, indeed, this time; and said,
rubbing his nose slily with one end of the portfolio:
'It was a capital thought, wasn't it?'
'What was a capital thought, David?' Mr Montague inquired.
'The Anglo-Bengalee,' tittered the secretary.
'The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company is
rather a capital concern, I hope, David,' said Montague.
'Capital indeed!' cried the secretary, with another laugh--' in one
sense.'
'In the only important one,' observed the chairman; 'which is number
one, David.'
'What,' asked the secretary, bursting into another laugh, 'what will be
the paid up capital, according to the next prospectus?'
'A figure of two, and as many oughts after it as the printer can get
into the same line,' replied his friend. 'Ha, ha!'
At this they both laughed; the secretary so vehemently, that in kicking
up his feet, he kicked the apron open, and nearly started Cauliflower's
brother into an oyster shop; not to mention Mr Bailey's receiving such
a sudden swing, that he held on for a moment quite a young Fame, by one
strap and no legs.
'What a chap you are!' exclaimed David admiringly, when this little
alarm had subsided.
'Say, genius, David, genius.'
'Well, upon my soul, you ARE a genius then,' said David. 'I always knew
you had the gift of the gab, of course; but I never believed you were
half the man you are. How could I?'
'I rise with circumstances, David. That's a point of genius in itself,'
said Tigg. 'If you were to lose a hundred pound wager to me at
this minute David, and were to pay it (which is most confoundedly
improbable), I should rise, in a mental point of view, directly.'
It is due to Mr Tigg to say that he had really risen with his
opportunities; and, peculating on a grander scale, he had become a
grander man altogether.
'Ha, ha,' cried the secretary, laying his hand, with growing
familiarity, upon the chairman's arm. 'When I look at you, and think of
your property in Bengal being--ha, ha, ha!--'
The half-expressed idea seemed no less ludicrous to Mr Tigg than to his
friend, for he laughed too, heartily.
'--Being,' resumed David, 'being amenable--your property in Bengal being
amenable--to all claims upon the company; when I look at you and think
of that, you might tickle me into fits by waving the feather of a pen at
me. Upon my soul you might!'
'It a devilish fine property,' said Tigg Montague, 'to be amenable
to any claims. The preserve of tigers alone is worth a mint of money,
David.'
David could only reply in the intervals of his laughter, 'Oh, what a
chap you are!' and so continued to laugh, and hold his sides, and wipe
his eyes, for some time, without offering any other observation.
'A capital idea?' said Tigg, returning after a time to his companion's
first remark; 'no doubt it was a capital idea. It was my idea.'
'No, no. It was my idea,' said David. 'Hang it, let a man have some
credit. Didn't I say to you that I'd saved a few pounds?--'
'You said! Didn't I say to you,' interposed Tigg, 'that I had come into
a few pounds?'
'Certainly you did,' returned David, warmly, 'but that's not the idea.
Who said, that if we put the money together we could furnish an office,
and make a show?'
'And who said,' retorted Mr Tigg, 'that, provided we did it on a
sufficiently large scale, we could furnish an office and make a show,
without any money at all? Be rational, and just, and calm, and tell me
whose idea was that.'
'Why, there,' David was obliged to confess, 'you had the advantage of
me, I admit. But I don't put myself on a level with you. I only want a
little credit in the business.'
'All the credit you deserve to have,' said Tigg.
'The plain work of the company, David--figures, books, circulars,
advertisements, pen, ink, and paper, sealing-wax and wafers--is
admirably done by you. You are a first-rate groveller. I don't dispute
it. But the ornamental department, David; the inventive and poetical
department--'
'Is entirely yours,' said his friend. 'No question of it. But with such
a swell turnout as this, and all the handsome things you've got about
you, and the life you lead, I mean to say it's a precious comfortable
department too.'
'Does it gain the purpose? Is it Anglo-Bengalee?' asked Tigg.
'Yes,' said David.
'Could you undertake it yourself?' demanded Tigg.
'No,' said David.
'Ha, ha!' laughed Tigg. 'Then be contented with your station and
your profits, David, my fine fellow, and bless the day that made us
acquainted across the counter of our common uncle, for it was a golden
day to you.'
It will have been already gathered from the conversation of these
worthies, that they were embarked in an enterprise of some magnitude, in
which they addressed the public in general from the strong position of
having everything to gain and nothing at all to lose; and which, based
upon this great principle, was thriving pretty comfortably.
The Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company started
into existence one morning, not an Infant Institution, but a Grown-up
Company running alone at a great pace, and doing business right and
left: with a 'branch' in a first floor over a tailor's at the west-end
of the town, and main offices in a new street in the City, comprising
the upper part of a spacious house resplendent in stucco and
plate-glass, with wire-blinds in all the windows, and 'Anglo-Bengalee'
worked into the pattern of every one of them. On the doorpost was
painted again in large letters, 'offices of the Anglo-Bengalee
Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company,' and on the door was a
large brass plate with the same inscription; always kept very bright, as
courting inquiry; staring the City out of countenance after office hours
on working days, and all day long on Sundays; and looking bolder than
the Bank. Within, the offices were newly plastered, newly painted,
newly papered, newly countered, newly floor-clothed, newly tabled, newly
chaired, newly fitted up in every way, with goods that were substantial
and expensive, and designed (like the company) to last. Business! Look
at the green ledgers with red backs, like strong cricket-balls beaten
flat; the court-guides directories, day-books, almanacks, letter-boxes,
weighing-machines for letters, rows of fire-buckets for dashing out a
conflagration in its first spark, and saving the immense wealth in notes
and bonds belonging to the company; look at the iron safes, the clock,
the office seal--in its capacious self, security for anything. Solidity!
Look at the massive blocks of marble in the chimney-pieces, and the
gorgeous parapet on the top of the house! Publicity! Why, Anglo-Bengalee
Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance company is painted on the very
coal-scuttles. It is repeated at every turn until the eyes are dazzled
with it, and the head is giddy. It is engraved upon the top of all the
letter paper, and it makes a scroll-work round the seal, and it shines
out of the porter's buttons, and it is repeated twenty times in every
circular and public notice wherein one David Crimple, Esquire, Secretary
and resident Director, takes the liberty of inviting your attention
to the accompanying statement of the advantages offered by the
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company; and fully
proves to you that any connection on your part with that establishment
must result in a perpetual Christmas Box and constantly increasing Bonus
to yourself, and that nobody can run any risk by the transaction except
the office, which, in its great liberality is pretty sure to lose. And
this, David Crimple, Esquire, submits to you (and the odds are heavy you
believe him), is the best guarantee that can reasonably be suggested by
the Board of Management for its permanence and stability.
This gentleman's name, by the way, had been originally Crimp; but as
the word was susceptible of an awkward construction and might be
misrepresented, he had altered it to Crimple.
Lest with all these proofs and confirmations, any man should be
suspicious of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance
company; should doubt in tiger, cab, or person, Tigg Montague, Esquire,
(of Pall Mall and Bengal), or any other name in the imaginative List of
Directors; there was a porter on the premises--a wonderful creature,
in a vast red waistcoat and a short-tailed pepper-and-salt coat--who
carried more conviction to the minds of sceptics than the whole
establishment without him. No confidences existed between him and the
Directorship; nobody knew where he had served last; no character or
explanation had been given or required. No questions had been asked on
either side. This mysterious being, relying solely on his figure, had
applied for the situation, and had been instantly engaged on his own
terms. They were high; but he knew, doubtless, that no man could carry
such an extent of waistcoat as himself, and felt the full value of his
capacity to such an institution. When he sat upon a seat erected for him
in a corner of the office, with his glazed hat hanging on a peg over his
head, it was impossible to doubt the respectability of the concern.
It went on doubling itself with every square inch of his red waistcoat
until, like the problem of the nails in the horse's shoes, the total
became enormous. People had been known to apply to effect an insurance
on their lives for a thousand pounds, and looking at him, to beg, before
the form of proposal was filled up, that it might be made two. And yet
he was not a giant. His coat was rather small than otherwise. The whole
charm was in his waistcoat. Respectability, competence, property in
Bengal or anywhere else, responsibility to any amount on the part of the
company that employed him, were all expressed in that one garment.
Rival offices had endeavoured to lure him away; Lombard Street itself
had beckoned to him; rich companies had whispered 'Be a Beadle!' but he
still continued faithful to the Anglo-Bengalee. Whether he was a deep
rogue, or a stately simpleton, it was impossible to make out, but he
appeared to believe in the Anglo-Bengalee. He was grave with imaginary
cares of office; and having nothing whatever to do, and something less
to take care of, would look as if the pressure of his numerous duties,
and a sense of the treasure in the company's strong-room, made him a
solemn and a thoughtful man.
As the cabriolet drove up to the door, this officer appeared bare-headed
on the pavement, crying aloud 'Room for the chairman, room for the
chairman, if you please!' much to the admiration of the bystanders,
who, it is needless to say, had their attention directed to the
Anglo-Bengalee Company thenceforth, by that means. Mr Tigg leaped
gracefully out, followed by the Managing Director (who was by this time
very distant and respectful), and ascended the stairs, still preceded by
the porter, who cried as he went, 'By your leave there! by your leave!
The Chairman of the Board, Gentle--MEN! In like manner, but in a still
more stentorian voice, he ushered the chairman through the public
office, where some humble clients were transacting business, into
an awful chamber, labelled Board-room; the door of which sanctuary
immediately closed, and screened the great capitalist from vulgar eyes.
The board-room had a Turkey carpet in it, a sideboard, a portrait of
Tigg Montague, Esquire, as chairman; a very imposing chair of office,
garnished with an ivory hammer and a little hand-bell; and a long table,
set out at intervals with sheets of blotting-paper, foolscap, clean
pens, and inkstands. The chairman having taken his seat with great
solemnity, the secretary supported him on his right hand, and the porter
stood bolt upright behind them, forming a warm background of waistcoat.
This was the board: everything else being a light-hearted little
fiction.
'Bullamy!' said Mr Tigg.
'Sir!' replied the porter.
'Let the Medical Officer know, with my compliments, that I wish to see
him.'
Bullamy cleared his throat, and bustled out into the office, crying 'The
Chairman of the Board wishes to see the Medical Officer. By your leave
there! By your leave!' He soon returned with the gentleman in question;
and at both openings of the board-room door--at his coming in and at
his going out--simple clients were seen to stretch their necks and
stand upon their toes, thirsting to catch the slightest glimpse of that
mysterious chamber.
'Jobling, my dear friend!' said Mr Tigg, 'how are you? Bullamy, wait
outside. Crimple, don't leave us. Jobling, my good fellow, I am glad to
see you.'
'And how are you, Mr Montague, eh?' said the Medical Officer, throwing
himself luxuriously into an easy-chair (they were all easy-chairs in the
board-room), and taking a handsome gold snuff-box from the pocket of his
black satin waistcoat. 'How are you? A little worn with business, eh? If
so, rest. A little feverish from wine, humph? If so, water. Nothing
at all the matter, and quite comfortable? Then take some lunch. A very
wholesome thing at this time of day to strengthen the gastric juices
with lunch, Mr Montague.'
The Medical Officer (he was the same medical officer who had followed
poor old Anthony Chuzzlewit to the grave, and who had attended Mrs
Gamp's patient at the Bull) smiled in saying these words; and casually
added, as he brushed some grains of snuff from his shirt-frill, 'I
always take it myself about this time of day, do you know!'
'Bullamy!' said the Chairman, ringing the little bell.
'Sir!'
'Lunch.'
'Not on my account, I hope?' said the doctor. 'You are very good. Thank
you. I'm quite ashamed. Ha, ha! if I had been a sharp practitioner,
Mr Montague, I shouldn't have mentioned it without a fee; for you may
depend upon it, my dear sir, that if you don't make a point of taking
lunch, you'll very soon come under my hands. Allow me to illustrate
this. In Mr Crimple's leg--'
The resident Director gave an involuntary start, for the doctor, in the
heat of his demonstration, caught it up and laid it across his own, as
if he were going to take it off, then and there.
'In Mr Crimple's leg, you'll observe,' pursued the doctor, turning back
his cuffs and spanning the limb with both hands, 'where Mr Crimple's
knee fits into the socket, here, there is--that is to say, between the
bone and the socket--a certain quantity of animal oil.'
'What do you pick MY leg out for?' said Mr Crimple, looking with
something of an anxious expression at his limb. 'It's the same with
other legs, ain't it?'
'Never you mind, my good sir,' returned the doctor, shaking his head,
'whether it is the same with other legs, or not the same.'
'But I do mind,' said David.
'I take a particular case, Mr Montague,' returned the doctor, 'as
illustrating my remark, you observe. In this portion of Mr Crimple's
leg, sir, there is a certain amount of animal oil. In every one of Mr
Crimple's joints, sir, there is more or less of the same deposit. Very
good. If Mr Crimple neglects his meals, or fails to take his proper
quantity of rest, that oil wanes, and becomes exhausted. What is the
consequence? Mr Crimple's bones sink down into their sockets, sir, and
Mr Crimple becomes a weazen, puny, stunted, miserable man!'
The doctor let Mr Crimple's leg fall suddenly, as if he were already in
that agreeable condition; turned down his wristbands again, and looked
triumphantly at the chairman.
'We know a few secrets of nature in our profession, sir,' said the
doctor. 'Of course we do. We study for that; we pass the Hall and the
College for that; and we take our station in society BY that. It's
extraordinary how little is known on these subjects generally. Where
do you suppose, now'--the doctor closed one eye, as he leaned back
smilingly in his chair, and formed a triangle with his hands, of which
his two thumbs composed the base--'where do you suppose Mr Crimple's
stomach is?'
Mr Crimple, more agitated than before, clapped his hand immediately
below his waistcoat.
'Not at all,' cried the doctor; 'not at all. Quite a popular mistake! My
good sir, you're altogether deceived.'
'I feel it there, when it's out of order; that's all I know,' said
Crimple.
'You think you do,' replied the doctor; 'but science knows better. There
was a patient of mine once,' touching one of the many mourning rings
upon his fingers, and slightly bowing his head, 'a gentleman who did
me the honour to make a very handsome mention of me in his will--"in
testimony," as he was pleased to say, "of the unremitting zeal, talent,
and attention of my friend and medical attendant, John Jobling, Esquire,
M.R.C.S.,"--who was so overcome by the idea of having all his life
laboured under an erroneous view of the locality of this important
organ, that when I assured him on my professional reputation, he was
mistaken, he burst into tears, put out his hand, and said, "Jobling,
God bless you!" Immediately afterwards he became speechless, and was
ultimately buried at Brixton.'
'By your leave there!' cried Bullamy, without. 'By your leave!
Refreshment for the Board-room!'
'Ha!' said the doctor, jocularly, as he rubbed his hands, and drew his
chair nearer to the table. 'The true Life Assurance, Mr Montague. The
best Policy in the world, my dear sir. We should be provident, and eat
and drink whenever we can. Eh, Mr Crimple?'
The resident Director acquiesced rather sulkily, as if the gratification
of replenishing his stomach had been impaired by the unsettlement of his
preconceived opinions in reference to its situation. But the appearance
of the porter and under-porter with a tray covered with a snow-white
cloth, which, being thrown back, displayed a pair of cold roast fowls,
flanked by some potted meats and a cool salad, quickly restored his
good humour. It was enhanced still further by the arrival of a bottle
of excellent madeira, and another of champagne; and he soon attacked
the repast with an appetite scarcely inferior to that of the medical
officer.
The lunch was handsomely served, with a profusion of rich glass plate,
and china; which seemed to denote that eating and drinking on a showy
scale formed no unimportant item in the business of the Anglo-Bengalee
Directorship. As it proceeded, the Medical Officer grew more and more
joyous and red-faced, insomuch that every mouthful he ate, and every
drop of wine he swallowed, seemed to impart new lustre to his eyes, and
to light up new sparks in his nose and forehead.
In certain quarters of the City and its neighbourhood, Mr Jobling was,
as we have already seen in some measure, a very popular character. He
had a portentously sagacious chin, and a pompous voice, with a rich
huskiness in some of its tones that went directly to the heart, like a
ray of light shining through the ruddy medium of choice old burgundy.
His neckerchief and shirt-frill were ever of the whitest, his clothes of
the blackest and sleekest, his gold watch-chain of the heaviest, and
his seals of the largest. His boots, which were always of the brightest,
creaked as he walked. Perhaps he could shake his head, rub his hands,
or warm himself before a fire, better than any man alive; and he had a
peculiar way of smacking his lips and saying, 'Ah!' at intervals while
patients detailed their symptoms, which inspired great confidence. It
seemed to express, 'I know what you're going to say better than you do;
but go on, go on.' As he talked on all occasions whether he had anything
to say or not, it was unanimously observed of him that he was 'full of
anecdote;' and his experience and profit from it were considered, for
the same reason, to be something much too extensive for description. His
female patients could never praise him too highly; and the coldest of
his male admirers would always say this for him to their friends, 'that
whatever Jobling's professional skill might be (and it could not be
denied that he had a very high reputation), he was one of the most
comfortable fellows you ever saw in your life!'
Jobling was for many reasons, and not last in the list because his
connection lay principally among tradesmen and their families, exactly
the sort of person whom the Anglo-Bengalee Company wanted for a medical
officer. But Jobling was far too knowing to connect himself with the
company in any closer ties than as a paid (and well paid) functionary,
or to allow his connection to be misunderstood abroad, if he could help
it. Hence he always stated the case to an inquiring patient, after this
manner:
'Why, my dear sir, with regard to the Anglo-Bengalee, my information,
you see, is limited; very limited. I am the medical officer, in
consideration of a certain monthly payment. The labourer is worthy of
his hire; BIS DAT QUI CITO DAT'--['classical scholar, Jobling!' thinks
the patient, 'well-read man!')--'and I receive it regularly. Therefore
I am bound, so far as my own knowledge goes, to speak well of the
establishment.' ['Nothing can be fairer than Jobling's conduct,' thinks
the patient, who has just paid Jobling's bill himself.) 'If you put
any question to me, my dear friend,' says the doctor, 'touching the
responsibility or capital of the company, there I am at fault; for I
have no head for figures, and not being a shareholder, am delicate of
showing any curiosity whatever on the subject. Delicacy--your
amiable lady will agree with me I am sure--should be one of the first
characteristics of a medical man.' ['Nothing can be finer or more
gentlemanly than Jobling's feeling,' thinks the patient.) 'Very good,
my dear sir, so the matter stands. You don't know Mr Montague? I'm sorry
for it. A remarkably handsome man, and quite the gentleman in every
respect. Property, I am told, in India. House and everything belonging
to him, beautiful. Costly furniture on the most elegant and lavish
scale. And pictures, which, even in an anatomical point of view, are
perfection. In case you should ever think of doing anything with the
company, I'll pass you, you may depend upon it. I can conscientiously
report you a healthy subject. If I understand any man's constitution, it
is yours; and this little indisposition has done him more good,
ma'am,' says the doctor, turning to the patient's wife, 'than if he had
swallowed the contents of half the nonsensical bottles in my surgery.
For they ARE nonsense--to tell the honest truth, one half of them are
nonsense--compared with such a constitution as his!' ['Jobling is the
most friendly creature I ever met with in my life,' thinks the patient;
'and upon my word and honour, I'll consider of it!')
'Commission to you, doctor, on four new policies, and a loan this
morning, eh?' said Crimple, looking, when they had finished lunch, over
some papers brought in by the porter. 'Well done!'
'Jobling, my dear friend,' said Tigg, 'long life to you.'
'No, no. Nonsense. Upon my word I've no right to draw the commission,'
said the doctor, 'I haven't really. It's picking your pocket. I don't
recommend anybody here. I only say what I know. My patients ask me what
I know, and I tell 'em what I know. Nothing else. Caution is my weak
side, that's the truth; and always was from a boy. That is,' said the
doctor, filling his glass, 'caution in behalf of other people. Whether I
would repose confidence in this company myself, if I had not been paying
money elsewhere for many years--that's quite another question.'
He tried to look as if there were no doubt about it; but feeling that he
did it but indifferently, changed the theme and praised the wine.
'Talking of wine,' said the doctor, 'reminds me of one of the finest
glasses of light old port I ever drank in my life; and that was at a
funeral. You have not seen anything of--of THAT party, Mr Montague, have
you?' handing him a card.
'He is not buried, I hope?' said Tigg, as he took it. 'The honour of his
company is not requested if he is.'
'Ha, ha!' laughed the doctor. 'No; not quite. He was honourably
connected with that very occasion though.'
'Oh!' said Tigg, smoothing his moustache, as he cast his eyes upon the
name. 'I recollect. No. He has not been here.'
The words were on his lips, when Bullamy entered, and presented a card
to the Medical Officer.
'Talk of the what's his name--' observed the doctor rising.
'And he's sure to appear, eh?' said Tigg.
'Why, no, Mr Montague, no,' returned the doctor. 'We will not say that
in the present case, for this gentleman is very far from it.'
'So much the better,' retorted Tigg. 'So much the more adaptable to the
Anglo-Bengalee. Bullamy, clear the table and take the things out by the
other door. Mr Crimple, business.'
'Shall I introduce him?' asked Jobling.
'I shall be eternally delighted,' answered Tigg, kissing his hand and
smiling sweetly.
The doctor disappeared into the outer office, and immediately returned
with Jonas Chuzzlewit.
'Mr Montague,' said Jobling. 'Allow me. My friend Mr Chuzzlewit. My dear
friend--our chairman. Now do you know,' he added checking himself with
infinite policy, and looking round with a smile; 'that's a very singular
instance of the force of example. It really is a very remarkable
instance of the force of example. I say OUR chairman. Why do I say our
chairman? Because he is not MY chairman, you know. I have no connection
with the company, farther than giving them, for a certain fee and
reward, my poor opinion as a medical man, precisely as I may give it any
day to Jack Noakes or Tom Styles. Then why do I say our chairman? Simply
because I hear the phrase constantly repeated about me. Such is the
involuntary operation of the mental faculty in the imitative biped man.
Mr Crimple, I believe you never take snuff? Injudicious. You should.'
Pending these remarks on the part of the doctor, and the lengthened and
sonorous pinch with which he followed them up, Jonas took a seat at
the board; as ungainly a man as ever he has been within the reader's
knowledge. It is too common with all of us, but it is especially in
the nature of a mean mind, to be overawed by fine clothes and fine
furniture. They had a very decided influence on Jonas.
'Now you two gentlemen have business to discuss, I know,' said the
doctor, 'and your time is precious. So is mine; for several lives are
waiting for me in the next room, and I have a round of visits to make
after--after I have taken 'em. Having had the happiness to introduce you
to each other, I may go about my business. Good-bye. But allow me, Mr
Montague, before I go, to say this of my friend who sits beside you:
That gentleman has done more, sir,' rapping his snuff-box solemnly, 'to
reconcile me to human nature, than any man alive or dead. Good-bye!'
With these words Jobling bolted abruptly out of the room, and proceeded
in his own official department, to impress the lives in waiting with a
sense of his keen conscientiousness in the discharge of his duty, and
the great difficulty of getting into the Anglo-Bengalee; by feeling
their pulses, looking at their tongues, listening at their ribs,
poking them in the chest, and so forth; though, if he didn't well know
beforehand that whatever kind of lives they were, the Anglo-Bengalee
would accept them readily, he was far from being the Jobling that his
friend considered him; and was not the original Jobling, but a spurious
imitation.
Mr Crimple also departed on the business of the morning; and Jonas
Chuzzlewit and Tigg were left alone.
'I learn from our friend,' said Tigg, drawing his chair towards Jonas
with a winning ease of manner, 'that you have been thinking--'
'Oh! Ecod then he'd no right to say so,' cried Jonas, interrupting.
'I didn't tell HIM my thoughts. If he took it into his head that I was
coming here for such or such a purpose, why, that's his lookout. I don't
stand committed by that.'
Jonas said this offensively enough; for over and above the habitual
distrust of his character, it was in his nature to seek to revenge
himself on the fine clothes and the fine furniture, in exact proportion
as he had been unable to withstand their influence.
'If I come here to ask a question or two, and get a document or two to
consider of, I don't bind myself to anything. Let's understand that, you
know,' said Jonas.
'My dear fellow!' cried Tigg, clapping him on the shoulder, 'I applaud
your frankness. If men like you and I speak openly at first, all
possible misunderstanding is avoided. Why should I disguise what you
know so well, but what the crowd never dream of? We companies are all
birds of prey; mere birds of prey. The only question is, whether in
serving our own turn, we can serve yours too; whether in double-lining
our own nest, we can put a single living into yours. Oh, you're in our
secret. You're behind the scenes. We'll make a merit of dealing plainly
with you, when we know we can't help it.'
It was remarked, on the first introduction of Mr Jonas into these pages,
that there is a simplicity of cunning no less than a simplicity of
innocence, and that in all matters involving a faith in knavery, he was
the most credulous of men. If Mr Tigg had preferred any claim to high
and honourable dealing, Jonas would have suspected him though he had
been a very model of probity; but when he gave utterance to Jonas's own
thoughts of everything and everybody, Jonas began to feel that he was a
pleasant fellow, and one to be talked to freely.
He changed his position in the chair, not for a less awkward, but for a
more boastful attitude; and smiling in his miserable conceit rejoined:
'You an't a bad man of business, Mr Montague. You know how to set about
it, I WILL say.'
'Tut, tut,' said Tigg, nodding confidentially, and showing his white
teeth; 'we are not children, Mr Chuzzlewit; we are grown men, I hope.'
Jonas assented, and said after a short silence, first spreading out his
legs, and sticking one arm akimbo to show how perfectly at home he was,
'The truth is--'
'Don't say, the truth,' interposed Tigg, with another grin. 'It's so
like humbug.'
Greatly charmed by this, Jonas began again.
'The long and the short of it is--'
'Better,' muttered Tigg. 'Much better!'
'--That I didn't consider myself very well used by one or two of the old
companies in some negotiations I have had with 'em--once had, I mean.
They started objections they had no right to start, and put questions
they had no right to put, and carried things much too high for my
taste.'
As he made these observations he cast down his eyes, and looked
curiously at the carpet. Mr Tigg looked curiously at him.
He made so long a pause, that Tigg came to the rescue, and said, in his
pleasantest manner:
'Take a glass of wine.'
'No, no,' returned Jonas, with a cunning shake of the head; 'none of
that, thankee. No wine over business. All very well for you, but it
wouldn't do for me.'
'What an old hand you are, Mr Chuzzlewit!' said Tigg, leaning back in
his chair, and leering at him through his half-shut eyes.
Jonas shook his head again, as much as to say, 'You're right there;' And
then resumed, jocosely:
'Not such an old hand, either, but that I've been and got married.
That's rather green, you'll say. Perhaps it is, especially as she's
young. But one never knows what may happen to these women, so I'm
thinking of insuring her life. It is but fair, you know, that a man
should secure some consolation in case of meeting with such a loss.'
'If anything can console him under such heart-breaking circumstances,'
murmured Tigg, with his eyes shut up as before.
'Exactly,' returned Jonas; 'if anything can. Now, supposing I did it
here, I should do it cheap, I know, and easy, without bothering her
about it; which I'd much rather not do, for it's just in a woman's way
to take it into her head, if you talk to her about such things, that
she's going to die directly.'
'So it is,' cried Tigg, kissing his hand in honour of the sex. 'You're
quite right. Sweet, silly, fluttering little simpletons!'
'Well,' said Jonas, 'on that account, you know, and because offence
has been given me in other quarters, I wouldn't mind patronizing this
Company. But I want to know what sort of security there is for the
Company's going on. That's the--'
'Not the truth?' cried Tigg, holding up his jewelled hand. 'Don't use
that Sunday School expression, please!'
'The long and the short of it,' said Jonas. 'The long and the short of
it is, what's the security?'
'The paid-up capital, my dear sir,' said Tigg, referring to some papers
on the table, 'is, at this present moment--'
'Oh! I understand all about paid-up capitals, you know,' said Jonas.
'You do?' cried Tigg, stopping short.
'I should hope so.'
He turned the papers down again, and moving nearer to him, said in his
ear:
'I know you do. I know you do. Look at me!'
It was not much in Jonas's way to look straight at anybody; but thus
requested, he made shift to take a tolerable survey of the chairman's
features. The chairman fell back a little, to give him the better
opportunity.
'You know me?' he inquired, elevating his eyebrows. 'You recollect?
You've seen me before?'
'Why, I thought I remembered your face when I first came in,' said
Jonas, gazing at it; 'but I couldn't call to mind where I had seen it.
No. I don't remember, even now. Was it in the street?'
'Was it in Pecksniff's parlour?' said Tigg
'In Pecksniff's parlour!' echoed Jonas, fetching a long breath. 'You
don't mean when--'
'Yes,' cried Tigg, 'when there was a very charming and delightful little
family party, at which yourself and your respected father assisted.'
'Well, never mind HIM,' said Jonas. 'He's dead, and there's no help for
it.'
'Dead, is he!' cried Tigg, 'Venerable old gentleman, is he dead! You're
very like him.'
Jonas received this compliment with anything but a good grace, perhaps
because of his own private sentiments in reference to the personal
appearance of his deceased parent; perhaps because he was not best
pleased to find that Montague and Tigg were one. That gentleman
perceived it, and tapping him familiarly on the sleeve, beckoned him
to the window. From this moment, Mr Montague's jocularity and flow of
spirits were remarkable.
'Do you find me at all changed since that time?' he asked. 'Speak
plainly.'
Jonas looked hard at his waistcoat and jewels; and said 'Rather, ecod!'
'Was I at all seedy in those days?' asked Montague.
'Precious seedy,' said Jonas.
Mr Montague pointed down into the street, where Bailey and the cab were
in attendance.
'Neat; perhaps dashing. Do you know whose it is?'
'No.'
'Mine. Do you like this room?'
'It must have cost a lot of money,' said Jonas.
'You're right. Mine too. Why don't you'--he whispered this, and nudged
him in the side with his elbow--'why don't you take premiums, instead of
paying 'em? That's what a man like you should do. Join us!'
Jonas stared at him in amazement.
'Is that a crowded street?' asked Montague, calling his attention to the
multitude without.
'Very,' said Jonas, only glancing at it, and immediately afterwards
looking at him again.
'There are printed calculations,' said his companion, 'which will
tell you pretty nearly how many people will pass up and down that
thoroughfare in the course of a day. I can tell you how many of 'em will
come in here, merely because they find this office here; knowing no more
about it than they do of the Pyramids. Ha, ha! Join us. You shall come
in cheap.'
Jonas looked at him harder and harder.
'I can tell you,' said Tigg in his ear, 'how many of 'em will buy
annuities, effect insurances, bring us their money in a hundred shapes
and ways, force it upon us, trust us as if we were the Mint; yet know no
more about us than you do of that crossing-sweeper at the corner. Not so
much. Ha, ha!'
Jonas gradually broke into a smile.
'Yah!' said Montague, giving him a pleasant thrust in the breast;
'you're too deep for us, you dog, or I wouldn't have told you. Dine with
me to-morrow, in Pall Mall!'
'I will' said Jonas.
'Done!' cried Montague. 'Wait a bit. Take these papers with you and look
'em over. See,' he said, snatching some printed forms from the table. 'B
is a little tradesman, clerk, parson, artist, author, any common thing
you like.'
'Yes,' said Jonas, looking greedily over his shoulder. 'Well!'
'B wants a loan. Say fifty or a hundred pound; perhaps more; no matter.
B proposes self and two securities. B is accepted. Two securities give
a bond. B assures his own life for double the amount, and brings two
friends' lives also--just to patronize the office. Ha ha, ha! Is that a
good notion?'
'Ecod, that's a capital notion!' cried Jonas. 'But does he really do
it?'
'Do it!' repeated the chairman. 'B's hard up, my good fellow, and will
do anything. Don't you see? It's my idea.'
'It does you honour. I'm blest if it don't,' said Jonas.
'I think it does,' replied the chairman, 'and I'm proud to hear you say
so. B pays the highest lawful interest--'
'That an't much,' interrupted Jonas.
'Right! quite right!' retorted Tigg. 'And hard it is upon the part
of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate
victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all
its clients. But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.
Well! The law being hard upon us, we're not exactly soft upon B; for
besides charging B the regular interest, we get B's premium, and B's
friends' premiums, and we charge B for the bond, and, whether we accept
him or not, we charge B for "inquiries" (we keep a man, at a pound a
week, to make 'em), and we charge B a trifle for the secretary; and in
short, my good fellow, we stick it into B, up hill and down dale, and
make a devilish comfortable little property out of him. Ha, ha, ha! I
drive B, in point of fact,' said Tigg, pointing to the cabriolet, 'and a
thoroughbred horse he is. Ha, ha, ha!'
Jonas enjoyed this joke very much indeed. It was quite in his peculiar
vein of humour.
'Then,' said Tigg Montague, 'we grant annuities on the very lowest and
most advantageous terms known in the money market; and the old ladies
and gentlemen down in the country buy 'em. Ha, ha, ha! And we pay 'em
too--perhaps. Ha, ha, ha!'
'But there's responsibility in that,' said Jonas, looking doubtful.
'I take it all myself,' said Tigg Montague. 'Here I am responsible for
everything. The only responsible person in the establishment! Ha,
ha, ha! Then there are the Life Assurances without loans; the common
policies. Very profitable, very comfortable. Money down, you know;
repeated every year; capital fun!'
'But when they begin to fall in,' observed Jonas. 'It's all very well,
while the office is young, but when the policies begin to die--that's
what I am thinking of.'
'At the first start, my dear fellow,' said Montague, 'to show you how
correct your judgment is, we had a couple of unlucky deaths that brought
us down to a grand piano.'
'Brought you down where?' cried Jonas.
'I give you my sacred word of honour,' said Tigg Montague, 'that I
raised money on every other individual piece of property, and was left
alone in the world with a grand piano. And it was an upright-grand too,
so that I couldn't even sit upon it. But, my dear fellow, we got over
it. We granted a great many new policies that week (liberal allowance
to solicitors, by the bye), and got over it in no time. Whenever they
should chance to fall in heavily, as you very justly observe they may,
one of these days; then--' he finished the sentence in so low a whisper,
that only one disconnected word was audible, and that imperfectly. But
it sounded like 'Bolt.'
'Why, you're as bold as brass!' said Jonas, in the utmost admiration.
'A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he
gets gold in exchange!' cried the chairman, with a laugh that shook him
from head to foot. 'You'll dine with me to-morrow?'
'At what time?' asked Jonas.
'Seven. Here's my card. Take the documents. I see you'll join us!'
'I don't know about that,' said Jonas. 'There's a good deal to be looked
into first.'
'You shall look,' said Montague, slapping him on the back, 'into
anything and everything you please. But you'll join us, I am convinced.
You were made for it. Bullamy!'
Obedient to the summons and the little bell, the waistcoat appeared.
Being charged to show Jonas out, it went before; and the voice within it
cried, as usual, 'By your leave there, by your leave! Gentleman from the
board-room, by your leave!'
Mr Montague being left alone, pondered for some moments, and then said,
raising his voice:
'Is Nadgett in the office there?'
'Here he is, sir.' And he promptly entered; shutting the board-room door
after him, as carefully as if he were about to plot a murder.
He was the man at a pound a week who made the inquiries. It was no
virtue or merit in Nadgett that he transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee
business secretly and in the closest confidence; for he was born to be
a secret. He was a short, dried-up, withered old man, who seemed to have
secreted his very blood; for nobody would have given him credit for the
possession of six ounces of it in his whole body. How he lived was a
secret; where he lived was a secret; and even what he was, was a secret.
In his musty old pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in some of
which he called himself a coal-merchant, in others a wine-merchant,
in others a commission-agent, in others a collector, in others an
accountant; as if he really didn't know the secret himself. He was
always keeping appointments in the City, and the other man never seemed
to come. He would sit on 'Change for hours, looking at everybody who
walked in and out, and would do the like at Garraway's, and in other
business coffee-rooms, in some of which he would be occasionally seen
drying a very damp pocket-handkerchief before the fire, and still
looking over his shoulder for the man who never appeared. He was
mildewed, threadbare, shabby; always had flue upon his legs and back;
and kept his linen so secretly buttoning up and wrapping over, that he
might have had none--perhaps he hadn't. He carried one stained beaver
glove, which he dangled before him by the forefinger as he walked or
sat; but even its fellow was a secret. Some people said he had been a
bankrupt, others that he had gone an infant into an ancient Chancery
suit which was still depending, but it was all a secret. He carried bits
of sealing-wax and a hieroglyphical old copper seal in his pocket, and
often secretly indited letters in corner boxes of the trysting-places
before mentioned; but they never appeared to go to anybody, for he would
put them into a secret place in his coat, and deliver them to himself
weeks afterwards, very much to his own surprise, quite yellow. He was
that sort of man that if he had died worth a million of money, or had
died worth twopence halfpenny, everybody would have been perfectly
satisfied, and would have said it was just as they expected. And yet
he belonged to a class; a race peculiar to the City; who are secrets as
profound to one another, as they are to the rest of mankind.
'Mr Nadgett,' said Montague, copying Jonas Chuzzlewit's address upon a
piece of paper, from the card which was still lying on the table, 'any
information about this name, I shall be glad to have myself. Don't you
mind what it is. Any you can scrape together, bring me. Bring it to me,
Mr Nadgett.'
Nadgett put on his spectacles, and read the name attentively; then
looked at the chairman over his glasses, and bowed; then took them off,
and put them in their case; and then put the case in his pocket. When he
had done so, he looked, without his spectacles, at the paper as it lay
before him, and at the same time produced his pocket-book from somewhere
about the middle of his spine. Large as it was, it was very full of
documents, but he found a place for this one; and having clasped it
carefully, passed it by a kind of solemn legerdemain into the same
region as before.
He withdrew with another bow and without a word; opening the door
no wider than was sufficient for his passage out; and shutting it as
carefully as before. The chairman of the board employed the rest of the
morning in affixing his sign-manual of gracious acceptance to various
new proposals of annuity-purchase and assurance. The Company was looking
up, for they flowed in gayly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MR MONTAGUE AT HOME. AND MR JONAS CHUZZLEWIT AT HOME
There were many powerful reasons for Jonas Chuzzlewit being strongly
prepossessed in favour of the scheme which its great originator had so
boldly laid open to him; but three among them stood prominently forward.
Firstly, there was money to be made by it. Secondly, the money had the
peculiar charm of being sagaciously obtained at other people's cost.
Thirdly, it involved much outward show of homage and distinction: a
board being an awful institution in its own sphere, and a director a
mighty man. 'To make a swingeing profit, have a lot of chaps to order
about, and get into regular good society by one and the same means, and
them so easy to one's hand, ain't such a bad look-out,' thought
Jonas. The latter considerations were only second to his avarice; for,
conscious that there was nothing in his person, conduct, character, or
accomplishments, to command respect, he was greedy of power, and was, in
his heart, as much a tyrant as any laureled conqueror on record.
But he determined to proceed with cunning and caution, and to be very
keen on his observation of the gentility of Mr Montague's private
establishment. For it no more occurred to this shallow knave that
Montague wanted him to be so, or he wouldn't have invited him while his
decision was yet in abeyance, than the possibility of that genius being
able to overreach him in any way, pierced through his self-deceit by the
inlet of a needle's point. He had said, in the outset, that Jonas
was too sharp for him; and Jonas, who would have been sharp enough to
believe him in nothing else, though he had solemnly sworn it, believed
him in that, instantly.
It was with a faltering hand, and yet with an imbecile attempt at a
swagger, that he knocked at his new friend's door in Pall Mall when the
appointed hour arrived. Mr Bailey quickly answered to the summons. He
was not proud and was kindly disposed to take notice of Jonas; but Jonas
had forgotten him.
'Mr Montague at home?'
'I should hope he wos at home, and waiting dinner, too,' said Bailey,
with the ease of an old acquaintance. 'Will you take your hat up along
with you, or leave it here?'
Mr Jonas preferred leaving it there.
'The hold name, I suppose?' said Bailey, with a grin.
Mr Jonas stared at him in mute indignation.
'What, don't you remember hold mother Todgers's?' said Mr Bailey, with
his favourite action of the knees and boots. 'Don't you remember my
taking your name up to the young ladies, when you came a-courting there?
A reg'lar scaly old shop, warn't it? Times is changed ain't they. I say
how you've growed!'
Without pausing for any acknowledgement of this compliment, he ushered
the visitor upstairs, and having announced him, retired with a private
wink.
The lower story of the house was occupied by a wealthy tradesman, but
Mr Montague had all the upper portion, and splendid lodging it was. The
room in which he received Jonas was a spacious and elegant apartment,
furnished with extreme magnificence; decorated with pictures, copies
from the antique in alabaster and marble, china vases, lofty mirrors,
crimson hangings of the richest silk, gilded carvings, luxurious
couches, glistening cabinets inlaid with precious woods; costly toys of
every sort in negligent abundance. The only guests besides Jonas
were the doctor, the resident Director, and two other gentlemen, whom
Montague presented in due form.
'My dear friend, I am delighted to see you. Jobling you know, I
believe?'
'I think so,' said the doctor pleasantly, as he stepped out of the
circle to shake hands. 'I trust I have the honour. I hope so. My dear
sir, I see you well. Quite well? THAT'S well!'
'Mr Wolf,' said Montague, as soon as the doctor would allow him to
introduce the two others, 'Mr Chuzzlewit. Mr Pip, Mr Chuzzlewit.'
Both gentlemen were exceedingly happy to have the honour of making Mr
Chuzzlewit's acquaintance. The doctor drew Jonas a little apart, and
whispered behind his hand:
'Men of the world, my dear sir--men of the world. Hem! Mr Wolf--literary
character--you needn't mention it--remarkably clever weekly paper--oh,
remarkably clever! Mr Pip--theatrical man--capital man to know--oh,
capital man!'
'Well!' said Wolf, folding his arms and resuming a conversation which
the arrival of Jonas had interrupted. 'And what did Lord Nobley say to
that?'
'Why,' returned Pip, with an oath. 'He didn't know what to say. Same,
sir, if he wasn't as mute as a poker. But you know what a good fellow
Nobley is!'
'The best fellow in the world!' cried Wolf. 'It as only last week that
Nobley said to me, "By Gad, Wolf, I've got a living to bestow, and if
you had but been brought up at the University, strike me blind if I
wouldn't have made a parson of you!"'
'Just like him,' said Pip with another oath. 'And he'd have done it!'
'Not a doubt of it,' said Wolf. 'But you were going to tell us--'
'Oh, yes!' cried Pip. 'To be sure. So I was. At first he was dumb--sewn
up, dead, sir--but after a minute he said to the Duke, "Here's Pip.
Ask Pip. Pip's our mutual friend. Ask Pip. He knows." "Damme!" said the
Duke, "I appeal to Pip then. Come, Pip. Bandy or not bandy? Speak out!"
"Bandy, your Grace, by the Lord Harry!" said I. "Ha, ha!" laughed the
Duke. "To be sure she is. Bravo, Pip. Well said Pip. I wish I may die
if you're not a trump, Pip. Pop me down among your fashionable visitors
whenever I'm in town, Pip." And so I do, to this day.'
The conclusion of this story gave immense satisfaction, which was in
no degree lessened by the announcement of dinner. Jonas repaired to the
dining room, along with his distinguished host, and took his seat at the
board between that individual and his friend the doctor. The rest fell
into their places like men who were well accustomed to the house; and
dinner was done full justice to, by all parties.
It was a good a one as money (or credit, no matter which) could produce.
The dishes, wines, and fruits were of the choicest kind. Everything was
elegantly served. The plate was gorgeous. Mr Jonas was in the midst of
a calculation of the value of this item alone, when his host disturbed
him.
'A glass of wine?'
'Oh!' said Jonas, who had had several glasses already. 'As much of that
as you like! It's too good to refuse.'
'Well said, Mr Chuzzlewit!' cried Wolf.
'Tom Gag, upon my soul!' said Pip.
'Positively, you know, that's--ha, ha, ha!' observed the doctor, laying
down his knife and fork for one instant, and then going to work again,
pell-mell--'that's epigrammatic; quite!'
'You're tolerably comfortable, I hope?' said Tigg, apart to Jonas.
'Oh! You needn't trouble your head about ME,' he replied, 'Famous!'
'I thought it best not to have a party,' said Tigg. 'You feel that?'
'Why, what do you call this?' retorted Jonas. 'You don't mean to say you
do this every day, do you?'
'My dear fellow,' said Montague, shrugging his shoulders, 'every day of
my life, when I dine at home. This is my common style. It was of no use
having anything uncommon for you. You'd have seen through it. "You'll
have a party?" said Crimple. "No, I won't," I said, "he shall take us in
the rough!"
'And pretty smooth, too, ecod!' said Jonas, glancing round the table.
'This don't cost a trifle.'
'Why, to be candid with you, it does not,' returned the other. 'But I
like this sort of thing. It's the way I spend my money.'
Jonas thrust his tongue into his cheek, and said, 'Was it?'
'When you join us, you won't get rid of your share of the profits in the
same way?' said Tigg.
'Quite different,' retorted Jonas.
'Well, and you're right,' said Tigg, with friendly candour. 'You
needn't. It's not necessary. One of a Company must do it to hold
the connection together; but, as I take a pleasure in it, that's my
department. You don't mind dining expensively at another man's expense,
I hope?'
'Not a bit,' said Jonas.
'Then I hope you'll often dine with me?'
'Ah!' said Jonas, 'I don't mind. On the contrary.'
'And I'll never attempt to talk business to you over wine, I take my
oath,' said Tigg. 'Oh deep, deep, deep of you this morning! I must tell
'em that. They're the very men to enjoy it. Pip, my good fellow, I've
a splendid little trait to tell you of my friend Chuzzlewit who is
the deepest dog I know; I give you my sacred word of honour he is the
deepest dog I know, Pip!'
Pip swore a frightful oath that he was sure of it already; and
the anecdote, being told, was received with loud applause, as an
incontestable proof of Mr Jonas's greatness. Pip, in a natural spirit of
emulation, then related some instances of his own depth; and Wolf not
to be left behind-hand, recited the leading points of one or two vastly
humorous articles he was then preparing. These lucubrations being of
what he called 'a warm complexion,' were highly approved; and all the
company agreed that they were full of point.
'Men of the world, my dear sir,' Jobling whispered to Jonas; 'thorough
men of the world! To a professional person like myself it's
quite refreshing to come into this kind of society. It's not only
agreeable--and nothing CAN be more agreeable--but it's philosophically
improving. It's character, my dear sir; character!'
It is so pleasant to find real merit appreciated, whatever its
particular walk in life may be, that the general harmony of the company
was doubtless much promoted by their knowing that the two men of the
world were held in great esteem by the upper classes of society, and
by the gallant defenders of their country in the army and navy, but
particularly the former. The least of their stories had a colonel in it;
lords were as plentiful as oaths; and even the Blood Royal ran in the
muddy channel of their personal recollections.
'Mr Chuzzlewit didn't know him, I'm afraid,' said Wolf, in reference to
a certain personage of illustrious descent, who had previously figured
in a reminiscence.
'No,' said Tigg. 'But we must bring him into contact with this sort of
fellows.'
'He was very fond of literature,' observed Wolf.
'Was he?' said Tigg.
'Oh, yes; he took my paper regularly for many years. Do you know he
said some good things now and then? He asked a certain Viscount, who's
a friend of mine--Pip knows him--"What's the editor's name, what's the
editor's name?" "Wolf." "Wolf, eh? Sharp biter, Wolf. We must keep the
Wolf from the door, as the proverb says." It was very well. And being
complimentary, I printed it.'
'But the Viscount's the boy!' cried Pip, who invented a new oath for
the introduction of everything he said. 'The Viscount's the boy! He came
into our place one night to take Her home; rather slued, but not much;
and said, "Where's Pip? I want to see Pip. Produce Pip!"--"What's the
row, my lord?"--"Shakspeare's an infernal humbug, Pip! What's the good
of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about,
Pip? There's a lot of feet in Shakspeare's verse, but there an't any
legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare's plays, are there, Pip? Juliet,
Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of 'em, whatever their names
are, might as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know
about it, Pip. Why, in that respect they're all Miss Biffins to the
audience, Pip. I'll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic
poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be
lectured? No, Pip. If I wanted that, I'd go to church. What's the
legitimate object of the drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human
nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces, Pip, and I'll stand by
you, my buck!" and I am proud to say,' added Pip, 'that he DID stand by
me, handsomely.'
The conversation now becoming general, Mr Jonas's opinion was requested
on this subject; and as it was in full accordance with the sentiments of
Mr Pip, that gentleman was extremely gratified. Indeed, both himself and
Wolf had so much in common with Jonas, that they became very amicable;
and between their increasing friendship and the fumes of wine, Jonas
grew talkative.
It does not follow in the case of such a person that the more talkative
he becomes, the more agreeable he is; on the contrary, his merits show
to most advantage, perhaps, in silence. Having no means, as he thought,
of putting himself on an equality with the rest, but by the assertion
of that depth and sharpness on which he had been complimented, Jonas
exhibited that faculty to the utmost; and was so deep and sharp that
he lost himself in his own profundity, and cut his fingers with his own
edge-tools.
It was especially in his way and character to exhibit his quality at his
entertainer's expense; and while he drank of his sparkling wines, and
partook of his monstrous profusion, to ridicule the extravagance which
had set such costly fare before him. Even at such a wanton board, and in
such more than doubtful company, this might have proved a disagreeable
experiment, but that Tigg and Crimple, studying to understand their man
thoroughly, gave him what license he chose: knowing that the more
he took, the better for their purpose. And thus while the blundering
cheat--gull that he was, for all his cunning--thought himself rolled
up hedgehog fashion, with his sharpest points towards them, he was,
in fact, betraying all his vulnerable parts to their unwinking
watchfulness.
Whether the two gentlemen who contributed so much to the doctor's
philosophical knowledge (by the way, the doctor slipped off quietly,
after swallowing his usual amount of wine) had had their cue distinctly
from the host, or took it from what they saw and heard, they acted
their parts very well. They solicited the honour of Jonas's better
acquaintance; trusted that they would have the pleasure of introducing
him into that elevated society in which he was so well qualified to
shine; and informed him, in the most friendly manner that the advantages
of their respective establishments were entirely at his control. In a
word, they said 'Be one of us!' And Jonas said he was infinitely obliged
to them, and he would be; adding within himself, that so long as they
'stood treat,' there was nothing he would like better.
After coffee, which was served in the drawing-room, there was a short
interval (mainly sustained by Pip and Wolf) of conversation; rather
highly spiced and strongly seasoned. When it flagged, Jonas took it up
and showed considerable humour in appraising the furniture; inquiring
whether such an article was paid for; what it had originally cost, and
the like. In all of this, he was, as he considered, desperately hard on
Montague, and very demonstrative of his own brilliant parts.
Some Champagne Punch gave a new though temporary fillip to the
entertainments of the evening. For after leading to some noisy
proceedings, which were not intelligible, it ended in the unsteady
departure of the two gentlemen of the world, and the slumber of Mr Jonas
upon one of the sofas.
As he could not be made to understand where he was, Mr Bailey received
orders to call a hackney-coach, and take him home; which that young
gentleman roused himself from an uneasy sleep in the hall to do. It
being now almost three o'clock in the morning.
'Is he hooked, do you think?' whispered Crimple, as himself and partner
stood in a distant part of the room observing him as he lay.
'Aye!' said Tigg, in the same tone. 'With a strong iron, perhaps. Has
Nadgett been here to-night?'
'Yes. I went out to him. Hearing you had company, he went away.'
'Why did he do that?'
'He said he would come back early in the morning, before you were out of
bed.'
'Tell them to be sure and send him up to my bedside. Hush! Here's the
boy! Now Mr Bailey, take this gentleman home, and see him safely in.
Hallo, here! Why Chuzzlewit, halloa!'
They got him upright with some difficulty, and assisted him downstairs,
where they put his hat upon his head, and tumbled him into the coach.
Mr Bailey, having shut him in, mounted the box beside the coachman, and
smoked his cigar with an air of particular satisfaction; the undertaking
in which he was engaged having a free and sporting character about it,
which was quite congenial to his taste.
Arriving in due time at the house in the City, Mr Bailey jumped down,
and expressed the lively nature of his feelings in a knock the like of
which had probably not been heard in that quarter since the great fire
of London. Going out into the road to observe the effect of this feat,
he saw that a dim light, previously visible at an upper window, had been
already removed and was travelling downstairs. To obtain a foreknowledge
of the bearer of this taper, Mr Bailey skipped back to the door again,
and put his eye to the keyhole.
It was the merry one herself. But sadly, strangely altered! So careworn
and dejected, so faltering and full of fear; so fallen, humbled,
broken; that to have seen her quiet in her coffin would have been a less
surprise.
She set the light upon a bracket in the hall, and laid her hand upon her
heart; upon her eyes; upon her burning head. Then she came on towards
the door with such a wild and hurried step that Mr Bailey lost his
self-possession, and still had his eye where the keyhole had been, when
she opened it.
'Aha!' said Mr Bailey, with an effort. 'There you are, are you? What's
the matter? Ain't you well, though?'
In the midst of her astonishment as she recognized him in his altered
dress, so much of her old smile came back to her face that Bailey was
glad. But next moment he was sorry again, for he saw tears standing in
her poor dim eyes.
'Don't be frightened,' said Bailey. 'There ain't nothing the matter.
I've brought home Mr Chuzzlewit. He ain't ill. He's only a little
swipey, you know.' Mr Bailey reeled in his boots, to express
intoxication.
'Have you come from Mrs Todgers's?' asked Merry, trembling.
'Todgers's, bless you! No!' cried Mr Bailey. 'I haven't got nothin, to
do with Todgers's. I cut that connection long ago. He's been a-dining
with my governor at the west-end. Didn't you know he was a-coming to see
us?'
'No,' she said, faintly.
'Oh yes! We're heavy swells too, and so I tell you. Don't you come out,
a-catching cold in your head. I'll wake him!' Mr Bailey expressing in
his demeanour a perfect confidence that he could carry him in with ease,
if necessary, opened the coach door, let down the steps, and giving
Jonas a shake, cried 'We've got home, my flower! Tumble up, then!'
He was so far recovered as to be able to respond to this appeal, and
to come stumbling out of the coach in a heap, to the great hazard of Mr
Bailey's person. When he got upon the pavement, Mr Bailey first butted
at him in front, and then dexterously propped him up behind; and having
steadied him by these means, he assisted him into the house.
'You go up first with the light,' said Bailey to Mr Jonas, 'and we'll
foller. Don't tremble so. He won't hurt you. When I've had a drop too
much, I'm full of good natur myself.'
She went on before; and her husband and Bailey, by dint of tumbling
over each other, and knocking themselves about, got at last into the
sitting-room above stairs, where Jonas staggered into a seat.
'There!' said Mr Bailey. 'He's all right now. You ain't got nothing to
cry for, bless you! He's righter than a trivet!'
The ill-favoured brute, with dress awry, and sodden face, and rumpled
hair, sat blinking and drooping, and rolling his idiotic eyes about,
until, becoming conscious by degrees, he recognized his wife, and shook
his fist at her.
'Ah!' cried Mr Bailey, squaring his arms with a sudden emotion. 'What,
you're wicious, are you? Would you though! You'd better not!'
'Pray, go away!' said Merry. 'Bailey, my good boy, go home. Jonas!' she
said; timidly laying her hand upon his shoulder, and bending her head
down over him. 'Jonas!'
'Look at her!' cried Jonas, pushing her off with his extended arm. 'Look
here! Look at her! Here's a bargain for a man!'
'Dear Jonas!'
'Dear Devil!' he replied, with a fierce gesture. 'You're a pretty clog
to be tied to a man for life, you mewling, white-faced cat! Get out of
my sight!'
'I know you don't mean it, Jonas. You wouldn't say it if you were
sober.'
With affected gayety she gave Bailey a piece of money, and again
implored him to be gone. Her entreaty was so earnest, that the boy had
not the heart to stay there. But he stopped at the bottom of the stairs,
and listened.
'I wouldn't say it if I was sober!' retorted Jonas. 'You know better.
Have I never said it when I was sober?'
'Often, indeed!' she answered through her tears.
'Hark ye!' cried Jonas, stamping his foot upon the ground. 'You made me
bear your pretty humours once, and ecod I'll make you bear mine now. I
always promised myself I would. I married you that I might. I'll know
who's master, and who's slave!'
'Heaven knows I am obedient!' said the sobbing girl. 'Much more so than
I ever thought to be!'
Jonas laughed in his drunken exultation. 'What! you're finding it out,
are you! Patience, and you will in time! Griffins have claws, my girl.
There's not a pretty slight you ever put upon me, nor a pretty trick you
ever played me, nor a pretty insolence you ever showed me, that I won't
pay back a hundred-fold. What else did I marry you for? YOU, too!' he
said, with coarse contempt.
It might have softened him--indeed it might--to hear her turn a little
fragment of a song he used to say he liked; trying, with a heart so
full, to win him back.
'Oho!' he said, 'you're deaf, are you? You don't hear me, eh? So much
the better for you. I hate you. I hate myself, for having, been fool
enough to strap a pack upon my back for the pleasure of treading on it
whenever I choose. Why, things have opened to me, now, so that I might
marry almost where I liked. But I wouldn't; I'd keep single. I ought to
be single, among the friends I know. Instead of that, here I am, tied
like a log to you. Pah! Why do you show your pale face when I come home?
Am I never to forget you?'
'How late it is!' she said cheerfully, opening the shutter after an
interval of silence. 'Broad day, Jonas!'
'Broad day or black night, what do I care!' was the kind rejoinder.
'The night passed quickly, too. I don't mind sitting up, at all.'
'Sit up for me again, if you dare!' growled Jonas.
'I was reading,' she proceeded, 'all night long. I began when you went
out, and read till you came home again. The strangest story, Jonas! And
true, the book says. I'll tell it you to-morrow.'
'True, was it?' said Jonas, doggedly.
'So the book says.'
'Was there anything in it, about a man's being determined to conquer his
wife, break her spirit, bend her temper, crush all her humours like so
many nut-shells--kill her, for aught I know?' said Jonas.
'No. Not a word,' she answered quickly.
'Oh!' he returned. 'That'll be a true story though, before long; for all
the book says nothing about it. It's a lying book, I see. A fit book for
a lying reader. But you're deaf. I forgot that.'
There was another interval of silence; and the boy was stealing away,
when he heard her footstep on the floor, and stopped. She went up to
him, as it seemed, and spoke lovingly; saying that she would defer to
him in everything and would consult his wishes and obey them, and they
might be very happy if he would be gentle with her. He answered with an
imprecation, and--
Not with a blow? Yes. Stern truth against the base-souled villain; with
a blow.
No angry cries; no loud reproaches. Even her weeping and her sobs were
stifled by her clinging round him. She only said, repeating it in agony
of heart, how could he, could he, could he--and lost utterance in tears.
Oh woman, God beloved in old Jerusalem! The best among us need deal
lightly with thy faults, if only for the punishment thy nature will
endure, in bearing heavy evidence against us, on the Day of Judgment!
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
IN WHICH SOME PEOPLE ARE PRECOCIOUS, OTHERS PROFESSIONAL, AND OTHERS
MYSTERIOUS; ALL IN THEIR SEVERAL WAYS
It may have been the restless remembrance of what he had seen and heard
overnight, or it may have been no deeper mental operation than the
discovery that he had nothing to do, which caused Mr Bailey, on the
following afternoon, to feel particularly disposed for agreeable
society, and prompted him to pay a visit to his friend Poll Sweedlepipe.
On the little bell giving clamorous notice of a visitor's approach (for
Mr Bailey came in at the door with a lunge, to get as much sound out of
the bell as possible), Poll Sweedlepipe desisted from the contemplation
of a favourite owl, and gave his young friend hearty welcome.
'Why, you look smarter by day,' said Poll, 'than you do by candle-light.
I never see such a tight young dasher.'
'Reether so, Polly. How's our fair friend, Sairah?'
'Oh, she's pretty well,' said Poll. 'She's at home.'
'There's the remains of a fine woman about Sairah, Poll,' observed Mr
Bailey, with genteel indifference.
'Oh!' thought Poll, 'he's old. He must be very old!'
'Too much crumb, you know,' said Mr Bailey; 'too fat, Poll. But there's
many worse at her time of life.'
'The very owl's a-opening his eyes!' thought Poll. 'I don't wonder at it
in a bird of his opinions.'
He happened to have been sharpening his razors, which were lying open
in a row, while a huge strop dangled from the wall. Glancing at these
preparations, Mr Bailey stroked his chin, and a thought appeared to
occur to him.
'Poll,' he said, 'I ain't as neat as I could wish about the gills. Being
here, I may as well have a shave, and get trimmed close.'
The barber stood aghast; but Mr Bailey divested himself of his
neck-cloth, and sat down in the easy shaving chair with all the dignity
and confidence in life. There was no resisting his manner. The evidence
of sight and touch became as nothing. His chin was as smooth as a
new-laid egg or a scraped Dutch cheese; but Poll Sweedlepipe wouldn't
have ventured to deny, on affidavit, that he had the beard of a Jewish
rabbi.
'Go WITH the grain, Poll, all round, please,' said Mr Bailey, screwing
up his face for the reception of the lather. 'You may do wot you like
with the bits of whisker. I don't care for 'em.'
The meek little barber stood gazing at him with the brush and soap-dish
in his hand, stirring them round and round in a ludicrous uncertainty,
as if he were disabled by some fascination from beginning. At last he
made a dash at Mr Bailey's cheek. Then he stopped again, as if the
ghost of a beard had suddenly receded from his touch; but receiving mild
encouragement from Mr Bailey, in the form of an adjuration to 'Go in and
win,' he lathered him bountifully. Mr Bailey smiled through the suds in
his satisfaction. 'Gently over the stones, Poll. Go a tip-toe over the
pimples!'
Poll Sweedlepipe obeyed, and scraped the lather off again with
particular care. Mr Bailey squinted at every successive dab, as it
was deposited on a cloth on his left shoulder, and seemed, with a
microscopic eye, to detect some bristles in it; for he murmured more
than once 'Reether redder than I could wish, Poll.' The operation being
concluded, Poll fell back and stared at him again, while Mr Bailey,
wiping his face on the jack-towel, remarked, 'that arter late hours
nothing freshened up a man so much as a easy shave.'
He was in the act of tying his cravat at the glass, without his coat,
and Poll had wiped his razor, ready for the next customer, when Mrs
Gamp, coming downstairs, looked in at the shop-door to give the barber
neighbourly good day. Feeling for her unfortunate situation, in having
conceived a regard for himself which it was not in the nature of things
that he could return, Mr Bailey hastened to soothe her with words of
kindness.
'Hallo!' he said, 'Sairah! I needn't ask you how you've been this long
time, for you're in full bloom. All a-blowin and a-growin; ain't she,
Polly?'
'Why, drat the Bragian boldness of that boy!' cried Mrs Gamp, though
not displeased. 'What a imperent young sparrow it is! I wouldn't be that
creetur's mother not for fifty pound!'
Mr Bailey regarded this as a delicate confession of her attachment,
and a hint that no pecuniary gain could recompense her for its being
rendered hopeless. He felt flattered. Disinterested affection is always
flattering.
'Ah, dear!' moaned Mrs Gamp, sinking into the shaving chair, 'that there
blessed Bull, Mr Sweedlepipe, has done his wery best to conker me. Of
all the trying inwalieges in this walley of the shadder, that one beats
'em black and blue.'
It was the practice of Mrs Gamp and her friends in the profession, to
say this of all the easy customers; as having at once the effect of
discouraging competitors for office, and accounting for the necessity of
high living on the part of the nurses.
'Talk of constitooshun!' Mrs Gamp observed. 'A person's constitooshun
need be made of bricks to stand it. Mrs Harris jestly says to me, but
t'other day, "Oh! Sairey Gamp," she says, "how is it done?" "Mrs Harris,
ma'am," I says to her, "we gives no trust ourselves, and puts a deal
o'trust elsevere; these is our religious feelins, and we finds 'em
answer." "Sairey," says Mrs Harris, "sech is life. Vich likeways is the
hend of all things!"'
The barber gave a soft murmur, as much as to say that Mrs Harris's
remark, though perhaps not quite so intelligible as could be desired
from such an authority, did equal honour to her head and to her heart.
'And here,' continued Mrs Gamp, 'and here am I a-goin twenty mile in
distant, on as wentersome a chance as ever any one as monthlied ever
run, I do believe. Says Mrs Harris, with a woman's and a mother's
art a-beatin in her human breast, she says to me, "You're not a-goin,
Sairey, Lord forgive you!" "Why am I not a-goin, Mrs Harris?" I replies.
"Mrs Gill," I says, "wos never wrong with six; and is it likely,
ma'am--I ast you as a mother--that she will begin to be unreg'lar now?
Often and often have I heerd him say," I says to Mrs Harris, meaning Mr
Gill, "that he would back his wife agen Moore's almanack, to name the
very day and hour, for ninepence farden. IS it likely, ma'am," I says,
"as she will fail this once?" Says Mrs Harris "No, ma'am, not in the
course of natur. But," she says, the tears a-fillin in her eyes, "you
knows much betterer than me, with your experienge, how little puts us
out. A Punch's show," she says, "a chimbley sweep, a newfundlan dog, or
a drunkin man a-comin round the corner sharp may do it." So it may, Mr
Sweedlepipes,' said Mrs Gamp, 'there's no deniging of it; and though my
books is clear for a full week, I takes a anxious art along with me, I
do assure you, sir.'
'You're so full of zeal, you see!' said Poll. 'You worrit yourself so.'
'Worrit myself!' cried Mrs Gamp, raising her hands and turning up her
eyes. 'You speak truth in that, sir, if you never speaks no more 'twixt
this and when two Sundays jines together. I feels the sufferins of other
people more than I feels my own, though no one mayn't suppoge it. The
families I've had,' said Mrs Gamp, 'if all was knowd and credit done
where credit's doo, would take a week to chris'en at Saint Polge's
fontin!'
'Where's the patient goin?' asked Sweedlepipe.
'Into Har'fordshire, which is his native air. But native airs nor native
graces neither,' Mrs Gamp observed, 'won't bring HIM round.'
'So bad as that?' inquired the wistful barber. 'Indeed!'
Mrs Gamp shook her head mysteriously, and pursed up her lips. 'There's
fevers of the mind,' she said, 'as well as body. You may take your slime
drafts till you flies into the air with efferwescence; but you won't
cure that.'
'Ah!' said the barber, opening his eyes, and putting on his raven
aspect; 'Lor!'
'No. You may make yourself as light as any gash balloon,' said Mrs Gamp.
'But talk, when you're wrong in your head and when you're in your sleep,
of certain things; and you'll be heavy in your mind.'
'Of what kind of things now?' inquired Poll, greedily biting his nails
in his great interest. 'Ghosts?'
Mrs Gamp, who perhaps had been already tempted further than she had
intended to go, by the barber's stimulating curiosity, gave a sniff of
uncommon significance, and said, it didn't signify.
'I'm a-goin down with my patient in the coach this arternoon,' she
proceeded. 'I'm a-goin to stop with him a day or so, till he gets a
country nuss (drat them country nusses, much the orkard hussies knows
about their bis'ness); and then I'm a-comin back; and that's my trouble,
Mr Sweedlepipes. But I hope that everythink'll only go on right and
comfortable as long as I'm away; perwisin which, as Mrs Harris says, Mrs
Gill is welcome to choose her own time; all times of the day and night
bein' equally the same to me.'
During the progress of the foregoing remarks, which Mrs Gamp had
addressed exclusively to the barber, Mr Bailey had been tying his
cravat, getting on his coat, and making hideous faces at himself in the
glass. Being now personally addressed by Mrs Gamp, he turned round, and
mingled in the conversation.
'You ain't been in the City, I suppose, sir, since we was all three
there together,' said Mrs Gamp, 'at Mr Chuzzlewit's?'
'Yes, I have, Sairah. I was there last night.'
'Last night!' cried the barber.
'Yes, Poll, reether so. You can call it this morning, if you like to be
particular. He dined with us.'
'Who does that young Limb mean by "hus?"' said Mrs Gamp, with most
impatient emphasis.
'Me and my Governor, Sairah. He dined at our house. We wos very merry,
Sairah. So much so, that I was obliged to see him home in a hackney
coach at three o'clock in the morning.' It was on the tip of the boy's
tongue to relate what had followed; but remembering how easily it might
be carried to his master's ears, and the repeated cautions he had had
from Mr Crimple 'not to chatter,' he checked himself; adding, only, 'She
was sitting up, expecting him.'
'And all things considered,' said Mrs Gamp sharply, 'she might have
know'd better than to go a-tirin herself out, by doin' anythink of the
sort. Did they seem pretty pleasant together, sir?'
'Oh, yes,' answered Bailey, 'pleasant enough.'
'I'm glad on it,' said Mrs Gamp, with a second sniff of significance.
'They haven't been married so long,' observed Poll, rubbing his hands,
'that they need be anything but pleasant yet awhile.'
'No,' said Mrs Gamp, with a third significant signal.
'Especially,' pursued the barber, 'when the gentleman bears such a
character as you gave him.'
'I speak; as I find, Mr Sweedlepipes,' said Mrs Gamp. 'Forbid it should
be otherways! But we never knows wot's hidden in each other's hearts;
and if we had glass winders there, we'd need keep the shetters up, some
on us, I do assure you!'
'But you don't mean to say--' Poll Sweedlepipe began.
'No,' said Mrs Gamp, cutting him very short, 'I don't. Don't think I do.
The torters of the Imposition shouldn't make me own I did. All I says
is,' added the good woman, rising and folding her shawl about her, 'that
the Bull's a-waitin, and the precious moments is a-flyin' fast.'
The little barber having in his eager curiosity a great desire to see
Mrs Gamp's patient, proposed to Mr Bailey that they should accompany
her to the Bull, and witness the departure of the coach. That young
gentleman assenting, they all went out together.
Arriving at the tavern, Mrs Gamp (who was full-dressed for the journey,
in her latest suit of mourning) left her friends to entertain
themselves in the yard, while she ascended to the sick room, where her
fellow-labourer Mrs Prig was dressing the invalid.
He was so wasted, that it seemed as if his bones would rattle when they
moved him. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes unnaturally large. He
lay back in the easy-chair like one more dead than living; and rolled
his languid eyes towards the door when Mrs Gamp appeared, as painfully
as if their weight alone were burdensome to move.
'And how are we by this time?' Mrs Gamp observed. 'We looks charming.'
'We looks a deal charminger than we are, then,' returned Mrs Prig, a
little chafed in her temper. 'We got out of bed back'ards, I think, for
we're as cross as two sticks. I never see sich a man. He wouldn't have
been washed, if he'd had his own way.'
'She put the soap in my mouth,' said the unfortunate patient feebly.
'Couldn't you keep it shut then?' retorted Mrs Prig. 'Who do you think's
to wash one feater, and miss another, and wear one's eyes out with all
manner of fine work of that description, for half-a-crown a day! If you
wants to be tittivated, you must pay accordin'.'
'Oh dear me!' cried the patient, 'oh dear, dear!'
'There!' said Mrs Prig, 'that's the way he's been a-conductin of
himself, Sarah, ever since I got him out of bed, if you'll believe it.'
'Instead of being grateful,' Mrs Gamp observed, 'for all our little
ways. Oh, fie for shame, sir, fie for shame!'
Here Mrs Prig seized the patient by the chin, and began to rasp his
unhappy head with a hair-brush.
'I suppose you don't like that, neither!' she observed, stopping to look
at him.
It was just possible that he didn't for the brush was a specimen of
the hardest kind of instrument producible by modern art; and his very
eyelids were red with the friction. Mrs Prig was gratified to observe
the correctness of her supposition, and said triumphantly 'she know'd as
much.'
When his hair was smoothed down comfortably into his eyes, Mrs Prig and
Mrs Gamp put on his neckerchief; adjusting his shirt collar with great
nicety, so that the starched points should also invade those organs, and
afflict them with an artificial ophthalmia. His waistcoat and coat
were next arranged; and as every button was wrenched into a wrong
button-hole, and the order of his boots was reversed, he presented on
the whole rather a melancholy appearance.
'I don't think it's right,' said the poor weak invalid. 'I feel as if I
was in somebody else's clothes. I'm all on one side; and you've made one
of my legs shorter than the other. There's a bottle in my pocket too.
What do you make me sit upon a bottle for?'
'Deuce take the man!' cried Mrs Gamp, drawing it forth. 'If he ain't
been and got my night-bottle here. I made a little cupboard of his coat
when it hung behind the door, and quite forgot it, Betsey. You'll find a
ingun or two, and a little tea and sugar in his t'other pocket, my dear,
if you'll just be good enough to take 'em out.'
Betsey produced the property in question, together with some other
articles of general chandlery; and Mrs Gamp transferred them to her own
pocket, which was a species of nankeen pannier. Refreshment then arrived
in the form of chops and strong ale for the ladies, and a basin of
beef-tea for the patient; which refection was barely at an end when John
Westlock appeared.
'Up and dressed!' cried John, sitting down beside him. 'That's brave.
How do you feel?'
'Much better. But very weak.'
'No wonder. You have had a hard bout of it. But country air, and change
of scene,' said John, 'will make another man of you! Why, Mrs Gamp,'
he added, laughing, as he kindly arranged the sick man's garments, 'you
have odd notions of a gentleman's dress!'
'Mr Lewsome an't a easy gent to get into his clothes, sir,' Mrs Gamp
replied with dignity; 'as me and Betsey Prig can certify afore the Lord
Mayor and Uncommon Counsellors, if needful!'
John at that moment was standing close in front of the sick man, in the
act of releasing him from the torture of the collars before mentioned,
when he said in a whisper:
'Mr Westlock! I don't wish to be overheard. I have something very
particular and strange to say to you; something that has been a dreadful
weight on my mind, through this long illness.'
Quick in all his motions, John was turning round to desire the women to
leave the room; when the sick man held him by the sleeve.
'Not now. I've not the strength. I've not the courage. May I tell it
when I have? May I write it, if I find that easier and better?'
'May you!' cried John. 'Why, Lewsome, what is this!'
'Don't ask me what it is. It's unnatural and cruel. Frightful to think
of. Frightful to tell. Frightful to know. Frightful to have helped in.
Let me kiss your hand for all your goodness to me. Be kinder still, and
don't ask me what it is!'
At first, John gazed at him in great surprise; but remembering how very
much reduced he was, and how recently his brain had been on fire with
fever, believed that he was labouring under some imaginary horror or
despondent fancy. For farther information on this point, he took an
opportunity of drawing Mrs Gamp aside, while Betsey Prig was wrapping
him in cloaks and shawls, and asked her whether he was quite collected
in his mind.
'Oh bless you, no!' said Mrs Gamp. 'He hates his nusses to this hour.
They always does it, sir. It's a certain sign. If you could have heerd
the poor dear soul a-findin fault with me and Betsey Prig, not half an
hour ago, you would have wondered how it is we don't get fretted to the
tomb.'
This almost confirmed John in his suspicion; so, not taking what had
passed into any serious account, he resumed his former cheerful manner,
and assisted by Mrs Gamp and Betsey Prig, conducted Lewsome downstairs
to the coach; just then upon the point of starting. Poll Sweedlepipe
was at the door with his arms tight folded and his eyes wide open, and
looked on with absorbing interest, while the sick man was slowly
moved into the vehicle. His bony hands and haggard face impressed Poll
wonderfully; and he informed Mr Bailey in confidence, that he wouldn't
have missed seeing him for a pound. Mr Bailey, who was of a different
constitution, remarked that he would have stayed away for five
shillings.
It was a troublesome matter to adjust Mrs Gamp's luggage to her
satisfaction; for every package belonging to that lady had the
inconvenient property of requiring to be put in a boot by itself, and
to have no other luggage near it, on pain of actions at law for heavy
damages against the proprietors of the coach. The umbrella with the
circular patch was particularly hard to be got rid of, and several times
thrust out its battered brass nozzle from improper crevices and chinks,
to the great terror of the other passengers. Indeed, in her intense
anxiety to find a haven of refuge for this chattel, Mrs Gamp so often
moved it, in the course of five minutes, that it seemed not one umbrella
but fifty. At length it was lost, or said to be; and for the next five
minutes she was face to face with the coachman, go wherever he might,
protesting that it should be 'made good,' though she took the question
to the House of Commons.
At last, her bundle, and her pattens, and her basket, and everything
else, being disposed of, she took a friendly leave of Poll and Mr
Bailey, dropped a curtsey to John Westlock, and parted as from a
cherished member of the sisterhood with Betsey Prig.
'Wishin you lots of sickness, my darlin creetur,' Mrs Gamp observed,
'and good places. It won't be long, I hope, afore we works together, off
and on, again, Betsey; and may our next meetin' be at a large family's,
where they all takes it reg'lar, one from another, turn and turn about,
and has it business-like.'
'I don't care how soon it is,' said Mrs Prig; 'nor how many weeks it
lasts.'
Mrs Gamp with a reply in a congenial spirit was backing to the coach,
when she came in contact with a lady and gentleman who were passing
along the footway.
'Take care, take care here!' cried the gentleman. 'Halloo! My dear! Why,
it's Mrs Gamp!'
'What, Mr Mould!' exclaimed the nurse. 'And Mrs Mould! who would have
thought as we should ever have a meetin' here, I'm sure!'
'Going out of town, Mrs Gamp?' cried Mould. 'That's unusual, isn't it?'
'It IS unusual, sir,' said Mrs Gamp. 'But only for a day or two at most.
The gent,' she whispered, 'as I spoke about.'
'What, in the coach!' cried Mould. 'The one you thought of recommending?
Very odd. My dear, this will interest you. The gentleman that Mrs Gamp
thought likely to suit us is in the coach, my love.'
Mrs Mould was greatly interested.
'Here, my dear. You can stand upon the door-step,' said Mould, 'and take
a look at him. Ha! There he is. Where's my glass? Oh! all right. I've
got it. Do you see him, my dear?'
'Quite plain,' said Mrs Mould.
'Upon my life, you know, this is a very singular circumstance,' said
Mould, quite delighted. 'This is the sort of thing, my dear, I wouldn't
have missed on any account. It tickles one. It's interesting. It's
almost a little play, you know. Ah! There he is! To be sure. Looks
poorly, Mrs M., don't he?'
Mrs Mould assented.
'He's coming our way, perhaps, after all,' said Mould. 'Who knows! I
feel as if I ought to show him some little attention, really. He don't
seem a stranger to me. I'm very much inclined to move my hat, my dear.'
'He's looking hard this way,' said Mrs Mould.
'Then I will!' cried Mould. 'How d'ye do, sir! I wish you good day. Ha!
He bows too. Very gentlemanly. Mrs Gamp has the cards in her pocket, I
have no doubt. This is very singular, my dear--and very pleasant. I am
not superstitious, but it really seems as if one was destined to pay him
those little melancholy civilities which belong to our peculiar line of
business. There can be no kind of objection to your kissing your hand to
him, my dear.'
Mrs Mould did so.
'Ha!' said Mould. 'He's evidently gratified. Poor fellow! I am quite
glad you did it, my love. Bye bye, Mrs Gamp!' waving his hand. 'There he
goes; there he goes!'
So he did; for the coach rolled off as the words were spoken. Mr and Mrs
Mould, in high good humour, went their merry way. Mr Bailey retired
with Poll Sweedlepipe as soon as possible; but some little time
elapsed before he could remove his friend from the ground, owing to
the impression wrought upon the barber's nerves by Mrs Prig, whom he
pronounced, in admiration of her beard, to be a woman of transcendent
charms.
When the light cloud of bustle hanging round the coach was thus
dispersed, Nadgett was seen in the darkest box of the Bull coffee-room,
looking wistfully up at the clock--as if the man who never appeared were
a little behind his time.
CHAPTER THIRTY
PROVES THAT CHANGES MAY BE RUNG IN THE BEST-REGULATED FAMILIES, AND THAT
MR PECKNIFF WAS A SPECIAL HAND AT A TRIPLE-BOB-MAJOR
As the surgeon's first care after amputating a limb, is to take up the
arteries the cruel knife has severed, so it is the duty of this history,
which in its remorseless course has cut from the Pecksniffian trunk its
right arm, Mercy, to look to the parent stem, and see how in all its
various ramifications it got on without her.
And first of Mr Pecksniff it may be observed, that having provided for
his youngest daughter that choicest of blessings, a tender and indulgent
husband; and having gratified the dearest wish of his parental heart by
establishing her in life so happily; he renewed his youth, and spreading
the plumage of his own bright conscience, felt himself equal to all
kinds of flights. It is customary with fathers in stage-plays, after
giving their daughters to the men of their hearts, to congratulate
themselves on having no other business on their hands but to die
immediately; though it is rarely found that they are in a hurry to do
it. Mr Pecksniff, being a father of a more sage and practical class,
appeared to think that his immediate business was to live; and having
deprived himself of one comfort, to surround himself with others.
But however much inclined the good man was to be jocose and playful, and
in the garden of his fancy to disport himself (if one may say so) like
an architectural kitten, he had one impediment constantly opposed to
him. The gentle Cherry, stung by a sense of slight and injury, which
far from softening down or wearing out, rankled and festered in her
heart--the gentle Cherry was in flat rebellion. She waged fierce war
against her dear papa, she led her parent what is usually called, for
want of a better figure of speech, the life of a dog. But never did that
dog live, in kennel, stable-yard, or house, whose life was half as hard
as Mr Pecksniff's with his gentle child.
The father and daughter were sitting at their breakfast. Tom had
retired, and they were alone. Mr Pecksniff frowned at first; but having
cleared his brow, looked stealthily at his child. Her nose was very red
indeed, and screwed up tight, with hostile preparation.
'Cherry,' cried Mr Pecksniff, 'what is amiss between us? My child, why
are we disunited?'
Miss Pecksniff's answer was scarcely a response to this gush of
affection, for it was simply, 'Bother, Pa!'
'Bother!' repeated Mr Pecksniff, in a tone of anguish.
'Oh! 'tis too late, Pa,' said his daughter, calmly 'to talk to me like
this. I know what it means, and what its value is.'
'This is hard!' cried Mr Pecksniff, addressing his breakfast-cup. 'This
is very hard! She is my child. I carried her in my arms when she wore
shapeless worsted shoes--I might say, mufflers--many years ago!'
'You needn't taunt me with that, Pa,' retorted Cherry, with a spiteful
look. 'I am not so many years older than my sister, either, though she
IS married to your friend!'
'Ah, human nature, human nature! Poor human nature!' said Mr Pecksniff,
shaking his head at human nature, as if he didn't belong to it. 'To
think that this discord should arise from such a cause! oh dear, oh
dear!'
'From such a cause indeed!' cried Cherry. 'State the real cause, Pa, or
I'll state it myself. Mind! I will!'
Perhaps the energy with which she said this was infectious. However that
may be, Mr Pecksniff changed his tone and the expression of his face for
one of anger, if not downright violence, when he said:
'You will! you have. You did yesterday. You do always. You have no
decency; you make no secret of your temper; you have exposed yourself to
Mr Chuzzlewit a hundred times.'
'Myself!' cried Cherry, with a bitter smile. 'Oh indeed! I don't mind
that.'
'Me, too, then,' said Mr Pecksniff.
His daughter answered with a scornful laugh.
'And since we have come to an explanation, Charity,' said Mr Pecksniff,
rolling his head portentously, 'let me tell you that I won't allow it.
None of your nonsense, Miss! I won't permit it to be done.'
'I shall do,' said Charity, rocking her chair backwards and forwards,
and raising her voice to a high pitch, 'I shall do, Pa, what I please
and what I have done. I am not going to be crushed in everything, depend
upon it. I've been more shamefully used than anybody ever was in
this world,' here she began to cry and sob, 'and may expect the worse
treatment from you, I know. But I don't care for that. No, I don't!'
Mr Pecksniff was made so desperate by the loud tone in which she spoke,
that, after looking about him in frantic uncertainty for some means of
softening it, he rose and shook her until the ornamental bow of hair
upon her head nodded like a plume. She was so very much astonished by
this assault, that it really had the desired effect.
'I'll do it again!' cried Mr Pecksniff, as he resumed his seat and
fetched his breath, 'if you dare to talk in that loud manner. How do
you mean about being shamefully used? If Mr Jonas chose your sister in
preference to you, who could help it, I should wish to know? What have I
to do with it?'
'Wasn't I made a convenience of? Weren't my feelings trifled with?
Didn't he address himself to me first?' sobbed Cherry, clasping her
hands; 'and oh, good gracious, that I should live to be shook!'
'You'll live to be shaken again,' returned her parent, 'if you drive
me to that means of maintaining the decorum of this humble roof. You
surprise me. I wonder you have not more spirit. If Mr Jonas didn't care
for you, how could you wish to have him?'
'I wish to have him!' exclaimed Cherry. 'I wish to have him, Pa!'
'Then what are you making all this piece of work for,' retorted her
father, 'if you didn't wish to have him?'
'Because I was treated with duplicity,' said Cherry; 'and because my own
sister and my own father conspired against me. I am not angry with HER,'
said Cherry; looking much more angry than ever. 'I pity her. I'm sorry
for her. I know the fate that's in store for her, with that Wretch.'
'Mr Jonas will survive your calling him a wretch, my child, I dare say,'
said Mr Pecksniff, with returning resignation; 'but call him what you
like and make an end of it.'
'Not an end, Pa,' said Charity. 'No, not an end. That's not the only
point on which we're not agreed. I won't submit to it. It's better you
should know that at once. No; I won't submit to it indeed, Pa! I am
not quite a fool, and I am not blind. All I have got to say is, I won't
submit to it.'
Whatever she meant, she shook Mr Pecksniff now; for his lame attempt to
seem composed was melancholy in the last degree. His anger changed to
meekness, and his words were mild and fawning.
'My dear,' he said; 'if in the short excitement of an angry moment I
resorted to an unjustifiable means of suppressing a little outbreak
calculated to injure you as well as myself--it's possible I may have
done so; perhaps I did--I ask your pardon. A father asking pardon of
his child,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'is, I believe, a spectacle to soften the
most rugged nature.'
But it didn't at all soften Miss Pecksniff; perhaps because her nature
was not rugged enough. On the contrary, she persisted in saying, over
and over again, that she wasn't quite a fool, and wasn't blind, and
wouldn't submit to it.
'You labour under some mistake, my child!' said Mr Pecksniff, 'but
I will not ask you what it is; I don't desire to know. No, pray!' he
added, holding out his hand and colouring again, 'let us avoid the
subject, my dear, whatever it is!'
'It's quite right that the subject should be avoided between us,
sir,' said Cherry. 'But I wish to be able to avoid it altogether, and
consequently must beg you to provide me with a home.'
Mr Pecksniff looked about the room, and said, 'A home, my child!'
'Another home, papa,' said Cherry, with increasing stateliness 'Place me
at Mrs Todgers's or somewhere, on an independent footing; but I will not
live here, if such is to be the case.'
It is possible that Miss Pecksniff saw in Mrs Todgers's a vision
of enthusiastic men, pining to fall in adoration at her feet. It is
possible that Mr Pecksniff, in his new-born juvenility, saw, in the
suggestion of that same establishment, an easy means of relieving
himself from an irksome charge in the way of temper and watchfulness.
It is undoubtedly a fact that in the attentive ears of Mr Pecksniff, the
proposition did not sound quite like the dismal knell of all his hopes.
But he was a man of great feeling and acute sensibility; and he squeezed
his pocket-handkerchief against his eyes with both hands--as such men
always do, especially when they are observed. 'One of my birds,' Mr
Pecksniff said, 'has left me for the stranger's breast; the other would
take wing to Todgers's! Well, well, what am I? I don't know what I am,
exactly. Never mind!'
Even this remark, made more pathetic perhaps by his breaking down in
the middle of it, had no effect upon Charity. She was grim, rigid, and
inflexible.
'But I have ever,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'sacrificed my children's
happiness to my own--I mean my own happiness to my children's--and I
will not begin to regulate my life by other rules of conduct now. If you
can be happier at Mrs Todgers's than in your father's house, my dear, go
to Mrs Todgers's! Do not think of me, my girl!' said Mr Pecksniff with
emotion; 'I shall get on pretty well, no doubt.'
Miss Charity, who knew he had a secret pleasure in the contemplation of
the proposed change, suppressed her own, and went on to negotiate the
terms. His views upon this subject were at first so very limited that
another difference, involving possibly another shaking, threatened to
ensue; but by degrees they came to something like an understanding, and
the storm blew over. Indeed, Miss Charity's idea was so agreeable
to both, that it would have been strange if they had not come to an
amicable agreement. It was soon arranged between them that the project
should be tried, and that immediately; and that Cherry's not being well,
and needing change of scene, and wishing to be near her sister, should
form the excuse for her departure to Mr Chuzzlewit and Mary, to both of
whom she had pleaded indisposition for some time past. These premises
agreed on, Mr Pecksniff gave her his blessing, with all the dignity of
a self-denying man who had made a hard sacrifice, but comforted himself
with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. Thus they were
reconciled for the first time since that not easily forgiven night,
when Mr Jonas, repudiating the elder, had confessed his passion for the
younger sister, and Mr Pecksniff had abetted him on moral grounds.
But how happened it--in the name of an unexpected addition to that small
family, the Seven Wonders of the World, whatever and wherever they may
be, how happened it--that Mr Pecksniff and his daughter were about
to part? How happened it that their mutual relations were so greatly
altered? Why was Miss Pecksniff so clamorous to have it understood that
she was neither blind nor foolish, and she wouldn't bear it? It is not
possible that Mr Pecksniff had any thoughts of marrying again; or that
his daughter, with the sharp eye of a single woman, fathomed his design!
Let us inquire into this.
Mr Pecksniff, as a man without reproach, from whom the breath of slander
passed like common breath from any other polished surface, could afford
to do what common men could not. He knew the purity of his own motives;
and when he had a motive worked at it as only a very good man (or a very
bad one) can. Did he set before himself any strong and palpable motives
for taking a second wife? Yes; and not one or two of them, but a
combination of very many.
Old Martin Chuzzlewit had gradually undergone an important change. Even
upon the night when he made such an ill-timed arrival at Mr Pecksniff's
house, he was comparatively subdued and easy to deal with. This Mr
Pecksniff attributed, at the time, to the effect his brother's death had
had upon him. But from that hour his character seemed to have modified
by regular degrees, and to have softened down into a dull indifference
for almost every one but Mr Pecksniff. His looks were much the same as
ever, but his mind was singularly altered. It was not that this or that
passion stood out in brighter or in dimmer hues; but that the colour of
the whole man was faded. As one trait disappeared, no other trait sprung
up to take its place. His senses dwindled too. He was less keen of
sight; was deaf sometimes; took little notice of what passed before him;
and would be profoundly taciturn for days together. The process of this
alteration was so easy that almost as soon as it began to be observed
it was complete. But Mr Pecksniff saw it first, and having Anthony
Chuzzlewit fresh in his recollection, saw in his brother Martin the same
process of decay.
To a gentleman of Mr Pecksniff's tenderness, this was a very mournful
sight. He could not but foresee the probability of his respected
relative being made the victim of designing persons, and of his riches
falling into worthless hands. It gave him so much pain that he resolved
to secure the property to himself; to keep bad testamentary suitors at a
distance; to wall up the old gentleman, as it were, for his own use. By
little and little, therefore, he began to try whether Mr Chuzzlewit gave
any promise of becoming an instrument in his hands, and finding that he
did, and indeed that he was very supple in his plastic fingers, he made
it the business of his life--kind soul!--to establish an ascendancy over
him; and every little test he durst apply meeting with a success beyond
his hopes, he began to think he heard old Martin's cash already chinking
in his own unworldly pockets.
But when Mr Pecksniff pondered on this subject (as, in his zealous
way, he often did), and thought with an uplifted heart of the train of
circumstances which had delivered the old gentleman into his hands for
the confusion of evil-doers and the triumph of a righteous nature, he
always felt that Mary Graham was his stumbling-block. Let the old man
say what he would, Mr Pecksniff knew he had a strong affection for her.
He knew that he showed it in a thousand little ways; that he liked to
have her near him, and was never quite at ease when she was absent
long. That he had ever really sworn to leave her nothing in his will, Mr
Pecksniff greatly doubted. That even if he had, there were many ways by
which he could evade the oath and satisfy his conscience, Mr Pecksniff
knew. That her unprotected state was no light burden on the old man's
mind, he also knew, for Mr Chuzzlewit had plainly told him so. 'Then,'
said Mr Pecksniff 'what if I married her! What,' repeated Mr Pecksniff,
sticking up his hair and glancing at his bust by Spoker; 'what
if, making sure of his approval first--he is nearly imbecile, poor
gentleman--I married her!'
Mr Pecksniff had a lively sense of the Beautiful; especially in women.
His manner towards the sex was remarkable for its insinuating character.
It is recorded of him in another part of these pages, that he embraced
Mrs Todgers on the smallest provocation; and it was a way he had; it was
a part of the gentle placidity of his disposition. Before any thought of
matrimony was in his mind, he had bestowed on Mary many little tokens of
his spiritual admiration. They had been indignantly received, but that
was nothing. True, as the idea expanded within him, these had become
too ardent to escape the piercing eye of Cherry, who read his scheme at
once; but he had always felt the power of Mary's charms. So Interest and
Inclination made a pair, and drew the curricle of Mr Pecksniff's plan.
As to any thought of revenging himself on young Martin for his insolent
expressions when they parted, and of shutting him out still more
effectually from any hope of reconciliation with his grandfather, Mr
Pecksniff was much too meek and forgiving to be suspected of harbouring
it. As to being refused by Mary, Mr Pecksniff was quite satisfied that
in her position she could never hold out if he and Mr Chuzzlewit were
both against her. As to consulting the wishes of her heart in such a
case, it formed no part of Mr Pecksniff's moral code; for he knew what a
good man he was, and what a blessing he must be to anybody. His daughter
having broken the ice, and the murder being out between them, Mr
Pecksniff had now only to pursue his design as cleverly as he could, and
by the craftiest approaches.
'Well, my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, meeting old Martin in the
garden, for it was his habit to walk in and out by that way, as the
fancy took him; 'and how is my dear friend this delicious morning?'
'Do you mean me?' asked the old man.
'Ah!' said Mr Pecksniff, 'one of his deaf days, I see. Could I mean any
one else, my dear sir?'
'You might have meant Mary,' said the old man.
'Indeed I might. Quite true. I might speak of her as a dear, dear
friend, I hope?' observed Mr Pecksniff.
'I hope so,' returned old Martin. 'I think she deserves it.'
'Think!' cried Pecksniff, 'think, Mr Chuzzlewit!'
'You are speaking, I know,' returned Martin, 'but I don't catch what you
say. Speak up!'
'He's getting deafer than a flint,' said Pecksniff. 'I was saying, my
dear sir, that I am afraid I must make up my mind to part with Cherry.'
'What has SHE been doing?' asked the old man.
'He puts the most ridiculous questions I ever heard!' muttered Mr
Pecksniff. 'He's a child to-day.' After which he added, in a mild roar:
'She hasn't been doing anything, my dear friend.'
'What are you going to part with her for?' demanded Martin.
'She hasn't her health by any means,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'She misses
her sister, my dear sir; they doted on each other from the cradle. And I
think of giving her a run in London for a change. A good long run, sir,
if I find she likes it.'
'Quite right,' cried Martin. 'It's judicious.'
'I am glad to hear you say so. I hope you mean to bear me company in
this dull part, while she's away?' said Mr Pecksniff.
'I have no intention of removing from it,' was Martin's answer.
'Then why,' said Mr Pecksniff, taking the old man's arm in his, and
walking slowly on; 'Why, my good sir, can't you come and stay with me?
I am sure I could surround you with more comforts--lowly as is my
Cot--than you can obtain at a village house of entertainment. And pardon
me, Mr Chuzzlewit, pardon me if I say that such a place as the Dragon,
however well-conducted (and, as far as I know, Mrs Lupin is one of the
worthiest creatures in this county), is hardly a home for Miss Graham.'
Martin mused a moment; and then said, as he shook him by the hand:
'No. You're quite right; it is not.'
'The very sight of skittles,' Mr Pecksniff eloquently pursued, 'is far
from being congenial to a delicate mind.'
'It's an amusement of the vulgar,' said old Martin, 'certainly.'
'Of the very vulgar,' Mr Pecksniff answered. 'Then why not bring Miss
Graham here, sir? Here is the house. Here am I alone in it, for Thomas
Pinch I do not count as any one. Our lovely friend shall occupy my
daughter's chamber; you shall choose your own; we shall not quarrel, I
hope!'
'We are not likely to do that,' said Martin.
Mr Pecksniff pressed his hand. 'We understand each other, my dear sir,
I see!--I can wind him,' he thought, with exultation, 'round my little
finger.'
'You leave the recompense to me?' said the old man, after a minute's
silence.
'Oh! do not speak of recompense!' cried Pecksniff.
'I say,' repeated Martin, with a glimmer of his old obstinacy, 'you
leave the recompense to me. Do you?'
'Since you desire it, my good sir.'
'I always desire it,' said the old man. 'You know I always desire it. I
wish to pay as I go, even when I buy of you. Not that I do not leave a
balance to be settled one day, Pecksniff.'
The architect was too much overcome to speak. He tried to drop a tear
upon his patron's hand, but couldn't find one in his dry distillery.
'May that day be very distant!' was his pious exclamation. 'Ah, sir! If
I could say how deep an interest I have in you and yours! I allude to
our beautiful young friend.'
'True,' he answered. 'True. She need have some one interested in her.
I did her wrong to train her as I did. Orphan though she was, she would
have found some one to protect her whom she might have loved again. When
she was a child, I pleased myself with the thought that in gratifying my
whim of placing her between me and false-hearted knaves, I had done
her a kindness. Now she is a woman, I have no such comfort. She has no
protector but herself. I have put her at such odds with the world, that
any dog may bark or fawn upon her at his pleasure. Indeed she stands in
need of delicate consideration. Yes; indeed she does!'
'If her position could be altered and defined, sir?' Mr Pecksniff
hinted.
'How can that be done? Should I make a seamstress of her, or a
governess?'
'Heaven forbid!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'My dear sir, there are other ways.
There are indeed. But I am much excited and embarrassed at present, and
would rather not pursue the subject. I scarcely know what I mean. Permit
me to resume it at another time.'
'You are not unwell?' asked Martin anxiously.
'No, no!' cried Pecksniff. 'No. Permit me to resume it at another time.
I'll walk a little. Bless you!'
Old Martin blessed him in return, and squeezed his hand. As he turned
away, and slowly walked towards the house, Mr Pecksniff stood gazing
after him; being pretty well recovered from his late emotion, which, in
any other man, one might have thought had been assumed as a machinery
for feeling Martin's pulse. The change in the old man found such a
slight expression in his figure, that Mr Pecksniff, looking after him,
could not help saying to himself:
'And I can wind him round my little finger! Only think!'
Old Martin happening to turn his head, saluted him affectionately. Mr
Pecksniff returned the gesture.
'Why, the time was,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'and not long ago, when he
wouldn't look at me! How soothing is this change. Such is the delicate
texture of the human heart; so complicated is the process of its being
softened! Externally he looks the same, and I can wind him round my
little finger. Only think!'
In sober truth, there did appear to be nothing on which Mr Pecksniff
might not have ventured with Martin Chuzzlewit; for whatever Mr
Pecksniff said or did was right, and whatever he advised was done.
Martin had escaped so many snares from needy fortune-hunters, and had
withered in the shell of his suspicion and distrust for so many years,
but to become the good man's tool and plaything. With the happiness of
this conviction painted on his face, the architect went forth upon his
morning walk.
The summer weather in his bosom was reflected in the breast of Nature.
Through deep green vistas where the boughs arched overhead, and showed
the sunlight flashing in the beautiful perspective; through dewy fern
from which the startled hares leaped up, and fled at his approach; by
mantled pools, and fallen trees, and down in hollow places, rustling
among last year's leaves whose scent woke memory of the past; the placid
Pecksniff strolled. By meadow gates and hedges fragrant with wild roses;
and by thatched-roof cottages whose inmates humbly bowed before him as
a man both good and wise; the worthy Pecksniff walked in tranquil
meditation. The bee passed onward, humming of the work he had to do;
the idle gnats for ever going round and round in one contracting and
expanding ring, yet always going on as fast as he, danced merrily before
him; the colour of the long grass came and went, as if the light clouds
made it timid as they floated through the distant air. The birds,
so many Pecksniff consciences, sang gayly upon every branch; and Mr
Pecksniff paid HIS homage to the day by ruminating on his projects as he
walked along.
Chancing to trip, in his abstraction, over the spreading root of an old
tree, he raised his pious eyes to take a survey of the ground before
him. It startled him to see the embodied image of his thoughts not far
ahead. Mary herself. And alone.
At first Mr Pecksniff stopped as if with the intention of avoiding
her; but his next impulse was to advance, which he did at a brisk pace;
caroling as he went so sweetly and with so much innocence that he only
wanted feathers and wings to be a bird.
Hearing notes behind her, not belonging to the songsters of the grove,
she looked round. Mr Pecksniff kissed his hand, and was at her side
immediately.
'Communing with nature?' said Mr Pecksniff. 'So am I.'
She said the morning was so beautiful that she had walked further than
she intended, and would return. Mr Pecksniff said it was exactly his
case, and he would return with her.
'Take my arm, sweet girl,' said Mr Pecksniff.
Mary declined it, and walked so very fast that he remonstrated. 'You
were loitering when I came upon you,' Mr Pecksniff said. 'Why be so
cruel as to hurry now? You would not shun me, would you?'
'Yes, I would,' she answered, turning her glowing cheek indignantly
upon him, 'you know I would. Release me, Mr Pecksniff. Your touch is
disagreeable to me.'
His touch! What? That chaste patriarchal touch which Mrs Todgers--surely
a discreet lady--had endured, not only without complaint, but with
apparent satisfaction! This was positively wrong. Mr Pecksniff was sorry
to hear her say it.
'If you have not observed,' said Mary, 'that it is so, pray take
assurance from my lips, and do not, as you are a gentleman, continue to
offend me.'
'Well, well!' said Mr Pecksniff, mildly, 'I feel that I might consider
this becoming in a daughter of my own, and why should I object to it
in one so beautiful! It's harsh. It cuts me to the soul,' said Mr
Pecksniff; 'but I cannot quarrel with you, Mary.'
She tried to say she was sorry to hear it, but burst into tears. Mr
Pecksniff now repeated the Todgers performance on a comfortable scale,
as if he intended it to last some time; and in his disengaged hand,
catching hers, employed himself in separating the fingers with his own,
and sometimes kissing them, as he pursued the conversation thus:
'I am glad we met. I am very glad we met. I am able now to ease my
bosom of a heavy load, and speak to you in confidence. Mary,' said Mr
Pecksniff in his tenderest tones, indeed they were so very tender that
he almost squeaked: 'My soul! I love you!'
A fantastic thing, that maiden affectation! She made believe to shudder.
'I love you,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'my gentle life, with a devotion which
is quite surprising, even to myself. I did suppose that the sensation
was buried in the silent tomb of a lady, only second to you in qualities
of the mind and form; but I find I am mistaken.'
She tried to disengage her hand, but might as well have tried to free
herself from the embrace of an affectionate boa-constrictor; if anything
so wily may be brought into comparison with Pecksniff.
'Although I am a widower,' said Mr Pecksniff, examining the rings upon
her fingers, and tracing the course of one delicate blue vein with his
fat thumb, 'a widower with two daughters, still I am not encumbered,
my love. One of them, as you know, is married. The other, by her own
desire, but with a view, I will confess--why not?--to my altering my
condition, is about to leave her father's house. I have a character,
I hope. People are pleased to speak well of me, I think. My person
and manner are not absolutely those of a monster, I trust. Ah! naughty
Hand!' said Mr Pecksniff, apostrophizing the reluctant prize, 'why did
you take me prisoner? Go, go!'
He slapped the hand to punish it; but relenting, folded it in his
waistcoat to comfort it again.
'Blessed in each other, and in the society of our venerable friend, my
darling,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'we shall be happy. When he is wafted to a
haven of rest, we will console each other. My pretty primrose, what do
you say?'
'It is possible,' Mary answered, in a hurried manner, 'that I ought to
feel grateful for this mark of your confidence. I cannot say that I do,
but I am willing to suppose you may deserve my thanks. Take them; and
pray leave me, Mr Pecksniff.'
The good man smiled a greasy smile; and drew her closer to him.
'Pray, pray release me, Mr Pecksniff. I cannot listen to your proposal.
I cannot receive it. There are many to whom it may be acceptable, but it
is not so to me. As an act of kindness and an act of pity, leave me!'
Mr Pecksniff walked on with his arm round her waist, and her hand in
his, as contentedly as if they had been all in all to each other, and
were joined in the bonds of truest love.
'If you force me by your superior strength,' said Mary, who finding that
good words had not the least effect upon him, made no further effort to
suppress her indignation; 'if you force me by your superior strength
to accompany you back, and to be the subject of your insolence upon the
way, you cannot constrain the expression of my thoughts. I hold you in
the deepest abhorrence. I know your real nature and despise it.'
'No, no,' said Mr Pecksniff, sweetly. 'No, no, no!'
'By what arts or unhappy chances you have gained your influence over
Mr Chuzzlewit, I do not know,' said Mary; 'it may be strong enough to
soften even this, but he shall know of this, trust me, sir.'
Mr Pecksniff raised his heavy eyelids languidly, and let them fall
again. It was saying with perfect coolness, 'Aye, aye! Indeed!'
'Is it not enough,' said Mary, 'that you warp and change his nature,
adapt his every prejudice to your bad ends, and harden a heart naturally
kind by shutting out the truth and allowing none but false and distorted
views to reach it; is it not enough that you have the power of doing
this, and that you exercise it, but must you also be so coarse, so
cruel, and so cowardly to me?'
Still Mr Pecksniff led her calmly on, and looked as mild as any lamb
that ever pastured in the fields.
'Will nothing move you, sir?' cried Mary.
'My dear,' observed Mr Pecksniff, with a placid leer, 'a habit of
self-examination, and the practice of--shall I say of virtue?'
'Of hypocrisy,' said Mary.
'No, no,' resumed Mr Pecksniff, chafing the captive hand reproachfully,
'of virtue--have enabled me to set such guards upon myself, that it
is really difficult to ruffle me. It is a curious fact, but it is
difficult, do you know, for any one to ruffle me. And did she think,'
said Mr Pecksniff, with a playful tightening of his grasp 'that SHE
could! How little did she know his heart!'
Little, indeed! Her mind was so strangely constituted that she would
have preferred the caresses of a toad, an adder, or a serpent--nay, the
hug of a bear--to the endearments of Mr Pecksniff.
'Come, come,' said that good gentleman, 'a word or two will set this
matter right, and establish a pleasant understanding between us. I am
not angry, my love.'
'YOU angry!'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'I am not. I say so. Neither are you.'
There was a beating heart beneath his hand that told another story
though.
'I am sure you are not,' said Mr Pecksniff: 'and I will tell you why.
There are two Martin Chuzzlewits, my dear; and your carrying your anger
to one might have a serious effect--who knows!--upon the other. You
wouldn't wish to hurt him, would you?'
She trembled violently, and looked at him with such a proud disdain that
he turned his eyes away. No doubt lest he should be offended with her in
spite of his better self.
'A passive quarrel, my love,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'may be changed into
an active one, remember. It would be sad to blight even a disinherited
young man in his already blighted prospects; but how easy to do it.
Ah, how easy! HAVE I influence with our venerable friend, do you think?
Well, perhaps I have. Perhaps I have.'
He raised his eyes to hers; and nodded with an air of banter that was
charming.
'No,' he continued, thoughtfully. 'Upon the whole, my sweet, if I were
you I'd keep my secret to myself. I am not at all sure--very far from
it--that it would surprise our friend in any way, for he and I have had
some conversation together only this morning, and he is anxious, very
anxious, to establish you in some more settled manner. But whether he
was surprised or not surprised, the consequence of your imparting
it might be the same. Martin junior might suffer severely. I'd have
compassion on Martin junior, do you know?' said Mr Pecksniff, with a
persuasive smile. 'Yes. He don't deserve it, but I would.'
She wept so bitterly now, and was so much distressed, that he thought it
prudent to unclasp her waist, and hold her only by the hand.
'As to our own share in the precious little mystery,' said Mr Pecksniff,
'we will keep it to ourselves, and talk of it between ourselves, and
you shall think it over. You will consent, my love; you will consent,
I know. Whatever you may think; you will. I seem to remember to have
heard--I really don't know where, or how'--he added, with bewitching
frankness, 'that you and Martin junior, when you were children, had a
sort of childish fondness for each other. When we are married, you shall
have the satisfaction of thinking that it didn't last to ruin him, but
passed away to do him good; for we'll see then what we can do to put
some trifling help in Martin junior's way. HAVE I any influence with our
venerable friend? Well! Perhaps I have. Perhaps I have.'
The outlet from the wood in which these tender passages occurred, was
close to Mr Pecksniff's house. They were now so near it that he stopped,
and holding up her little finger, said in playful accents, as a parting
fancy:
'Shall I bite it?'
Receiving no reply he kissed it instead; and then stooping down,
inclined his flabby face to hers--he had a flabby face, although he
WAS a good man--and with a blessing, which from such a source was quite
enough to set her up in life, and prosper her from that time forth
permitted her to leave him.
Gallantry in its true sense is supposed to ennoble and dignify a
man; and love has shed refinements on innumerable Cymons. But Mr
Pecksniff--perhaps because to one of his exalted nature these were mere
grossnesses--certainly did not appear to any unusual advantage, now that
he was left alone. On the contrary, he seemed to be shrunk and reduced;
to be trying to hide himself within himself; and to be wretched at not
having the power to do it. His shoes looked too large; his sleeve looked
too long; his hair looked too limp; his features looked too mean; his
exposed throat looked as if a halter would have done it good. For a
minute or two, in fact, he was hot, and pale, and mean, and shy, and
slinking, and consequently not at all Pecksniffian. But after that, he
recovered himself, and went home with as beneficent an air as if he had
been the High Priest of the summer weather.
'I have arranged to go, Papa,' said Charity, 'to-morrow.'
'So soon, my child!'
'I can't go too soon,' said Charity, 'under the circumstances. I have
written to Mrs Todgers to propose an arrangement, and have requested her
to meet me at the coach, at all events. You'll be quite your own master
now, Mr Pinch!'
Mr Pecksniff had just gone out of the room, and Tom had just come into
it.
'My own master!' repeated Tom.
'Yes, you'll have nobody to interfere with you,' said Charity. 'At least
I hope you won't. Hem! It's a changing world.'
'What! are YOU going to be married, Miss Pecksniff?' asked Tom in great
surprise.
'Not exactly,' faltered Cherry. 'I haven't made up my mind to be. I
believe I could be, if I chose, Mr Pinch.'
'Of course you could!' said Tom. And he said it in perfect good faith.
He believed it from the bottom of his heart.
'No,' said Cherry, 'I am not going to be married. Nobody is, that I know
of. Hem! But I am not going to live with Papa. I have my reasons, but
it's all a secret. I shall always feel very kindly towards you, I assure
you, for the boldness you showed that night. As to you and me, Mr Pinch,
WE part the best friends possible!'
Tom thanked her for her confidence, and for her friendship, but there
was a mystery in the former which perfectly bewildered him. In his
extravagant devotion to the family, he had felt the loss of Merry more
than any one but those who knew that for all the slights he underwent he
thought his own demerits were to blame, could possibly have understood.
He had scarcely reconciled himself to that when here was Charity about
to leave them. She had grown up, as it were, under Tom's eye.
The sisters were a part of Pecksniff, and a part of Tom; items in
Pecksniff's goodness, and in Tom's service. He couldn't bear it; not two
hours' sleep had Tom that night, through dwelling in his bed upon these
dreadful changes.
When morning dawned he thought he must have dreamed this piece of
ambiguity; but no, on going downstairs he found them packing trunks
and cording boxes, and making other preparations for Miss Charity's
departure, which lasted all day long. In good time for the evening
coach, Miss Charity deposited her housekeeping keys with much ceremony
upon the parlour table; took a gracious leave of all the house; and
quitted her paternal roof--a blessing for which the Pecksniffian servant
was observed by some profane persons to be particularly active in the
thanksgiving at church next Sunday.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MR PINCH IS DISCHARGED OF A DUTY WHICH HE NEVER OWED TO ANYBODY, AND MR
PECKSNIFF DISCHARGES A DUTY WHICH HE OWES TO SOCIETY
The closing words of the last chapter lead naturally to the commencement
of this, its successor; for it has to do with a church. With the church,
so often mentioned heretofore, in which Tom Pinch played the organ for
nothing.
One sultry afternoon, about a week after Miss Charity's departure for
London, Mr Pecksniff being out walking by himself, took it into his head
to stray into the churchyard. As he was lingering among the tombstones,
endeavouring to extract an available sentiment or two from the
epitaphs--for he never lost an opportunity of making up a few moral
crackers, to be let off as occasion served--Tom Pinch began to practice.
Tom could run down to the church and do so whenever he had time to
spare; for it was a simple little organ, provided with wind by the
action of the musician's feet; and he was independent, even of a
bellows-blower. Though if Tom had wanted one at any time, there was
not a man or boy in all the village, and away to the turnpike (tollman
included), but would have blown away for him till he was black in the
face.
Mr Pecksniff had no objection to music; not the least. He was tolerant
of everything; he often said so. He considered it a vagabond kind of
trifling, in general, just suited to Tom's capacity. But in regard
to Tom's performance upon this same organ, he was remarkably lenient,
singularly amiable; for when Tom played it on Sundays, Mr Pecksniff
in his unbounded sympathy felt as if he played it himself, and were a
benefactor to the congregation. So whenever it was impossible to devise
any other means of taking the value of Tom's wages out of him, Mr
Pecksniff gave him leave to cultivate this instrument. For which mark of
his consideration Tom was very grateful.
The afternoon was remarkably warm, and Mr Pecksniff had been strolling
a long way. He had not what may be called a fine ear for music, but he
knew when it had a tranquilizing influence on his soul; and that was the
case now, for it sounded to him like a melodious snore. He approached
the church, and looking through the diamond lattice of a window near the
porch, saw Tom, with the curtains in the loft drawn back, playing away
with great expression and tenderness.
The church had an inviting air of coolness. The old oak roof supported
by cross-beams, the hoary walls, the marble tablets, and the cracked
stone pavement, were refreshing to look at. There were leaves of ivy
tapping gently at the opposite windows; and the sun poured in through
only one; leaving the body of the church in tempting shade. But the
most tempting spot of all, was one red-curtained and soft-cushioned pew,
wherein the official dignitaries of the place (of whom Mr Pecksniff was
the head and chief) enshrined themselves on Sundays. Mr Pecksniff's seat
was in the corner; a remarkably comfortable corner; where his very large
Prayer-Book was at that minute making the most of its quarto self upon
the desk. He determined to go in and rest.
He entered very softly; in part because it was a church; in part because
his tread was always soft; in part because Tom played a solemn tune; in
part because he thought he would surprise him when he stopped. Unbolting
the door of the high pew of state, he glided in and shut it after him;
then sitting in his usual place, and stretching out his legs upon the
hassocks, he composed himself to listen to the music.
It is an unaccountable circumstance that he should have felt drowsy
there, where the force of association might surely have been enough
to keep him wide awake; but he did. He had not been in the snug little
corner five minutes before he began to nod. He had not recovered himself
one minute before he began to nod again. In the very act of opening his
eyes indolently, he nodded again. In the very act of shutting them, he
nodded again. So he fell out of one nod into another until at last he
ceased to nod at all, and was as fast as the church itself.
He had a consciousness of the organ, long after he fell asleep, though
as to its being an organ he had no more idea of that than he had of
its being a bull. After a while he began to have at intervals the same
dreamy impressions of voices; and awakening to an indolent curiosity
upon the subject, opened his eyes.
He was so indolent, that after glancing at the hassocks and the pew, he
was already half-way off to sleep again, when it occurred to him that
there really were voices in the church; low voices, talking earnestly
hard by; while the echoes seemed to mutter responses. He roused himself,
and listened.
Before he had listened half a dozen seconds, he became as broad awake as
ever he had been in all his life. With eyes, and ears, and mouth,
wide open, he moved himself a very little with the utmost caution, and
gathering the curtain in his hand, peeped out.
Tom Pinch and Mary. Of course. He had recognized their voices, and
already knew the topic they discussed. Looking like the small end of a
guillotined man, with his chin on a level with the top of the pew, so
that he might duck down immediately in case of either of them turning
round, he listened. Listened with such concentrated eagerness, that his
very hair and shirt-collar stood bristling up to help him.
'No,' cried Tom. 'No letters have ever reached me, except that one from
New York. But don't be uneasy on that account, for it's very likely
they have gone away to some far-off place, where the posts are neither
regular nor frequent. He said in that very letter that it might be so,
even in that city to which they thought of travelling--Eden, you know.'
'It is a great weight upon my mind,' said Mary.
'Oh, but you mustn't let it be,' said Tom. 'There's a true saying that
nothing travels so fast as ill news; and if the slightest harm had
happened to Martin, you may be sure you would have heard of it long
ago. I have often wished to say this to you,' Tom continued with an
embarrassment that became him very well, 'but you have never given me an
opportunity.'
'I have sometimes been almost afraid,' said Mary, 'that you might
suppose I hesitated to confide in you, Mr Pinch.'
'No,' Tom stammered, 'I--I am not aware that I ever supposed that. I
am sure that if I have, I have checked the thought directly, as an
injustice to you. I feel the delicacy of your situation in having to
confide in me at all,' said Tom, 'but I would risk my life to save you
from one day's uneasiness; indeed I would!'
Poor Tom!
'I have dreaded sometimes,' Tom continued, 'that I might have displeased
you by--by having the boldness to try and anticipate your wishes now and
then. At other times I have fancied that your kindness prompted you to
keep aloof from me.'
'Indeed!'
'It was very foolish; very presumptuous and ridiculous, to think
so,' Tom pursued; 'but I feared you might suppose it possible that
I--I--should admire you too much for my own peace; and so denied
yourself the slight assistance you would otherwise have accepted from
me. If such an idea has ever presented itself to you,' faltered Tom,
'pray dismiss it. I am easily made happy; and I shall live contented
here long after you and Martin have forgotten me. I am a poor, shy,
awkward creature; not at all a man of the world; and you should think no
more of me, bless you, than if I were an old friar!'
If friars bear such hearts as thine, Tom, let friars multiply; though
they have no such rule in all their stern arithmetic.
'Dear Mr Pinch!' said Mary, giving him her hand; 'I cannot tell you how
your kindness moves me. I have never wronged you by the lightest doubt,
and have never for an instant ceased to feel that you were all--much
more than all--that Martin found you. Without the silent care and
friendship I have experienced from you, my life here would have been
unhappy. But you have been a good angel to me; filling me with gratitude
of heart, hope, and courage.'
'I am as little like an angel, I am afraid,' replied Tom, shaking his
head, 'as any stone cherubim among the grave-stones; and I don't think
there are many real angels of THAT pattern. But I should like to know
(if you will tell me) why you have been so very silent about Martin.'
'Because I have been afraid,' said Mary, 'of injuring you.'
'Of injuring me!' cried Tom.
'Of doing you an injury with your employer.'
The gentleman in question dived.
'With Pecksniff!' rejoined Tom, with cheerful confidence. 'Oh dear, he'd
never think of us! He's the best of men. The more at ease you were, the
happier he would be. Oh dear, you needn't be afraid of Pecksniff. He is
not a spy.'
Many a man in Mr Pecksniff's place, if he could have dived through the
floor of the pew of state and come out at Calcutta or any inhabited
region on the other side of the earth, would have done it instantly. Mr
Pecksniff sat down upon a hassock, and listening more attentively than
ever, smiled.
Mary seemed to have expressed some dissent in the meanwhile, for Tom
went on to say, with honest energy:
'Well, I don't know how it is, but it always happens, whenever I express
myself in this way to anybody almost, that I find they won't do justice
to Pecksniff. It is one of the most extraordinary circumstances that
ever came within my knowledge, but it is so. There's John Westlock, who
used to be a pupil here, one of the best-hearted young men in the world,
in all other matters--I really believe John would have Pecksniff flogged
at the cart's tail if he could. And John is not a solitary case,
for every pupil we have had in my time has gone away with the same
inveterate hatred of him. There was Mark Tapley, too, quite in another
station of life,' said Tom; 'the mockery he used to make of Pecksniff
when he was at the Dragon was shocking. Martin too: Martin was worse
than any of 'em. But I forgot. He prepared you to dislike Pecksniff, of
course. So you came with a prejudice, you know, Miss Graham, and are not
a fair witness.'
Tom triumphed very much in this discovery, and rubbed his hands with
great satisfaction.
'Mr Pinch,' said Mary, 'you mistake him.'
'No, no!' cried Tom. 'YOU mistake him. But,' he added, with a rapid
change in his tone, 'what is the matter? Miss Graham, what is the
matter?'
Mr Pecksniff brought up to the top of the pew, by slow degrees, his
hair, his forehead, his eyebrow, his eye. She was sitting on a bench
beside the door with her hands before her face; and Tom was bending over
her.
'What is the matter?' cried Tom. 'Have I said anything to hurt you? Has
any one said anything to hurt you? Don't cry. Pray tell me what it is.
I cannot bear to see you so distressed. Mercy on us, I never was so
surprised and grieved in all my life!'
Mr Pecksniff kept his eye in the same place. He could have moved it now
for nothing short of a gimlet or a red-hot wire.
'I wouldn't have told you, Mr Pinch,' said Mary, 'if I could have helped
it; but your delusion is so absorbing, and it is so necessary that we
should be upon our guard; that you should not be compromised; and to
that end that you should know by whom I am beset; that no alternative
is left me. I came here purposely to tell you, but I think I should
have wanted courage if you had not chanced to lead me so directly to the
object of my coming.'
Tom gazed at her steadfastly, and seemed to say, 'What else?' But he
said not a word.
'That person whom you think the best of men,' said Mary, looking up, and
speaking with a quivering lip and flashing eye.
'Lord bless me!' muttered Tom, staggering back. 'Wait a moment. That
person whom I think the best of men! You mean Pecksniff, of course.
Yes, I see you mean Pecksniff. Good gracious me, don't speak without
authority. What has he done? If he is not the best of men, what is he?'
'The worst. The falsest, craftiest, meanest, cruellest, most
sordid, most shameless,' said the trembling girl--trembling with her
indignation.
Tom sat down on a seat, and clasped his hands.
'What is he,' said Mary, 'who receiving me in his house as his guest;
his unwilling guest; knowing my history, and how defenceless and alone
I am, presumes before his daughters to affront me so, that if I had a
brother but a child, who saw it, he would instinctively have helped me?'
'He is a scoundrel!' exclaimed Tom. 'Whoever he may be, he is a
scoundrel.'
Mr Pecksniff dived again.
'What is he,' said Mary, 'who, when my only friend--a dear and kind one,
too--was in full health of mind, humbled himself before him, but was
spurned away (for he knew him then) like a dog. Who, in his forgiving
spirit, now that that friend is sunk into a failing state, can crawl
about him again, and use the influence he basely gains for every base
and wicked purpose, and not for one--not one--that's true or good?'
'I say he is a scoundrel!' answered Tom.
'But what is he--oh, Mr Pinch, what IS he--who, thinking he could
compass these designs the better if I were his wife, assails me with the
coward's argument that if I marry him, Martin, on whom I have brought so
much misfortune, shall be restored to something of his former hopes; and
if I do not, shall be plunged in deeper ruin? What is he who makes my
very constancy to one I love with all my heart a torture to myself and
wrong to him; who makes me, do what I will, the instrument to hurt a
head I would heap blessings on! What is he who, winding all these cruel
snares about me, explains their purpose to me, with a smooth tongue and
a smiling face, in the broad light of day; dragging me on, the while, in
his embrace, and holding to his lips a hand,' pursued the agitated girl,
extending it, 'which I would have struck off, if with it I could lose
the shame and degradation of his touch?'
'I say,' cried Tom, in great excitement, 'he is a scoundrel and a
villain! I don't care who he is, I say he is a double-dyed and most
intolerable villain!'
Covering her face with her hands again, as if the passion which had
sustained her through these disclosures lost itself in an overwhelming
sense of shame and grief, she abandoned herself to tears.
Any sight of distress was sure to move the tenderness of Tom, but this
especially. Tears and sobs from her were arrows in his heart. He tried
to comfort her; sat down beside her; expended all his store of homely
eloquence; and spoke in words of praise and hope of Martin. Aye, though
he loved her from his soul with such a self-denying love as woman seldom
wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. Not the wealth of the rich
Indies would have tempted Tom to shirk one mention of her lover's name.
When she was more composed, she impressed upon Tom that this man she
had described, was Pecksniff in his real colours; and word by word and
phrase by phrase, as well as she remembered it, related what had
passed between them in the wood: which was no doubt a source of high
gratification to that gentleman himself, who in his desire to see and
his dread of being seen, was constantly diving down into the state pew,
and coming up again like the intelligent householder in Punch's Show,
who avoids being knocked on the head with a cudgel. When she had
concluded her account, and had besought Tom to be very distant and
unconscious in his manner towards her after this explanation, and had
thanked him very much, they parted on the alarm of footsteps in the
burial-ground; and Tom was left alone in the church again.
And now the full agitation and misery of the disclosure came rushing
upon Tom indeed. The star of his whole life from boyhood had become, in
a moment, putrid vapour. It was not that Pecksniff, Tom's Pecksniff, had
ceased to exist, but that he never had existed. In his death Tom would
have had the comfort of remembering what he used to be, but in this
discovery, he had the anguish of recollecting what he never was. For,
as Tom's blindness in this matter had been total and not partial, so was
his restored sight. HIS Pecksniff could never have worked the wickedness
of which he had just now heard, but any other Pecksniff could; and the
Pecksniff who could do that could do anything, and no doubt had been
doing anything and everything except the right thing, all through his
career. From the lofty height on which poor Tom had placed his idol it
was tumbled down headlong, and
Not all the king's horses, nor all the king's men,
Could have set Mr Pecksniff up again.
Legions of Titans couldn't have got him out of the mud; and serve him
right! But it was not he who suffered; it was Tom. His compass was
broken, his chart destroyed, his chronometer had stopped, his masts were
gone by the board; his anchor was adrift, ten thousand leagues away.
Mr Pecksniff watched him with a lively interest, for he divined the
purpose of Tom's ruminations, and was curious to see how he conducted
himself. For some time, Tom wandered up and down the aisle like a man
demented, stopping occasionally to lean against a pew and think it over;
then he stood staring at a blank old monument bordered tastefully with
skulls and cross-bones, as if it were the finest work of Art he had ever
seen, although at other times he held it in unspeakable contempt; then
he sat down; then walked to and fro again; then went wandering up into
the organ-loft, and touched the keys. But their minstrelsy was changed,
their music gone; and sounding one long melancholy chord, Tom drooped
his head upon his hands and gave it up as hopeless.
'I wouldn't have cared,' said Tom Pinch, rising from his stool and
looking down into the church as if he had been the Clergyman, 'I
wouldn't have cared for anything he might have done to Me, for I have
tried his patience often, and have lived upon his sufferance and have
never been the help to him that others could have been. I wouldn't have
minded, Pecksniff,' Tom continued, little thinking who heard him, 'if
you had done Me any wrong; I could have found plenty of excuses for
that; and though you might have hurt me, could have still gone on
respecting you. But why did you ever fall so low as this in my esteem!
Oh Pecksniff, Pecksniff, there is nothing I would not have given, to
have had you deserve my old opinion of you; nothing!'
Mr Pecksniff sat upon the hassock pulling up his shirt-collar, while
Tom, touched to the quick, delivered this apostrophe. After a pause he
heard Tom coming down the stairs, jingling the church keys; and bringing
his eye to the top of the pew again, saw him go slowly out and lock the
door.
Mr Pecksniff durst not issue from his place of concealment; for through
the windows of the church he saw Tom passing on among the graves, and
sometimes stopping at a stone, and leaning there as if he were a
mourner who had lost a friend. Even when he had left the churchyard, Mr
Pecksniff still remained shut up; not being at all secure but that in
his restless state of mind Tom might come wandering back. At length he
issued forth, and walked with a pleasant countenance into the vestry;
where he knew there was a window near the ground, by which he could
release himself by merely stepping out.
He was in a curious frame of mind, Mr Pecksniff; being in no hurry to
go, but rather inclining to a dilatory trifling with the time, which
prompted him to open the vestry cupboard, and look at himself in the
parson's little glass that hung within the door. Seeing that his hair
was rumpled, he took the liberty of borrowing the canonical brush and
arranging it. He also took the liberty of opening another cupboard; but
he shut it up again quickly, being rather startled by the sight of a
black and a white surplice dangling against the wall; which had very
much the appearance of two curates who had committed suicide by hanging
themselves. Remembering that he had seen in the first cupboard a
port-wine bottle and some biscuits, he peeped into it again, and helped
himself with much deliberation; cogitating all the time though, in
a very deep and weighty manner, as if his thoughts were otherwise
employed.
He soon made up his mind, if it had ever been in doubt; and putting
back the bottle and biscuits, opened the casement. He got out into the
churchyard without any difficulty; shut the window after him; and walked
straight home.
'Is Mr Pinch indoors?' asked Mr Pecksniff of his serving-maid.
'Just come in, sir.'
'Just come in, eh?' repeated Mr Pecksniff, cheerfully. 'And gone
upstairs, I suppose?'
'Yes sir. Gone upstairs. Shall I call him, sir?'
'No,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'no. You needn't call him, Jane. Thank you,
Jane. How are your relations, Jane?'
'Pretty well, I thank you, sir.'
'I am glad to hear it. Let them know I asked about them, Jane. Is Mr
Chuzzlewit in the way, Jane?'
'Yes, sir. He's in the parlour, reading.'
'He's in the parlour, reading, is he, Jane?' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Very
well. Then I think I'll go and see him, Jane.'
Never had Mr Pecksniff been beheld in a more pleasant humour!
But when he walked into the parlour where the old man was engaged as
Jane had said; with pen and ink and paper on a table close at hand (for
Mr Pecksniff was always very particular to have him well supplied with
writing materials), he became less cheerful. He was not angry, he was
not vindictive, he was not cross, he was not moody, but he was grieved;
he was sorely grieved. As he sat down by the old man's side, two
tears--not tears like those with which recording angels blot their
entries out, but drops so precious that they use them for their
ink--stole down his meritorious cheeks.
'What is the matter?' asked old Martin. 'Pecksniff, what ails you, man?'
'I am sorry to interrupt you, my dear sir, and I am still more sorry for
the cause. My good, my worthy friend, I am deceived.'
'You are deceived!'
'Ah!' cried Mr Pecksniff, in an agony, 'deceived in the tenderest
point. Cruelly deceived in that quarter, sir, in which I placed the most
unbounded confidence. Deceived, Mr Chuzzlewit, by Thomas Pinch.'
'Oh! bad, bad, bad!' said Martin, laying down his book. 'Very bad! I
hope not. Are you certain?'
'Certain, my good sir! My eyes and ears are witnesses. I wouldn't have
believed it otherwise. I wouldn't have believed it, Mr Chuzzlewit, if a
Fiery Serpent had proclaimed it from the top of Salisbury Cathedral. I
would have said,' cried Mr Pecksniff, 'that the Serpent lied. Such was
my faith in Thomas Pinch, that I would have cast the falsehood back into
the Serpent's teeth, and would have taken Thomas to my heart. But I am
not a Serpent, sir, myself, I grieve to say, and no excuse or hope is
left me.'
Martin was greatly disturbed to see him so much agitated, and to hear
such unexpected news. He begged him to compose himself, and asked upon
what subject Mr Pinch's treachery had been developed.
'That is almost the worst of all, sir,' Mr Pecksniff answered, 'on a
subject nearly concerning YOU. Oh! is it not enough,' said Mr Pecksniff,
looking upward, 'that these blows must fall on me, but must they also
hit my friends!'
'You alarm me,' cried the old man, changing colour. 'I am not so strong
as I was. You terrify me, Pecksniff!'
'Cheer up, my noble sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, taking courage, 'and we
will do what is required of us. You shall know all, sir, and shall
be righted. But first excuse me, sir, excuse me. I have a duty to
discharge, which I owe to society.'
He rang the bell, and Jane appeared. 'Send Mr Pinch here, if you please,
Jane.'
Tom came. Constrained and altered in his manner, downcast and dejected,
visibly confused; not liking to look Pecksniff in the face.
The honest man bestowed a glance on Mr Chuzzlewit, as who should say
'You see!' and addressed himself to Tom in these terms:
'Mr Pinch, I have left the vestry-window unfastened. Will you do me the
favour to go and secure it; then bring the keys of the sacred edifice to
me!'
'The vestry-window, sir?' cried Tom.
'You understand me, Mr Pinch, I think,' returned his patron. 'Yes, Mr
Pinch, the vestry-window. I grieve to say that sleeping in the church
after a fatiguing ramble, I overheard just now some fragments,' he
emphasised that word, 'of a dialogue between two parties; and one of
them locking the church when he went out, I was obliged to leave
it myself by the vestry-window. Do me the favour to secure that
vestry-window, Mr Pinch, and then come back to me.'
No physiognomist that ever dwelt on earth could have construed Tom's
face when he heard these words. Wonder was in it, and a mild look of
reproach, but certainly no fear or guilt, although a host of strong
emotions struggled to display themselves. He bowed, and without saying
one word, good or bad, withdrew.
'Pecksniff,' cried Martin, in a tremble, 'what does all this mean? You
are not going to do anything in haste, you may regret!'
'No, my good sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, firmly, 'No. But I have a duty to
discharge which I owe to society; and it shall be discharged, my friend,
at any cost!'
Oh, late-remembered, much-forgotten, mouthing, braggart duty, always
owed, and seldom paid in any other coin than punishment and wrath, when
will mankind begin to know thee! When will men acknowledge thee in thy
neglected cradle, and thy stunted youth, and not begin their recognition
in thy sinful manhood and thy desolate old age! Oh, ermined Judge whose
duty to society is, now, to doom the ragged criminal to punishment and
death, hadst thou never, Man, a duty to discharge in barring up the
hundred open gates that wooed him to the felon's dock, and throwing but
ajar the portals to a decent life! Oh, prelate, prelate, whose duty to
society it is to mourn in melancholy phrase the sad degeneracy of these
bad times in which thy lot of honours has been cast, did nothing go
before thy elevation to the lofty seat, from which thou dealest out thy
homilies to other tarriers for dead men's shoes, whose duty to society
has not begun! Oh! magistrate, so rare a country gentleman and brave a
squire, had you no duty to society, before the ricks were blazing and
the mob were mad; or did it spring up, armed and booted from the earth,
a corps of yeomanry full-grown!
Mr Pecksniff's duty to society could not be paid till Tom came back. The
interval which preceded the return of that young man, he occupied in a
close conference with his friend; so that when Tom did arrive, he found
the two quite ready to receive him. Mary was in her own room above,
whither Mr Pecksniff, always considerate, had besought old Martin to
entreat her to remain some half-hour longer, that her feelings might be
spared.
When Tom came back, he found old Martin sitting by the window, and Mr
Pecksniff in an imposing attitude at the table. On one side of him was
his pocket-handkerchief; and on the other a little heap (a very little
heap) of gold and silver, and odd pence. Tom saw, at a glance, that it
was his own salary for the current quarter.
'Have you fastened the vestry-window, Mr Pinch?' said Pecksniff.
'Yes, sir.'
'Thank you. Put down the keys if you please, Mr Pinch.'
Tom placed them on the table. He held the bunch by the key of the
organ-loft (though it was one of the smallest), and looked hard at it
as he laid it down. It had been an old, old friend of Tom's; a kind
companion to him, many and many a day.
'Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, shaking his head; 'oh, Mr Pinch! I wonder
you can look me in the face!'
Tom did it though; and notwithstanding that he has been described as
stooping generally, he stood as upright then as man could stand.
'Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, taking up his handkerchief, as if he felt
that he should want it soon, 'I will not dwell upon the past. I will
spare you, and I will spare myself, that pain at least.'
Tom's was not a very bright eye, but it was a very expressive one when
he looked at Mr Pecksniff, and said:
'Thank you, sir. I am very glad you will not refer to the past.'
'The present is enough,' said Mr Pecksniff, dropping a penny, 'and
the sooner THAT is past, the better. Mr Pinch, I will not dismiss
you without a word of explanation. Even such a course would be quite
justifiable under the circumstances; but it might wear an appearance of
hurry, and I will not do it; for I am,' said Mr Pecksniff, knocking down
another penny, 'perfectly self-possessed. Therefore I will say to you,
what I have already said to Mr Chuzzlewit.'
Tom glanced at the old gentleman, who nodded now and then as approving
of Mr Pecksniff's sentences and sentiments, but interposed between them
in no other way.
'From fragments of a conversation which I overheard in the church, just
now, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff, 'between yourself and Miss Graham--I say
fragments, because I was slumbering at a considerable distance from you,
when I was roused by your voices--and from what I saw, I ascertained (I
would have given a great deal not to have ascertained, Mr Pinch) that
you, forgetful of all ties of duty and of honour, sir; regardless of the
sacred laws of hospitality, to which you were pledged as an inmate
of this house; have presumed to address Miss Graham with unreturned
professions of attachment and proposals of love.'
Tom looked at him steadily.
'Do you deny it, sir?' asked Mr Pecksniff, dropping one pound two and
fourpence, and making a great business of picking it up again.
'No, sir,' replied Tom. 'I do not.'
'You do not,' said Mr Pecksniff, glancing at the old gentleman. 'Oblige
me by counting this money, Mr Pinch, and putting your name to this
receipt. You do not?'
No, Tom did not. He scorned to deny it. He saw that Mr Pecksniff having
overheard his own disgrace, cared not a jot for sinking lower yet in his
contempt. He saw that he had devised this fiction as the readiest means
of getting rid of him at once, but that it must end in that any way. He
saw that Mr Pecksniff reckoned on his not denying it, because his doing
so and explaining would incense the old man more than ever against
Martin and against Mary; while Pecksniff himself would only have been
mistaken in his 'fragments.' Deny it! No.
'You find the amount correct, do you, Mr Pinch?' said Pecksniff.
'Quite correct, sir,' answered Tom.
'A person is waiting in the kitchen,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'to carry
your luggage wherever you please. We part, Mr Pinch, at once, and are
strangers from this time.'
Something without a name; compassion, sorrow, old tenderness, mistaken
gratitude, habit; none of these, and yet all of them; smote upon Tom's
gentle heart at parting. There was no such soul as Pecksniff's in
that carcase; and yet, though his speaking out had not involved the
compromise of one he loved, he couldn't have denounced the very shape
and figure of the man. Not even then.
'I will not say,' cried Mr Pecksniff, shedding tears, 'what a blow this
is. I will not say how much it tries me; how it works upon my nature;
how it grates upon my feelings. I do not care for that. I can endure as
well as another man. But what I have to hope, and what you have to hope,
Mr Pinch (otherwise a great responsibility rests upon you), is, that
this deception may not alter my ideas of humanity; that it may not
impair my freshness, or contract, if I may use the expression, my
Pinions. I hope it will not; I don't think it will. It may be a comfort
to you, if not now, at some future time, to know that I shall endeavour
not to think the worse of my fellow-creatures in general, for what has
passed between us. Farewell!'
Tom had meant to spare him one little puncturation with a lancet, which
he had it in his power to administer, but he changed his mind on hearing
this, and said:
'I think you left something in the church, sir.'
'Thank you, Mr Pinch,' said Pecksniff. 'I am not aware that I did.'
'This is your double eye-glass, I believe?' said Tom.
'Oh!' cried Pecksniff, with some degree of confusion. 'I am obliged to
you. Put it down, if you please.'
'I found it,' said Tom, slowly--'when I went to bolt the
vestry-window--in the pew.'
So he had. Mr Pecksniff had taken it off when he was bobbing up and
down, lest it should strike against the panelling; and had forgotten it.
Going back to the church with his mind full of having been watched, and
wondering very much from what part, Tom's attention was caught by the
door of the state pew standing open. Looking into it he found the glass.
And thus he knew, and by returning it gave Mr Pecksniff the information
that he knew, where the listener had been; and that instead of
overhearing fragments of the conversation, he must have rejoiced in
every word of it.
'I am glad he's gone,' said Martin, drawing a long breath when Tom had
left the room.
'It IS a relief,' assented Mr Pecksniff. 'It is a great relief. But
having discharged--I hope with tolerable firmness--the duty which I owed
to society, I will now, my dear sir, if you will give me leave, retire
to shed a few tears in the back garden, as an humble individual.'
Tom went upstairs; cleared his shelf of books; packed them up with his
music and an old fiddle in his trunk; got out his clothes (they were not
so many that they made his head ache); put them on the top of his books;
and went into the workroom for his case of instruments. There was a
ragged stool there, with the horsehair all sticking out of the top like
a wig: a very Beast of a stool in itself; on which he had taken up his
daily seat, year after year, during the whole period of his service.
They had grown older and shabbier in company. Pupils had served their
time; seasons had come and gone. Tom and the worn-out stool had held
together through it all. That part of the room was traditionally called
'Tom's Corner.' It had been assigned to him at first because of its
being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and
he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls,
with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments,
foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in
fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits
of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate
nose, and especially of his sister; who always being presented as
extremely beautiful, made full amends to Tom for any other jokes. Under
less uncommon circumstances, it would have cut Tom to the heart to leave
these things and think that he saw them for the last time; but it didn't
now. There was no Pecksniff; there never had been a Pecksniff; and all
his other griefs were swallowed up in that.
So, when he returned into the bedroom, and, having fastened his box and
a carpet-bag, put on his walking gaiters, and his great-coat, and his
hat, and taken his stick in his hand, looked round it for the last time.
Early on summer mornings, and by the light of private candle-ends on
winter nights, he had read himself half blind in this same room. He had
tried in this same room to learn the fiddle under the bedclothes, but
yielding to objections from the other pupils, had reluctantly abandoned
the design. At any other time he would have parted from it with a pang,
thinking of all he had learned there, of the many hours he had passed
there; for the love of his very dreams. But there was no Pecksniff;
there never had been a Pecksniff, and the unreality of Pecksniff
extended itself to the chamber, in which, sitting on one particular
bed, the thing supposed to be that Great Abstraction had often preached
morality with such effect that Tom had felt a moisture in his eyes,
while hanging breathless on the words.
The man engaged to bear his box--Tom knew him well: a Dragon man--came
stamping up the stairs, and made a roughish bow to Tom (to whom in
common times he would have nodded with a grin) as though he were aware
of what had happened, and wished him to perceive it made no difference
to HIM. It was clumsily done; he was a mere waterer of horses; but Tom
liked the man for it, and felt it more than going away.
Tom would have helped him with the box, but he made no more of it,
though it was a heavy one, than an elephant would have made of a
castle; just swinging it on his back and bowling downstairs as if, being
naturally a heavy sort of fellow, he could carry a box infinitely better
than he could go alone. Tom took the carpet-bag, and went downstairs
along with him. At the outer door stood Jane, crying with all her might;
and on the steps was Mrs Lupin, sobbing bitterly, and putting out her
hand for Tom to shake.
'You're coming to the Dragon, Mr Pinch?'
'No,' said Tom, 'no. I shall walk to Salisbury to-night. I couldn't stay
here. For goodness' sake, don't make me so unhappy, Mrs Lupin.'
'But you'll come to the Dragon, Mr Pinch. If it's only for tonight. To
see me, you know; not as a traveller.'
'God bless my soul!' said Tom, wiping his eyes. 'The kindness of people
is enough to break one's heart! I mean to go to Salisbury to-night, my
dear good creature. If you'll take care of my box for me till I write
for it, I shall consider it the greatest kindness you can do me.'
'I wish,' cried Mrs Lupin, 'there were twenty boxes, Mr Pinch, that I
might have 'em all.'
'Thank'ee,' said Tom. 'It's like you. Good-bye. Good-bye.'
There were several people, young and old, standing about the door, some
of whom cried with Mrs Lupin; while others tried to keep up a stout
heart, as Tom did; and others were absorbed in admiration of Mr
Pecksniff--a man who could build a church, as one may say, by squinting
at a sheet of paper; and others were divided between that feeling and
sympathy with Tom. Mr Pecksniff had appeared on the top of the steps,
simultaneously with his old pupil, and while Tom was talking with Mrs
Lupin kept his hand stretched out, as though he said 'Go forth!' When
Tom went forth, and had turned the corner Mr Pecksniff shook his head,
shut his eyes, and heaving a deep sigh, shut the door. On which, the
best of Tom's supporters said he must have done some dreadful deed, or
such a man as Mr Pecksniff never could have felt like that. If it had
been a common quarrel (they observed), he would have said something, but
when he didn't, Mr Pinch must have shocked him dreadfully.
Tom was out of hearing of their shrewd opinions, and plodded on as
steadily as he could go, until he came within sight of the turnpike
where the tollman's family had cried out 'Mr Pinch!' that frosty
morning, when he went to meet young Martin. He had got through the
village, and this toll-bar was his last trial; but when the infant
toll-takers came screeching out, he had half a mind to run for it, and
make a bolt across the country.
'Why, deary Mr Pinch! oh, deary sir!' cried the tollman's wife. 'What an
unlikely time for you to be a-going this way with a bag!'
'I am going to Salisbury,' said Tom.
'Why, goodness, where's the gig, then?' cried the tollman's wife,
looking down the road, as if she thought Tom might have been upset
without observing it.
'I haven't got it,' said Tom. 'I--' he couldn't evade it; he felt she
would have him in the next question, if he got over this one. 'I have
left Mr Pecksniff.'
The tollman--a crusty customer, always smoking solitary pipes in a
Windsor chair, inside, set artfully between two little windows that
looked up and down the road, so that when he saw anything coming up he
might hug himself on having toll to take, and when he saw it going down,
might hug himself on having taken it--the tollman was out in an instant.
'Left Mr Pecksniff!' cried the tollman.
'Yes,' said Tom, 'left him.'
The tollman looked at his wife, uncertain whether to ask her if she had
anything to suggest, or to order her to mind the children. Astonishment
making him surly, he preferred the latter, and sent her into the
toll-house with a flea in her ear.
'You left Mr Pecksniff!' cried the tollman, folding his arms, and
spreading his legs. 'I should as soon have thought of his head leaving
him.'
'Aye!' said Tom, 'so should I, yesterday. Good night!'
If a heavy drove of oxen hadn't come by immediately, the tollman would
have gone down to the village straight, to inquire into it. As
things turned out, he smoked another pipe, and took his wife into his
confidence. But their united sagacity could make nothing of it, and they
went to bed--metaphorically--in the dark. But several times that night,
when a waggon or other vehicle came through, and the driver asked
the tollkeeper 'What news?' he looked at the man by the light of his
lantern, to assure himself that he had an interest in the subject, and
then said, wrapping his watch-coat round his legs:
'You've heerd of Mr Pecksniff down yonder?'
'Ah! sure-ly!'
'And of his young man Mr Pinch, p'raps?'
'Ah!'
'They've parted.'
After every one of these disclosures, the tollman plunged into his
house again, and was seen no more, while the other side went on in great
amazement.
But this was long after Tom was abed, and Tom was now with his face
towards Salisbury, doing his best to get there. The evening was
beautiful at first, but it became cloudy and dull at sunset, and the
rain fell heavily soon afterwards. For ten long miles he plodded on, wet
through, until at last the lights appeared, and he came into the welcome
precincts of the city.
He went to the inn where he had waited for Martin, and briefly answering
their inquiries after Mr Pecksniff, ordered a bed. He had no heart for
tea or supper, meat or drink of any kind, but sat by himself before
an empty table in the public room while the bed was getting ready,
revolving in his mind all that had happened that eventful day, and
wondering what he could or should do for the future. It was a great
relief when the chambermaid came in, and said the bed was ready.
It was a low four-poster, shelving downward in the centre like a trough,
and the room was crowded with impracticable tables and exploded chests
of drawers, full of damp linen. A graphic representation in oil of a
remarkably fat ox hung over the fireplace, and the portrait of some
former landlord (who might have been the ox's brother, he was so like
him) stared roundly in, at the foot of the bed. A variety of queer
smells were partially quenched in the prevailing scent of very old
lavender; and the window had not been opened for such a long space of
time that it pleaded immemorial usage, and wouldn't come open now.
These were trifles in themselves, but they added to the strangeness of
the place, and did not induce Tom to forget his new position. Pecksniff
had gone out of the world--had never been in it--and it was as much
as Tom could do to say his prayers without him. But he felt happier
afterwards, and went to sleep, and dreamed about him as he Never Was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
TREATS OF TODGER'S AGAIN; AND OF ANOTHER BLIGHTED PLANT BESIDES THE
PLANTS UPON THE LEADS
Early on the day next after that on which she bade adieu to the halls
of her youth and the scenes of her childhood, Miss Pecksniff, arriving
safely at the coach-office in London, was there received, and conducted
to her peaceful home beneath the shadow of the Monument, by Mrs Todgers.
M. Todgers looked a little worn by cares of gravy and other such
solicitudes arising out of her establishment, but displayed her usual
earnestness and warmth of manner.
'And how, my sweet Miss Pecksniff,' said she, 'how is your princely pa?'
Miss Pecksniff signified (in confidence) that he contemplated the
introduction of a princely ma; and repeated the sentiment that she
wasn't blind, and wasn't quite a fool, and wouldn't bear it.
Mrs Todgers was more shocked by the intelligence than any one could have
expected. She was quite bitter. She said there was no truth in man and
that the warmer he expressed himself, as a general principle, the falser
and more treacherous he was. She foresaw with astonishing clearness that
the object of Mr Pecksniff's attachment was designing, worthless, and
wicked; and receiving from Charity the fullest confirmation of these
views, protested with tears in her eyes that she loved Miss Pecksniff
like a sister, and felt her injuries as if they were her own.
'Your real darling sister, I have not seen her more than once since her
marriage,' said Mrs Todgers, 'and then I thought her looking poorly. My
sweet Miss Pecksniff, I always thought that you was to be the lady?'
'Oh dear no!' cried Cherry, shaking her head. 'Oh no, Mrs Todgers. Thank
you. No! not for any consideration he could offer.'
'I dare say you are right,' said Mrs Todgers with a sigh. 'I feared
it all along. But the misery we have had from that match, here among
ourselves, in this house, my dear Miss Pecksniff, nobody would believe.'
'Lor, Mrs Todgers!'
'Awful, awful!' repeated Mrs Todgers, with strong emphasis. 'You
recollect our youngest gentleman, my dear?'
'Of course I do,' said Cherry.
'You might have observed,' said Mrs Todgers, 'how he used to watch your
sister; and that a kind of stony dumbness came over him whenever she was
in company?'
'I am sure I never saw anything of the sort,' said Cherry, in a peevish
manner. 'What nonsense, Mrs Todgers!'
'My dear,' returned that lady in a hollow voice, 'I have seen him again
and again, sitting over his pie at dinner, with his spoon a perfect
fixture in his mouth, looking at your sister. I have seen him standing
in a corner of our drawing-room, gazing at her, in such a lonely,
melancholy state, that he was more like a Pump than a man, and might
have drawed tears.'
'I never saw it!' cried Cherry; 'that's all I can say.'
'But when the marriage took place,' said Mrs Todgers, proceeding
with her subject, 'when it was in the paper, and was read out here at
breakfast, I thought he had taken leave of his senses, I did indeed.
The violence of that young man, my dear Miss Pecksniff; the frightful
opinions he expressed upon the subject of self-destruction; the
extraordinary actions he performed with his tea; the clenching way in
which he bit his bread and butter; the manner in which he taunted Mr
Jinkins; all combined to form a picture never to be forgotten.'
'It's a pity he didn't destroy himself, I think,' observed Miss
Pecksniff.
'Himself!' said Mrs Todgers, 'it took another turn at night. He was for
destroying other people then. There was a little chaffing going on--I
hope you don't consider that a low expression, Miss Pecksniff; it is
always in our gentlemen's mouths--a little chaffing going on, my dear,
among 'em, all in good nature, when suddenly he rose up, foaming with
his fury, and but for being held by three would have had Mr Jinkins's
life with a bootjack.'
Miss Pecksniff's face expressed supreme indifference.
'And now,' said Mrs Todgers, 'now he is the meekest of men. You can
almost bring the tears into his eyes by looking at him. He sits with me
the whole day long on Sundays, talking in such a dismal way that I find
it next to impossible to keep my spirits up equal to the accommodation
of the boarders. His only comfort is in female society. He takes me
half-price to the play, to an extent which I sometimes fear is beyond
his means; and I see the tears a-standing in his eyes during the whole
performance--particularly if it is anything of a comic nature. The turn
I experienced only yesterday,' said Mrs Todgers putting her hand to her
side, 'when the house-maid threw his bedside carpet out of the window of
his room, while I was sitting here, no one can imagine. I thought it was
him, and that he had done it at last!'
The contempt with which Miss Charity received this pathetic account of
the state to which the youngest gentleman in company was reduced,
did not say much for her power of sympathising with that unfortunate
character. She treated it with great levity, and went on to inform
herself, then and afterwards, whether any other changes had occurred in
the commercial boarding-house.
Mr Bailey was gone, and had been succeeded (such is the decay of human
greatness!) by an old woman whose name was reported to be Tamaroo--which
seemed an impossibility. Indeed it appeared in the fullness of time that
the jocular boarders had appropriated the word from an English ballad,
in which it is supposed to express the bold and fiery nature of a
certain hackney coachman; and that it was bestowed upon Mr Bailey's
successor by reason of her having nothing fiery about her, except an
occasional attack of that fire which is called St. Anthony's. This
ancient female had been engaged, in fulfillment of a vow, registered by
Mrs Todgers, that no more boys should darken the commercial doors; and
she was chiefly remarkable for a total absence of all comprehension upon
every subject whatever. She was a perfect Tomb for messages and small
parcels; and when dispatched to the Post Office with letters, had been
frequently seen endeavouring to insinuate them into casual chinks in
private doors, under the delusion that any door with a hole in it would
answer the purpose. She was a very little old woman, and always wore
a very coarse apron with a bib before and a loop behind, together
with bandages on her wrists, which appeared to be afflicted with an
everlasting sprain. She was on all occasions chary of opening the street
door, and ardent to shut it again; and she waited at table in a bonnet.
This was the only great change over and above the change which had
fallen on the youngest gentleman. As for him, he more than corroborated
the account of Mrs Todgers; possessing greater sensibility than even
she had given him credit for. He entertained some terrible notions of
Destiny, among other matters, and talked much about people's 'Missions';
upon which he seemed to have some private information not generally
attainable, as he knew it had been poor Merry's mission to crush him
in the bud. He was very frail and tearful; for being aware that a
shepherd's mission was to pipe to his flocks, and that a boatswain's
mission was to pipe all hands, and that one man's mission was to be a
paid piper, and another man's mission was to pay the piper, so he had
got it into his head that his own peculiar mission was to pipe his eye.
Which he did perpetually.
He often informed Mrs Todgers that the sun had set upon him; that the
billows had rolled over him; that the car of Juggernaut had crushed him,
and also that the deadly Upas tree of Java had blighted him. His name
was Moddle.
Towards this most unhappy Moddle, Miss Pecksniff conducted herself at
first with distant haughtiness, being in no humour to be entertained
with dirges in honour of her married sister. The poor young gentleman
was additionally crushed by this, and remonstrated with Mrs Todgers on
the subject.
'Even she turns from me, Mrs Todgers,' said Moddle.
'Then why don't you try and be a little bit more cheerful, sir?'
retorted Mrs Todgers.
'Cheerful, Mrs Todgers! cheerful!' cried the youngest gentleman; 'when
she reminds me of days for ever fled, Mrs Todgers!'
'Then you had better avoid her for a short time, if she does,' said Mrs
Todgers, 'and come to know her again, by degrees. That's my advice.'
'But I can't avoid her,' replied Moddle, 'I haven't strength of mind to
do it. Oh, Mrs Todgers, if you knew what a comfort her nose is to me!'
'Her nose, sir!' Mrs Todgers cried.
'Her profile, in general,' said the youngest gentleman, 'but
particularly her nose. It's so like;' here he yielded to a burst of
grief. 'It's so like hers who is Another's, Mrs Todgers!'
The observant matron did not fail to report this conversation to
Charity, who laughed at the time, but treated Mr Moddle that very
evening with increased consideration, and presented her side face to him
as much as possible. Mr Moddle was not less sentimental than usual;
was rather more so, if anything; but he sat and stared at her with
glistening eyes, and seemed grateful.
'Well, sir!' said the lady of the Boarding-House next day. 'You held up
your head last night. You're coming round, I think.'
'Only because she's so like her who is Another's, Mrs Todgers,' rejoined
the youth. 'When she talks, and when she smiles, I think I'm looking on
HER brow again, Mrs Todgers.'
This was likewise carried to Charity, who talked and smiled next evening
in her most engaging manner, and rallying Mr Moddle on the lowness of
his spirits, challenged him to play a rubber at cribbage. Mr Moddle
taking up the gauntlet, they played several rubbers for sixpences, and
Charity won them all. This may have been partially attributable to the
gallantry of the youngest gentleman, but it was certainly referable to
the state of his feelings also; for his eyes being frequently dimmed by
tears, he thought that aces were tens, and knaves queens, which at times
occasioned some confusion in his play.
On the seventh night of cribbage, when Mrs Todgers, sitting by, proposed
that instead of gambling they should play for 'love,' Mr Moddle was seen
to change colour. On the fourteenth night, he kissed Miss Pecksniff's
snuffers, in the passage, when she went upstairs to bed; meaning to have
kissed her hand, but missing it.
In short, Mr Moddle began to be impressed with the idea that Miss
Pecksniff's mission was to comfort him; and Miss Pecksniff began
to speculate on the probability of its being her mission to become
ultimately Mrs Moddle. He was a young gentleman (Miss Pecksniff was not
a very young lady) with rising prospects, and 'almost' enough to live
on. Really it looked very well.
Besides--besides--he had been regarded as devoted to Merry. Merry had
joked about him, and had once spoken of it to her sister as a conquest.
He was better looking, better shaped, better spoken, better tempered,
better mannered than Jonas. He was easy to manage, could be made to
consult the humours of his Betrothed, and could be shown off like a lamb
when Jonas was a bear. There was the rub!
In the meantime the cribbage went on, and Mrs Todgers went off; for the
youngest gentleman, dropping her society, began to take Miss Pecksniff
to the play. He also began, as Mrs Todgers said, to slip home 'in his
dinner-times,' and to get away from 'the office' at unholy seasons;
and twice, as he informed Mrs Todgers himself, he received anonymous
letters, enclosing cards from Furniture Warehouses--clearly the act of
that ungentlemanly ruffian Jinkins; only he hadn't evidence enough to
call him out upon. All of which, so Mrs Todgers told Miss Pecksniff,
spoke as plain English as the shining sun.
'My dear Miss Pecksniff, you may depend upon it,' said Mrs Todgers,
'that he is burning to propose.'
'My goodness me, why don't he then?' cried Cherry.
'Men are so much more timid than we think 'em, my dear,' returned
Mrs Todgers. 'They baulk themselves continually. I saw the words on
Todgers's lips for months and months and months, before he said 'em.'
Miss Pecksniff submitted that Todgers might not have been a fair
specimen.
'Oh yes, he was. Oh bless you, yes, my dear. I was very particular in
those days, I assure you,' said Mrs Todgers, bridling. 'No, no. You give
Mr Moddle a little encouragement, Miss Pecksniff, if you wish him to
speak; and he'll speak fast enough, depend upon it.'
'I am sure I don't know what encouragement he would have, Mrs Todgers,'
returned Charity. 'He walks with me, and plays cards with me, and he
comes and sits alone with me.'
'Quite right,' said Mrs Todgers. 'That's indispensable, my dear.'
'And he sits very close to me.'
'Also quite correct,' said Mrs Todgers.
'And he looks at me.'
'To be sure he does,' said Mrs Todgers.
'And he has his arm upon the back of the chair or sofa, or whatever it
is--behind me, you know.'
'I should think so,' said Mrs Todgers.
'And then he begins to cry!'
Mrs Todgers admitted that he might do better than that; and might
undoubtedly profit by the recollection of the great Lord Nelson's signal
at the battle of Trafalgar. Still, she said, he would come round, or,
not to mince the matter, would be brought round, if Miss Pecksniff took
up a decided position, and plainly showed him that it must be done.
Determining to regulate her conduct by this opinion, the young lady
received Mr Moddle, on the earliest subsequent occasion, with an air of
constraint; and gradually leading him to inquire, in a dejected manner,
why she was so changed, confessed to him that she felt it necessary for
their mutual peace and happiness to take a decided step. They had been
much together lately, she observed, much together, and had tasted the
sweets of a genuine reciprocity of sentiment. She never could forget
him, nor could she ever cease to think of him with feelings of the
liveliest friendship, but people had begun to talk, the thing had been
observed, and it was necessary that they should be nothing more to each
other, than any gentleman and lady in society usually are. She was glad
she had had the resolution to say thus much before her feelings had been
tried too far; they had been greatly tried, she would admit; but though
she was weak and silly, she would soon get the better of it, she hoped.
Moddle, who had by this time become in the last degree maudlin, and wept
abundantly, inferred from the foregoing avowal, that it was his mission
to communicate to others the blight which had fallen on himself; and
that, being a kind of unintentional Vampire, he had had Miss Pecksniff
assigned to him by the Fates, as Victim Number One. Miss Pecksniff
controverting this opinion as sinful, Moddle was goaded on to ask
whether she could be contented with a blighted heart; and it appearing
on further examination that she could be, plighted his dismal troth,
which was accepted and returned.
He bore his good fortune with the utmost moderation. Instead of being
triumphant, he shed more tears than he had ever been known to shed
before; and, sobbing, said:
'Oh! what a day this has been! I can't go back to the office this
afternoon. Oh, what a trying day this has been! Good Gracious!'
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
FURTHER PROCEEDINGS IN EDEN, AND A PROCEEDING OUT OF IT. MARTIN MAKES A
DISCOVERY OF SOME IMPORTANCE
From Mr Moddle to Eden is an easy and natural transition. Mr Moddle,
living in the atmosphere of Miss Pecksniff's love, dwelt (if he had but
known it) in a terrestrial Paradise. The thriving city of Eden was
also a terrestrial Paradise, upon the showing of its proprietors. The
beautiful Miss Pecksniff might have been poetically described as a
something too good for man in his fallen and degraded state. That
was exactly the character of the thriving city of Eden, as poetically
heightened by Zephaniah Scadder, General Choke, and other worthies; part
and parcel of the talons of that great American Eagle, which is always
airing itself sky-high in purest aether, and never, no never, never,
tumbles down with draggled wings into the mud.
When Mark Tapley, leaving Martin in the architectural and surveying
offices, had effectually strengthened and encouraged his own spirits
by the contemplation of their joint misfortunes, he proceeded, with
new cheerfulness, in search of help; congratulating himself, as he went
along, on the enviable position to which he had at last attained.
'I used to think, sometimes,' said Mr Tapley, 'as a desolate island
would suit me, but I should only have had myself to provide for there,
and being naturally a easy man to manage, there wouldn't have been much
credit in THAT. Now here I've got my partner to take care on, and he's
something like the sort of man for the purpose. I want a man as is
always a-sliding off his legs when he ought to be on 'em. I want a
man as is so low down in the school of life that he's always a-making
figures of one in his copy-book, and can't get no further. I want a man
as is his own great coat and cloak, and is always a-wrapping himself up
in himself. And I have got him too,' said Mr Tapley, after a moment's
silence. 'What a happiness!'
He paused to look round, uncertain to which of the log-houses he should
repair.
'I don't know which to take,' he observed; 'that's the truth. They're
equally prepossessing outside, and equally commodious, no doubt, within;
being fitted up with every convenience that a Alligator, in a state of
natur', could possibly require. Let me see! The citizen as turned out
last night, lives under water, in the right hand dog-kennel at the
corner. I don't want to trouble him if I can help it, poor man, for
he is a melancholy object; a reg'lar Settler in every respect. There's
house with a winder, but I am afraid of their being proud. I don't know
whether a door ain't too aristocratic; but here goes for the first one!'
He went up to the nearest cabin, and knocked with his hand. Being
desired to enter, he complied.
'Neighbour,' said Mark; 'for I AM a neighbour, though you don't know me;
I've come a-begging. Hallo! hal--lo! Am I a-bed, and dreaming!'
He made this exclamation on hearing his own name pronounced, and finding
himself clasped about the skirts by two little boys, whose faces he had
often washed, and whose suppers he had often cooked, on board of that
noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, the Screw.
'My eyes is wrong!' said Mark. 'I don't believe 'em. That ain't my
fellow-passenger younder, a-nursing her little girl, who, I am sorry to
see, is so delicate; and that ain't her husband as come to New York to
fetch her. Nor these,' he added, looking down upon the boys, 'ain't them
two young shavers as was so familiar to me; though they are uncommon
like 'em. That I must confess.'
The woman shed tears, in very joy to see him; the man shook both his
hands and would not let them go; the two boys hugged his legs; the sick
child in the mother's arms stretched out her burning little fingers, and
muttered, in her hoarse, dry throat, his well-remembered name.
It was the same family, sure enough. Altered by the salubrious air of
Eden. But the same.
'This is a new sort of a morning call,' said Mark, drawing a long
breath. 'It strikes one all of a heap. Wait a little bit! I'm a-coming
round fast. That'll do! These gentlemen ain't my friends. Are they on
the visiting list of the house?'
The inquiry referred to certain gaunt pigs, who had walked in after him,
and were much interested in the heels of the family. As they did not
belong to the mansion, they were expelled by the two little boys.
'I ain't superstitious about toads,' said Mark, looking round the room,
'but if you could prevail upon the two or three I see in company, to
step out at the same time, my young friends, I think they'd find the
open air refreshing. Not that I at all object to 'em. A very handsome
animal is a toad,' said Mr Tapley, sitting down upon a stool; 'very
spotted; very like a partickler style of old gentleman about the throat;
very bright-eyed, very cool, and very slippy. But one sees 'em to the
best advantage out of doors perhaps.'
While pretending, with such talk as this, to be perfectly at his ease,
and to be the most indifferent and careless of men, Mark Tapley had
an eye on all around him. The wan and meagre aspect of the family, the
changed looks of the poor mother, the fevered child she held in her lap,
the air of great despondency and little hope on everything, were plain
to him, and made a deep impression on his mind. He saw it all as
clearly and as quickly, as with his bodily eyes he saw the rough shelves
supported by pegs driven between the logs, of which the house was made;
the flour-cask in the corner, serving also for a table; the blankets,
spades, and other articles against the walls; the damp that blotched the
ground; or the crop of vegetable rottenness in every crevice of the hut.
'How is it that you have come here?' asked the man, when their first
expressions of surprise were over.
'Why, we come by the steamer last night,' replied Mark. 'Our intention
is to make our fortuns with punctuality and dispatch; and to retire upon
our property as soon as ever it's realised. But how are you all? You're
looking noble!'
'We are but sickly now,' said the poor woman, bending over her child.
'But we shall do better when we are seasoned to the place.'
'There are some here,' thought Mark 'whose seasoning will last for
ever.'
But he said cheerfully, 'Do better! To be sure you will. We shall all
do better. What we've got to do is, to keep up our spirits, and be
neighbourly. We shall come all right in the end, never fear. That
reminds me, by the bye, that my partner's all wrong just at present;
and that I looked in to beg for him. I wish you'd come and give me your
opinion of him, master.'
That must have been a very unreasonable request on the part of Mark
Tapley, with which, in their gratitude for his kind offices on board the
ship, they would not have complied instantly. The man rose to accompany
him without a moment's delay. Before they went, Mark took the sick child
in his arms, and tried to comfort the mother; but the hand of death was
on it then, he saw.
They found Martin in the house, lying wrapped up in his blanket on
the ground. He was, to all appearance, very ill indeed, and shook and
shivered horribly; not as people do from cold, but in a frightful
kind of spasm or convulsion, that racked his whole body. Mark's friend
pronounced his disease an aggravated kind of fever, accompanied with
ague; which was very common in those parts, and which he predicted would
be worse to-morrow, and for many more to-morrows. He had had it himself
off and on, he said, for a couple of years or so; but he was thankful
that, while so many he had known had died about him, he had escaped with
life.
'And with not too much of that,' thought Mark, surveying his emaciated
form. 'Eden for ever!'
They had some medicine in their chest; and this man of sad experience
showed Mark how and when to administer it, and how he could best
alleviate the sufferings of Martin. His attentions did not stop there;
for he was backwards and forwards constantly, and rendered Mark
good service in all his brisk attempts to make their situation more
endurable. Hope or comfort for the future he could not bestow. The
season was a sickly one; the settlement a grave. His child died that
night; and Mark, keeping the secret from Martin, helped to bury it,
beneath a tree, next day.
With all his various duties of attendance upon Martin (who became the
more exacting in his claims, the worse he grew), Mark worked out of
doors, early and late; and with the assistance of his friend and others,
laboured to do something with their land. Not that he had the least
strength of heart or hope, or steady purpose in so doing, beyond the
habitual cheerfulness of his disposition, and his amazing power of
self-sustainment; for within himself, he looked on their condition
as beyond all hope, and, in his own words, 'came out strong' in
consequence.
'As to coming out as strong as I could wish, sir,' he confided to Martin
in a leisure moment; that is to say, one evening, while he was washing
the linen of the establishment, after a hard day's work, 'that I give
up. It's a piece of good fortune as never is to happen to me, I see!'
'Would you wish for circumstances stronger than these?' Martin retorted
with a groan, from underneath his blanket.
'Why, only see how easy they might have been stronger, sir,' said Mark,
'if it wasn't for the envy of that uncommon fortun of mine, which is
always after me, and tripping me up. The night we landed here, I thought
things did look pretty jolly. I won't deny it. I thought they did look
pretty jolly.'
'How do they look now?' groaned Martin.
'Ah!' said Mark, 'Ah, to be sure. That's the question. How do they look
now? On the very first morning of my going out, what do I do? Stumble
on a family I know, who are constantly assisting of us in all sorts of
ways, from that time to this! That won't do, you know; that ain't what
I'd a right to expect. If I had stumbled on a serpent and got bit; or
stumbled on a first-rate patriot, and got bowie-knifed, or stumbled on a
lot of Sympathisers with inverted shirt-collars, and got made a lion of;
I might have distinguished myself, and earned some credit. As it is,
the great object of my voyage is knocked on the head. So it would be,
wherever I went. How do you feel to-night, sir?'
'Worse than ever,' said poor Martin.
'That's something,' returned Mark, 'but not enough. Nothing but being
very bad myself, and jolly to the last, will ever do me justice.'
'In Heaven's name, don't talk of that,' said Martin with a thrill of
terror. 'What should I do, Mark, if you were taken ill!'
Mr Tapley's spirits appeared to be stimulated by this remark, although
it was not a very flattering one. He proceeded with his washing in a
brighter mood; and observed 'that his glass was arising.'
'There's one good thing in this place, sir,' said Mr Tapley, scrubbing
away at the linen, 'as disposes me to be jolly; and that is that it's
a reg'lar little United States in itself. There's two or three American
settlers left; and they coolly comes over one, even here, sir, as if it
was the wholesomest and loveliest spot in the world. But they're like
the cock that went and hid himself to save his life, and was found out
by the noise he made. They can't help crowing. They was born to do it,
and do it they must, whatever comes of it.'
Glancing from his work out at the door as he said these words, Mark's
eyes encountered a lean person in a blue frock and a straw hat, with
a short black pipe in his mouth, and a great hickory stick studded all
over with knots, in his hand; who smoking and chewing as he came along,
and spitting frequently, recorded his progress by a train of decomposed
tobacco on the ground.
'Here's one on 'em,' cried Mark, 'Hannibal Chollop.'
'Don't let him in,' said Martin, feebly.
'He won't want any letting in,' replied Mark. 'He'll come in, sir.'
Which turned out to be quite true, for he did. His face was almost as
hard and knobby as his stick; and so were his hands. His head was like
an old black hearth-broom. He sat down on the chest with his hat on;
and crossing his legs and looking up at Mark, said, without removing his
pipe:
'Well, Mr Co.! and how do you git along, sir?'
It may be necessary to observe that Mr Tapley had gravely introduced
himself to all strangers, by that name.
'Pretty well, sir; pretty well,' said Mark.
'If this ain't Mr Chuzzlewit, ain't it!' exclaimed the visitor 'How do
YOU git along, sir?'
Martin shook his head, and drew the blanket over it involuntarily; for
he felt that Hannibal was going to spit; and his eye, as the song says,
was upon him.
'You need not regard me, sir,' observed Mr Chollop, complacently. 'I am
fever-proof, and likewise agur.'
'Mine was a more selfish motive,' said Martin, looking out again. 'I was
afraid you were going to--'
'I can calc'late my distance, sir,' returned Mr Chollop, 'to an inch.'
With a proof of which happy faculty he immediately favoured him.
'I re-quire, sir,' said Hannibal, 'two foot clear in a circ'lar
di-rection, and can engage my-self toe keep within it. I HAVE gone ten
foot, in a circ'lar di-rection, but that was for a wager.'
'I hope you won it, sir,' said Mark.
'Well, sir, I realised the stakes,' said Chollop. 'Yes, sir.'
He was silent for a time, during which he was actively engaged in the
formation of a magic circle round the chest on which he sat. When it was
completed, he began to talk again.
'How do you like our country, sir?' he inquired, looking at Martin.
'Not at all,' was the invalid's reply.
Chollop continued to smoke without the least appearance of emotion,
until he felt disposed to speak again. That time at length arriving, he
took his pipe from his mouth, and said:
'I am not surprised to hear you say so. It re-quires An elevation, and
A preparation of the intellect. The mind of man must be prepared for
Freedom, Mr Co.'
He addressed himself to Mark; because he saw that Martin, who wished
him to go, being already half-mad with feverish irritation, which the
droning voice of this new horror rendered almost insupportable, had
closed his eyes, and turned on his uneasy bed.
'A little bodily preparation wouldn't be amiss, either, would it, sir,'
said Mark, 'in the case of a blessed old swamp like this?'
'Do you con-sider this a swamp, sir?' inquired Chollop gravely.
'Why yes, sir,' returned Mark. 'I haven't a doubt about it myself.'
'The sentiment is quite Europian,' said the major, 'and does not
surprise me; what would your English millions say to such a swamp in
England, sir?'
'They'd say it was an uncommon nasty one, I should think, said Mark;
'and that they would rather be inoculated for fever in some other way.'
'Europian!' remarked Chollop, with sardonic pity. 'Quite Europian!'
And there he sat. Silent and cool, as if the house were his; smoking
away like a factory chimney.
Mr Chollop was, of course, one of the most remarkable men in the
country; but he really was a notorious person besides. He was usually
described by his friends, in the South and West, as 'a splendid sample
of our na-tive raw material, sir,' and was much esteemed for his
devotion to rational Liberty; for the better propagation whereof he
usually carried a brace of revolving pistols in his coat pocket, with
seven barrels a-piece. He also carried, amongst other trinkets, a
sword-stick, which he called his 'Tickler.' and a great knife, which
(for he was a man of a pleasant turn of humour) he called 'Ripper,' in
allusion to its usefulness as a means of ventilating the stomach of
any adversary in a close contest. He had used these weapons with
distinguished effect in several instances, all duly chronicled in the
newspapers; and was greatly beloved for the gallant manner in which
he had 'jobbed out' the eye of one gentleman, as he was in the act of
knocking at his own street-door.
Mr Chollop was a man of a roving disposition; and, in any less advanced
community, might have been mistaken for a violent vagabond. But his fine
qualities being perfectly understood and appreciated in those regions
where his lot was cast, and where he had many kindred spirits to consort
with, he may be regarded as having been born under a fortunate star,
which is not always the case with a man so much before the age in which
he lives. Preferring, with a view to the gratification of his tickling
and ripping fancies, to dwell upon the outskirts of society, and in the
more remote towns and cities, he was in the habit of emigrating from
place to place, and establishing in each some business--usually a
newspaper--which he presently sold; for the most part closing the
bargain by challenging, stabbing, pistolling, or gouging the new editor,
before he had quite taken possession of the property.
He had come to Eden on a speculation of this kind, but had abandoned it,
and was about to leave. He always introduced himself to strangers as
a worshipper of Freedom; was the consistent advocate of Lynch law,
and slavery; and invariably recommended, both in print and speech,
the 'tarring and feathering' of any unpopular person who differed from
himself. He called this 'planting the standard of civilization in the
wilder gardens of My country.'
There is little doubt that Chollop would have planted this standard in
Eden at Mark's expense, in return for his plainness of speech (for the
genuine Freedom is dumb, save when she vaunts herself), but for the
utter desolation and decay prevailing in the settlement, and his own
approaching departure from it. As it was, he contented himself with
showing Mark one of the revolving-pistols, and asking him what he
thought of that weapon.
'It ain't long since I shot a man down with that, sir, in the State of
IllinOY,' observed Chollop.
'Did you, indeed!' said Mark, without the smallest agitation. 'Very free
of you. And very independent!'
'I shot him down, sir,' pursued Chollop, 'for asserting in the Spartan
Portico, a tri-weekly journal, that the ancient Athenians went a-head of
the present Locofoco Ticket.'
'And what's that?' asked Mark.
'Europian not to know,' said Chollop, smoking placidly. 'Europian
quite!'
After a short devotion to the interests of the magic circle, he resumed
the conversation by observing:
'You won't half feel yourself at home in Eden, now?'
'No,' said Mark, 'I don't.'
'You miss the imposts of your country. You miss the house dues?'
observed Chollop.
'And the houses--rather,' said Mark.
'No window dues here, sir,' observed Chollop.
'And no windows to put 'em on,' said Mark.
'No stakes, no dungeons, no blocks, no racks, no scaffolds, no
thumbscrews, no pikes, no pillories,' said Chollop.
'Nothing but rewolwers and bowie-knives,' returned Mark. 'And what are
they? Not worth mentioning!'
The man who had met them on the night of their arrival came crawling up
at this juncture, and looked in at the door.
'Well, sir,' said Chollop. 'How do YOU git along?'
He had considerable difficulty in getting along at all, and said as much
in reply.
'Mr Co. And me, sir,' observed Chollop, 'are disputating a piece. He
ought to be slicked up pretty smart to disputate between the Old World
and the New, I do expect?'
'Well!' returned the miserable shadow. 'So he had.'
'I was merely observing, sir,' said Mark, addressing this new visitor,
'that I looked upon the city in which we have the honour to live, as
being swampy. What's your sentiments?'
'I opinionate it's moist perhaps, at certain times,' returned the man.
'But not as moist as England, sir?' cried Chollop, with a fierce
expression in his face.
'Oh! Not as moist as England; let alone its Institutions,' said the man.
'I should hope there ain't a swamp in all Americay, as don't whip THAT
small island into mush and molasses,' observed Chollop, decisively. 'You
bought slick, straight, and right away, of Scadder, sir?' to Mark.
He answered in the affirmative. Mr Chollop winked at the other citizen.
'Scadder is a smart man, sir? He is a rising man? He is a man as will
come up'ards, right side up, sir?' Mr Chollop winked again at the other
citizen.
'He should have his right side very high up, if I had my way,' said
Mark. 'As high up as the top of a good tall gallows, perhaps.'
Mr Chollop was so delighted at the smartness of his excellent countryman
having been too much for the Britisher, and at the Britisher's resenting
it, that he could contain himself no longer, and broke forth in a shout
of delight. But the strangest exposition of this ruling passion was
in the other--the pestilence-stricken, broken, miserable shadow of a
man--who derived so much entertainment from the circumstance that he
seemed to forget his own ruin in thinking of it, and laughed outright
when he said 'that Scadder was a smart man, and had draw'd a lot of
British capital that way, as sure as sun-up.'
After a full enjoyment of this joke, Mr Hannibal Chollop sat smoking and
improving the circle, without making any attempts either to converse or
to take leave; apparently labouring under the not uncommon delusion
that for a free and enlightened citizen of the United States to convert
another man's house into a spittoon for two or three hours together, was
a delicate attention, full of interest and politeness, of which nobody
could ever tire. At last he rose.
'I am a-going easy,' he observed.
Mark entreated him to take particular care of himself.
'Afore I go,' he said sternly, 'I have got a leetle word to say to you.
You are darnation 'cute, you are.'
Mark thanked him for the compliment.
'But you are much too 'cute to last. I can't con-ceive of any spotted
Painter in the bush, as ever was so riddled through and through as you
will be, I bet.'
'What for?' asked Mark.
'We must be cracked up, sir,' retorted Chollop, in a tone of menace.
'You are not now in A despotic land. We are a model to the airth, and
must be jist cracked-up, I tell you.'
'What! I speak too free, do I?' cried Mark.
'I have draw'd upon A man, and fired upon A man for less,' said Chollop,
frowning. 'I have know'd strong men obleeged to make themselves uncommon
skase for less. I have know'd men Lynched for less, and beaten into
punkin'-sarse for less, by an enlightened people. We are the intellect
and virtue of the airth, the cream of human natur', and the flower
Of moral force. Our backs is easy ris. We must be cracked-up, or they
rises, and we snarls. We shows our teeth, I tell you, fierce. You'd
better crack us up, you had!'
After the delivery of this caution, Mr Chollop departed; with Ripper,
Tickler, and the revolvers, all ready for action on the shortest notice.
'Come out from under the blanket, sir,' said Mark, 'he's gone. What's
this!' he added softly; kneeling down to look into his partner's
face, and taking his hot hand. 'What's come of all that chattering and
swaggering? He's wandering in his mind to-night, and don't know me!'
Martin indeed was dangerously ill; very near his death. He lay in that
state many days, during which time Mark's poor friends, regardless of
themselves, attended him. Mark, fatigued in mind and body; working
all the day and sitting up at night; worn with hard living and the
unaccustomed toil of his new life; surrounded by dismal and discouraging
circumstances of every kind; never complained or yielded in the least
degree. If ever he had thought Martin selfish or inconsiderate, or had
deemed him energetic only by fits and starts, and then too passive for
their desperate fortunes, he now forgot it all. He remembered nothing
but the better qualities of his fellow-wanderer, and was devoted to him,
heart and hand.
Many weeks elapsed before Martin was strong enough to move about with
the help of a stick and Mark's arm; and even then his recovery, for want
of wholesome air and proper nourishment, was very slow. He was yet in a
feeble and weak condition, when the misfourtune he had so much dreaded
fell upon them. Mark was taken ill.
Mark fought against it; but the malady fought harder, and his efforts
were in vain.
'Floored for the present, sir,' he said one morning, sinking back upon
his bed; 'but jolly!'
Floored indeed, and by a heavy blow! As any one but Martin might have
known beforehand.
If Mark's friends had been kind to Martin (and they had been very), they
were twenty times kinder to Mark. And now it was Martin's turn to work,
and sit beside the bed and watch, and listen through the long, long
nights, to every sound in the gloomy wilderness; and hear poor Mr
Tapley, in his wandering fancy, playing at skittles in the Dragon,
making love-remonstrances to Mrs Lupin, getting his sea-legs on board
the Screw, travelling with old Tom Pinch on English roads, and burning
stumps of trees in Eden, all at once.
But whenever Martin gave him drink or medicine, or tended him in any
way, or came into the house returning from some drudgery without, the
patient Mr Tapley brightened up and cried: 'I'm jolly, sir; 'I'm jolly!'
Now, when Martin began to think of this, and to look at Mark as he lay
there; never reproaching him by so much as an expression of regret;
never murmuring; always striving to be manful and staunch; he began to
think, how was it that this man who had had so few advantages, was so
much better than he who had had so many? And attendance upon a sick bed,
but especially the sick bed of one whom we have been accustomed to see
in full activity and vigour, being a great breeder of reflection, he
began to ask himself in what they differed.
He was assisted in coming to a conclusion on this head by the frequent
presence of Mark's friend, their fellow-passenger across the ocean,
which suggested to him that in regard to having aided her, for example,
they had differed very much. Somehow he coupled Tom Pinch with this
train of reflection; and thinking that Tom would be very likely to have
struck up the same sort of acquaintance under similar circumstances,
began to think in what respects two people so extremely different were
like each other, and were unlike him. At first sight there was nothing
very distressing in these meditations, but they did undoubtedly distress
him for all that.
Martin's nature was a frank and generous one; but he had been bred up
in his grandfather's house; and it will usually be found that the
meaner domestic vices propagate themselves to be their own antagonists.
Selfishness does this especially; so do suspicion, cunning, stealth, and
covetous propensities. Martin had unconsciously reasoned as a child, 'My
guardian takes so much thought of himself, that unless I do the like by
MYself, I shall be forgotten.' So he had grown selfish.
But he had never known it. If any one had taxed him with the vice, he
would have indignantly repelled the accusation, and conceived himself
unworthily aspersed. He never would have known it, but that being newly
risen from a bed of dangerous sickness, to watch by such another couch,
he felt how nearly Self had dropped into the grave, and what a poor
dependent, miserable thing it was.
It was natural for him to reflect--he had months to do it in--upon his
own escape, and Mark's extremity. This led him to consider which of them
could be the better spared, and why? Then the curtain slowly rose a very
little way; and Self, Self, Self, was shown below.
He asked himself, besides, when dreading Mark's decease (as all men do
and must, at such a time), whether he had done his duty by him, and had
deserved and made a good response to his fidelity and zeal. No. Short
as their companionship had been, he felt in many, many instances, that
there was blame against himself; and still inquiring why, the curtain
slowly rose a little more, and Self, Self, Self, dilated on the scene.
It was long before he fixed the knowledge of himself so firmly in his
mind that he could thoroughly discern the truth; but in the hideous
solitude of that most hideous place, with Hope so far removed, Ambition
quenched, and Death beside him rattling at the very door, reflection
came, as in a plague-beleaguered town; and so he felt and knew the
failing of his life, and saw distinctly what an ugly spot it was.
Eden was a hard school to learn so hard a lesson in; but there were
teachers in the swamp and thicket, and the pestilential air, who had a
searching method of their own.
He made a solemn resolution that when his strength returned he would not
dispute the point or resist the conviction, but would look upon it as an
established fact, that selfishness was in his breast, and must be rooted
out. He was so doubtful (and with justice) of his own character, that he
determined not to say one word of vain regret or good resolve to Mark,
but steadily to keep his purpose before his own eyes solely; and there
was not a jot of pride in this; nothing but humility and steadfastness;
the best armour he could wear. So low had Eden brought him down. So high
had Eden raised him up.
After a long and lingering illness (in certain forlorn stages of which,
when too far gone to speak, he had feebly written 'jolly!' on a slate),
Mark showed some symptoms of returning health. They came and went, and
flickered for a time; but he began to mend at last decidedly; and after
that continued to improve from day to day.
As soon as he was well enough to talk without fatigue, Martin consulted
him upon a project he had in his mind, and which a few months back he
would have carried into execution without troubling anybody's head but
his own.
'Ours is a desperate case,' said Martin. 'Plainly. The place is
deserted; its failure must have become known; and selling what we have
bought to any one, for anything, is hopeless, even if it were honest. We
left home on a mad enterprise, and have failed. The only hope left
us, the only one end for which we have now to try, is to quit this
settlement for ever, and get back to England. Anyhow! by any means! only
to get back there, Mark.'
'That's all, sir,' returned Mr Tapley, with a significant stress upon
the words; 'only that!'
'Now, upon this side of the water,' said Martin, 'we have but one friend
who can help us, and that is Mr Bevan.'
'I thought of him when you was ill,' said Mark.
'But for the time that would be lost, I would even write to my
grandfather,' Martin went on to say, 'and implore him for money to free
us from this trap into which we were so cruelly decoyed. Shall I try Mr
Bevan first?'
'He's a very pleasant sort of a gentleman,' said Mark. 'I think so.'
'The few goods we brought here, and in which we spent our money, would
produce something if sold,' resumed Martin; 'and whatever they realise
shall be paid him instantly. But they can't be sold here.'
'There's nobody but corpses to buy 'em,' said Mr Tapley, shaking his
head with a rueful air, 'and pigs.'
'Shall I tell him so, and only ask him for money enough to enable us by
the cheapest means to reach New York, or any port from which we may hope
to get a passage home, by serving in any capacity? Explaining to him
at the same time how I am connected, and that I will endeavour to
repay him, even through my grandfather, immediately on our arrival in
England?'
'Why to be sure,' said Mark: 'he can only say no, and he may say yes. If
you don't mind trying him, sir--'
'Mind!' exclaimed Martin. 'I am to blame for coming here, and I would do
anything to get away. I grieve to think of the past. If I had taken your
opinion sooner, Mark, we never should have been here, I am certain.'
Mr Tapley was very much surprised at this admission, but protested, with
great vehemence, that they would have been there all the same; and that
he had set his heart upon coming to Eden, from the first word he had
ever heard of it.
Martin then read him a letter to Mr Bevan, which he had already
prepared. It was frankly and ingenuously written, and described their
situation without the least concealment; plainly stated the miseries
they had undergone; and preferred their request in modest but
straightforward terms. Mark highly commended it; and they determined to
dispatch it by the next steamboat going the right way, that might call
to take in wood at Eden--where there was plenty of wood to spare.
Not knowing how to address Mr Bevan at his own place of abode, Martin
superscribed it to the care of the memorable Mr Norris of New York,
and wrote upon the cover an entreaty that it might be forwarded without
delay.
More than a week elapsed before a boat appeared; but at length they were
awakened very early one morning by the high-pressure snorting of
the 'Esau Slodge;' named after one of the most remarkable men in the
country, who had been very eminent somewhere. Hurrying down to the
landing-place, they got it safe on board; and waiting anxiously to see
the boat depart, stopped up the gangway; an instance of neglect which
caused the 'Capting' of the Esau Slodge to 'wish he might be sifted fine
as flour, and whittled small as chips; that if they didn't come off that
there fixing right smart too, he'd spill 'em in the drink;' whereby the
Capting metaphorically said he'd throw them in the river.
They were not likely to receive an answer for eight or ten weeks at the
earliest. In the meantime they devoted such strength as they had to
the attempted improvement of their land; to clearing some of it, and
preparing it for useful purposes. Monstrously defective as their farming
was, still it was better than their neighbours'; for Mark had some
practical knowledge of such matters, and Martin learned of him; whereas
the other settlers who remained upon the putrid swamp (a mere handful,
and those withered by disease), appeared to have wandered there with
the idea that husbandry was the natural gift of all mankind. They helped
each other after their own manner in these struggles, and in all others;
but they worked as hopelessly and sadly as a gang of convicts in a penal
settlement.
Often at night when Mark and Martin were alone, and lying down to sleep,
they spoke of home, familiar places, houses, roads, and people whom they
knew; sometimes in the lively hope of seeing them again, and sometimes
with a sorrowful tranquillity, as if that hope were dead. It was a
source of great amazement to Mark Tapley to find, pervading all these
conversations, a singular alteration in Martin.
'I don't know what to make of him,' he thought one night, 'he ain't what
I supposed. He don't think of himself half as much. I'll try him again.
Asleep, sir?'
'No, Mark.'
'Thinking of home, sir?'
'Yes, Mark.'
'So was I, sir. I was wondering how Mr Pinch and Mr Pecksniff gets on
now.'
'Poor Tom!' said Martin, thoughtfully.
'Weak-minded man, sir,' observed Mr Tapley. 'Plays the organ for
nothing, sir. Takes no care of himself?'
'I wish he took a little more, indeed,' said Martin. 'Though I don't
know why I should. We shouldn't like him half as well, perhaps.'
'He gets put upon, sir,' hinted Mark.
'Yes!' said Martin, after a short silence. 'I know that, Mark.'
He spoke so regretfully that his partner abandoned the theme, and was
silent for a short time until he had thought of another.
'Ah, sir!' said Mark, with a sigh. 'Dear me! You've ventured a good deal
for a young lady's love!'
'I tell you what. I'm not so sure of that, Mark,' was the reply; so
hastily and energetically spoken, that Martin sat up in his bed to give
it. 'I begin to be far from clear upon it. You may depend upon it she is
very unhappy. She has sacrificed her peace of mind; she has endangered
her interests very much; she can't run away from those who are jealous
of her, and opposed to her, as I have done. She has to endure, Mark; to
endure without the possibility of action, poor girl! I begin to think
that she has more to bear than ever I had. Upon my soul I do!'
Mr Tapley opened his eyes wide in the dark; but did not interrupt.
'And I'll tell you a secret, Mark,' said Martin, 'since we ARE upon this
subject. That ring--'
'Which ring, sir?' Mark inquired, opening his eyes still wider.
'That ring she gave me when we parted, Mark. She bought it; bought it;
knowing I was poor and proud (Heaven help me! Proud!) and wanted money.'
'Who says so, sir?' asked Mark.
'I say so. I know it. I thought of it, my good fellow, hundreds of
times, while you were lying ill. And like a beast, I took it from her
hand, and wore it on my own, and never dreamed of this even at the
moment when I parted with it, when some faint glimmering of the truth
might surely have possessed me! But it's late,' said Martin, checking
himself, 'and you are weak and tired, I know. You only talk to cheer me
up. Good night! God bless you, Mark!'
'God bless you, sir! But I'm reg'larly defrauded,' thought Mr Tapley,
turning round with a happy face. 'It's a swindle. I never entered for
this sort of service. There'll be no credit in being jolly with HIM!'
The time wore on, and other steamboats coming from the point on which
their hopes were fixed, arrived to take in wood; but still no answer
to the letter. Rain, heat, foul slime, and noxious vapour, with all the
ills and filthy things they bred, prevailed. The earth, the air, the
vegetation, and the water that they drank, all teemed with deadly
properties. Their fellow-passenger had lost two children long before;
and buried now her last. Such things are much too common to be widely
known or cared for. Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims
smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.
At last a boat came panting up the ugly river, and stopped at Eden. Mark
was waiting at the wood hut when it came, and had a letter handed to
him from on board. He bore it off to Martin. They looked at one another,
trembling.
'It feels heavy,' faltered Martin. And opening it a little roll of
dollar-notes fell out upon the ground.
What either of them said, or did, or felt, at first, neither of them
knew. All Mark could ever tell was, that he was at the river's bank
again out of breath, before the boat had gone, inquiring when it would
retrace its track and put in there.
The answer was, in ten or twelve days; notwithstanding which they began
to get their goods together and to tie them up that very night. When
this stage of excitement was passed, each of them believed (they found
this out, in talking of it afterwards) that he would surely die before
the boat returned.
They lived, however, and it came, after the lapse of three long crawling
weeks. At sunrise, on an autumn day, they stood upon her deck.
'Courage! We shall meet again!' cried Martin, waving his hand to two
thin figures on the bank. 'In the Old World!'
'Or in the next one,' added Mark below his breath. 'To see them standing
side by side, so quiet, is a'most the worst of all!'
They looked at one another as the vessel moved away, and then looked
backward at the spot from which it hurried fast. The log-house, with the
open door, and drooping trees about it; the stagnant morning mist, and
red sun, dimly seen beyond; the vapour rising up from land and river;
the quick stream making the loathsome banks it washed more flat and
dull; how often they returned in dreams! How often it was happiness to
wake and find them Shadows that had vanished!
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
IN WHICH THE TRAVELLERS MOVE HOMEWARD, AND ENCOUNTER SOME DISTINGUISHED
CHARACTERS UPON THE WAY
Among the passengers on board the steamboat, there was a faint gentleman
sitting on a low camp-stool, with his legs on a high barrel of flour, as
if he were looking at the prospect with his ankles, who attracted their
attention speedily.
He had straight black hair, parted up the middle of his head and hanging
down upon his coat; a little fringe of hair upon his chin; wore no
neckcloth; a white hat; a suit of black, long in the sleeves and short
in the legs; soiled brown stockings and laced shoes. His complexion,
naturally muddy, was rendered muddier by too strict an economy of soap
and water; and the same observation will apply to the washable part
of his attire, which he might have changed with comfort to himself and
gratification to his friends. He was about five and thirty; was crushed
and jammed up in a heap, under the shade of a large green cotton
umbrella; and ruminated over his tobacco-plug like a cow.
He was not singular, to be sure, in these respects; for every gentleman
on board appeared to have had a difference with his laundress and to
have left off washing himself in early youth. Every gentleman, too,
was perfectly stopped up with tight plugging, and was dislocated in
the greater part of his joints. But about this gentleman there was a
peculiar air of sagacity and wisdom, which convinced Martin that he was
no common character; and this turned out to be the case.
'How do you do sir?' said a voice in Martin's ear
'How do you do sir?' said Martin.
It was a tall thin gentleman who spoke to him, with a carpet-cap on,
and a long loose coat of green baize, ornamented about the pockets with
black velvet.
'You air from Europe, sir?'
'I am,' said Martin.
'You air fortunate, sir.'
Martin thought so too; but he soon discovered that the gentleman and he
attached different meanings to this remark.
'You air fortunate, sir, in having an opportunity of beholding our
Elijah Pogram, sir.'
'Your Elijahpogram!' said Martin, thinking it was all one word, and a
building of some sort.
'Yes sir.'
Martin tried to look as if he understood him, but he couldn't make it
out.
'Yes, sir,' repeated the gentleman, 'our Elijah Pogram, sir, is, at this
minute, identically settin' by the engine biler.'
The gentleman under the umbrella put his right forefinger to his
eyebrow, as if he were revolving schemes of state.
'That is Elijah Pogram, is it?' said Martin.
'Yes, sir,' replied the other. 'That is Elijah Pogram.'
'Dear me!' said Martin. 'I am astonished.' But he had not the least idea
who this Elijah Pogram was; having never heard the name in all his life.
'If the biler of this vessel was Toe bust, sir,' said his new
acquaintance, 'and Toe bust now, this would be a festival day in the
calendar of despotism; pretty nigh equallin', sir, in its effects upon
the human race, our Fourth of glorious July. Yes, sir, that is the
Honourable Elijah Pogram, Member of Congress; one of the master-minds of
our country, sir. There is a brow, sir, there!'
'Quite remarkable,' said Martin.
'Yes, sir. Our own immortal Chiggle, sir, is said to have observed,
when he made the celebrated Pogram statter in marble, which rose so much
con-test and preju-dice in Europe, that the brow was more than mortal.
This was before the Pogram Defiance, and was, therefore, a pre-diction,
cruel smart.'
'What is the Pogram Defiance?' asked Martin, thinking, perhaps, it was
the sign of a public-house.
'An o-ration, sir,' returned his friend.
'Oh! to be sure,' cried Martin. 'What am I thinking of! It defied--'
'It defied the world, sir,' said the other, gravely. 'Defied the world
in general to com-pete with our country upon any hook; and devellop'd
our internal resources for making war upon the universal airth. You
would like to know Elijah Pogram, sir?'
'If you please,' said Martin.
'Mr Pogram,' said the stranger--Mr Pogram having overheard every word of
the dialogue--'this is a gentleman from Europe, sir; from England, sir.
But gen'rous ene-mies may meet upon the neutral sile of private life, I
think.'
The languid Mr Pogram shook hands with Martin, like a clock-work figure
that was just running down. But he made amends by chewing like one that
was just wound up.
'Mr Pogram,' said the introducer, 'is a public servant, sir. When
Congress is recessed, he makes himself acquainted with those free United
States, of which he is the gifted son.'
It occurred to Martin that if the Honourable Elijah Pogram had stayed at
home, and sent his shoes upon a tour, they would have answered the
same purpose; for they were the only part of him in a situation to see
anything.
In course of time, however, Mr Pogram rose; and having ejected certain
plugging consequences which would have impeded his articulation, took up
a position where there was something to lean against, and began to talk
to Martin; shading himself with the green umbrella all the time.
As he began with the words, 'How do you like--?' Martin took him up and
said:
'The country, I presume?'
'Yes, sir,' said Elijah Pogram. A knot of passengers gathered round to
hear what followed; and Martin heard his friend say, as he whispered
to another friend, and rubbed his hands, 'Pogram will smash him into
sky-blue fits, I know!'
'Why,' said Martin, after a moment's hesitation, 'I have learned by
experience, that you take an unfair advantage of a stranger, when you
ask that question. You don't mean it to be answered, except in one way.
Now, I don't choose to answer it in that way, for I cannot honestly
answer it in that way. And therefore, I would rather not answer it at
all.'
But Mr Pogram was going to make a great speech in the next session
about foreign relations, and was going to write strong articles on the
subject; and as he greatly favoured the free and independent custom (a
very harmless and agreeable one) of procuring information of any sort
in any kind of confidence, and afterwards perverting it publicly in any
manner that happened to suit him, he had determined to get at Martin's
opinions somehow or other. For if he could have got nothing out of
him, he would have had to invent it for him, and that would have been
laborious. He made a mental note of his answer, and went in again.
'You are from Eden, sir? How did you like Eden?'
Martin said what he thought of that part of the country, in pretty
strong terms.
'It is strange,' said Pogram, looking round upon the group, 'this hatred
of our country, and her Institutions! This national antipathy is deeply
rooted in the British mind!'
'Good Heaven, sir,' cried Martin. 'Is the Eden Land Corporation, with Mr
Scadder at its head, and all the misery it has worked, at its door, an
Institution of America? A part of any form of government that ever was
known or heard of?'
'I con-sider the cause of this to be,' said Pogram, looking round again
and taking himself up where Martin had interrupted him, 'partly jealousy
and pre-judice, and partly the nat'ral unfitness of the British people
to appreciate the ex-alted Institutions of our native land. I expect,
sir,' turning to Martin again, 'that a gentleman named Chollop happened
in upon you during your lo-cation in the town of Eden?'
'Yes,' answered Martin; 'but my friend can answer this better than I
can, for I was very ill at the time. Mark! The gentleman is speaking of
Mr Chollop.'
'Oh. Yes, sir. Yes. I see him,' observed Mark.
'A splendid example of our na-tive raw material, sir?' said Pogram,
interrogatively.
'Indeed, sir!' cried Mark.
The Honourable Elijah Pogram glanced at his friends as though he would
have said, 'Observe this! See what follows!' and they rendered tribute
to the Pogram genius by a gentle murmur.
'Our fellow-countryman is a model of a man, quite fresh from Natur's
mould!' said Pogram, with enthusiasm. 'He is a true-born child of this
free hemisphere! Verdant as the mountains of our country; bright and
flowing as our mineral Licks; unspiled by withering conventionalities
as air our broad and boundless Perearers! Rough he may be. So air
our Barrs. Wild he may be. So air our Buffalers. But he is a child of
Natur', and a child of Freedom; and his boastful answer to the Despot
and the Tyrant is, that his bright home is in the Settin Sun.'
Part of this referred to Chollop, and part to a Western postmaster, who,
being a public defaulter not very long before (a character not at all
uncommon in America), had been removed from office; and on whose behalf
Mr Pogram (he voted for Pogram) had thundered the last sentence from
his seat in Congress, at the head of an unpopular President. It told
brilliantly; for the bystanders were delighted, and one of them said to
Martin, 'that he guessed he had now seen something of the eloquential
aspect of our country, and was chawed up pritty small.'
Mr Pogram waited until his hearers were calm again, before he said to
Mark:
'You do not seem to coincide, sir?'
'Why,' said Mark, 'I didn't like him much; and that's the truth, sir. I
thought he was a bully; and I didn't admire his carryin' them murderous
little persuaders, and being so ready to use 'em.'
'It's singler!' said Pogram, lifting his umbrella high enough to
look all round from under it. 'It's strange! You observe the settled
opposition to our Institutions which pervades the British mind!'
'What an extraordinary people you are!' cried Martin. 'Are Mr Chollop
and the class he represents, an Institution here? Are pistols with
revolving barrels, sword-sticks, bowie-knives, and such things,
Institutions on which you pride yourselves? Are bloody duels, brutal
combats, savage assaults, shooting down and stabbing in the streets,
your Institutions! Why, I shall hear next that Dishonour and Fraud are
among the Institutions of the great republic!'
The moment the words passed his lips, the Honourable Elijah Pogram
looked round again.
'This morbid hatred of our Institutions,' he observed, 'is quite a study
for the psychological observer. He's alludin' to Repudiation now!'
'Oh! you may make anything an Institution if you like,' said Martin,
laughing, 'and I confess you had me there, for you certainly have made
that one. But the greater part of these things are one Institution with
us, and we call it by the generic name of Old Bailey!'
The bell being rung for dinner at this moment, everybody ran away
into the cabin, whither the Honourable Elijah Pogram fled with such
precipitation that he forgot his umbrella was up, and fixed it so
tightly in the cabin door that it could neither be let down nor got out.
For a minute or so this accident created a perfect rebellion among the
hungry passengers behind, who, seeing the dishes, and hearing the knives
and forks at work, well knew what would happen unless they got there
instantly, and were nearly mad; while several virtuous citizens at the
table were in deadly peril of choking themselves in their unnatural
efforts to get rid of all the meat before these others came.
They carried the umbrella by storm, however, and rushed in at the
breach. The Honourable Elijah Pogram and Martin found themselves, after
a severe struggle, side by side, as they might have come together in the
pit of a London theatre; and for four whole minutes afterwards, Pogram
was snapping up great blocks of everything he could get hold of, like a
raven. When he had taken this unusually protracted dinner, he began
to talk to Martin; and begged him not to have the least delicacy in
speaking with perfect freedom to him, for he was a calm philosopher.
Which Martin was extremely glad to hear; for he had begun to speculate
on Elijah being a disciple of that other school of republican
philosophy, whose noble sentiments are carved with knives upon a pupil's
body, and written, not with pen and ink, but tar and feathers.
'What do you think of my countrymen who are present, sir?' inquired
Elijah Pogram.
'Oh! very pleasant,' said Martin.
They were a very pleasant party. No man had spoken a word; every one had
been intent, as usual, on his own private gorging; and the greater part
of the company were decidedly dirty feeders.
The Honourable Elijah Pogram looked at Martin as if he thought 'You
don't mean that, I know!' and he was soon confirmed in this opinion.
Sitting opposite to them was a gentleman in a high state of tobacco, who
wore quite a little beard, composed of the overflowing of that weed, as
they had dried about his mouth and chin; so common an ornament that it
would scarcely have attracted Martin's observation, but that this good
citizen, burning to assert his equality against all comers, sucked his
knife for some moments, and made a cut with it at the butter, just as
Martin was in the act of taking some. There was a juiciness about the
deed that might have sickened a scavenger.
When Elijah Pogram (to whom this was an every-day incident) saw that
Martin put the plate away, and took no butter, he was quite delighted,
and said,
'Well! The morbid hatred of you British to the Institutions of our
country is as-TONishing!'
'Upon my life!' cried Martin, in his turn. 'This is the most wonderful
community that ever existed. A man deliberately makes a hog of himself,
and THAT'S an Institution!'
'We have no time to ac-quire forms, sir,' said Elijah Pogram.
'Acquire!' cried Martin. 'But it's not a question of acquiring anything.
It's a question of losing the natural politeness of a savage, and that
instinctive good breeding which admonishes one man not to offend and
disgust another. Don't you think that man over the way, for instance,
naturally knows better, but considers it a very fine and independent
thing to be a brute in small matters?'
'He is a na-tive of our country, and is nat'rally bright and spry, of
course,' said Mr Pogram.
'Now, observe what this comes to, Mr Pogram,' pursued Martin. 'The
mass of your countrymen begin by stubbornly neglecting little social
observances, which have nothing to do with gentility, custom, usage,
government, or country, but are acts of common, decent, natural, human
politeness. You abet them in this, by resenting all attacks upon their
social offences as if they were a beautiful national feature. From
disregarding small obligations they come in regular course to disregard
great ones; and so refuse to pay their debts. What they may do, or what
they may refuse to do next, I don't know; but any man may see if he
will, that it will be something following in natural succession, and a
part of one great growth, which is rotten at the root.'
The mind of Mr Pogram was too philosophical to see this; so they went on
deck again, where, resuming his former post, he chewed until he was in a
lethargic state, amounting to insensibility.
After a weary voyage of several days, they came again to that same wharf
where Mark had been so nearly left behind, on the night of starting for
Eden. Captain Kedgick, the landlord, was standing there, and was greatly
surprised to see them coming from the boat.
'Why, what the 'tarnal!' cried the Captain. 'Well! I do admire at this,
I do!'
'We can stay at your house until to-morrow, Captain, I suppose?' said
Martin.
'I reckon you can stay there for a twelvemonth if you like,' retorted
Kedgick coolly. 'But our people won't best like your coming back.'
'Won't like it, Captain Kedgick!' said Martin.
'They did expect you was a-going to settle,' Kedgick answered, as he
shook his head. 'They've been took in, you can't deny!'
'What do you mean?' cried Martin.
'You didn't ought to have received 'em,' said the Captain. 'No you
didn't!'
'My good friend,' returned Martin, 'did I want to receive them? Was
it any act of mine? Didn't you tell me they would rile up, and that I
should be flayed like a wild cat--and threaten all kinds of vengeance,
if I didn't receive them?'
'I don't know about that,' returned the Captain. 'But when our people's
frills is out, they're starched up pretty stiff, I tell you!'
With that, he fell into the rear to walk with Mark, while Martin and
Elijah Pogram went on to the National.
'We've come back alive, you see!' said Mark.
'It ain't the thing I did expect,' the Captain grumbled. 'A man ain't
got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views. Our
fashionable people wouldn't have attended his le-vee, if they had know'd
it.'
Nothing mollified the Captain, who persisted in taking it very ill
that they had not both died in Eden. The boarders at the National felt
strongly on the subject too; but it happened by good fortune that they
had not much time to think about this grievance, for it was suddenly
determined to pounce upon the Honourable Elijah Pogram, and give HIM a
le-vee forthwith.
As the general evening meal of the house was over before the arrival of
the boat, Martin, Mark, and Pogram were taking tea and fixings at the
public table by themselves, when the deputation entered to announce this
honour; consisting of six gentlemen boarders and a very shrill boy.
'Sir!' said the spokesman.
'Mr Pogram!' cried the shrill boy.
The spokesman thus reminded of the shrill boy's presence, introduced
him. 'Doctor Ginery Dunkle, sir. A gentleman of great poetical elements.
He has recently jined us here, sir, and is an acquisition to us, sir,
I do assure you. Yes, sir. Mr Jodd, sir. Mr Izzard, sir. Mr Julius Bib,
sir.'
'Julius Washington Merryweather Bib,' said the gentleman himself TO
himself.
'I beg your pardon, sir. Excuse me. Mr Julius Washington Merryweather
Bib, sir; a gentleman in the lumber line, sir, and much esteemed.
Colonel Groper, sir. Pro-fessor Piper, sir. My own name, sir, is Oscar
Buffum.'
Each man took one slide forward as he was named; butted at the
Honourable Elijah Pogram with his head; shook hands, and slid back
again. The introductions being completed, the spokesman resumed.
'Sir!'
'Mr Pogram!' cried the shrill boy.
'Perhaps,' said the spokesman, with a hopeless look, 'you will be so
good, Dr. Ginery Dunkle, as to charge yourself with the execution of our
little office, sir?'
As there was nothing the shrill boy desired more, he immediately stepped
forward.
'Mr Pogram! Sir! A handful of your fellow-citizens, sir, hearing of your
arrival at the National Hotel, and feeling the patriotic character of
your public services, wish, sir, to have the gratification of beholding
you, and mixing with you, sir; and unbending with you, sir, in those
moments which--'
'Air,' suggested Buffum.
'Which air so peculiarly the lot, sir, of our great and happy country.'
'Hear!' cried Colonel Grouper, in a loud voice. 'Good! Hear him! Good!'
'And therefore, sir,' pursued the Doctor, 'they request; as A mark Of
their respect; the honour of your company at a little le-Vee, sir, in
the ladies' ordinary, at eight o'clock.'
Mr Pogram bowed, and said:
'Fellow countrymen!'
'Good!' cried the Colonel. 'Hear, him! Good!'
Mr Pogram bowed to the Colonel individually, and then resumed.
'Your approbation of My labours in the common cause goes to My heart. At
all times and in all places; in the ladies' ordinary, My friends, and in
the Battle Field--'
'Good, very good! Hear him! Hear him!' said the Colonel.
'The name of Pogram will be proud to jine you. And may it, My friends,
be written on My tomb, "He was a member of the Congress of our common
country, and was ac-Tive in his trust."'
'The Com-mittee, sir,' said the shrill boy, 'will wait upon you at five
minutes afore eight. I take My leave, sir!'
Mr Pogram shook hands with him, and everybody else, once more; and when
they came back again at five minutes before eight, they said, one by
one, in a melancholy voice, 'How do you do, sir?' and shook hands with
Mr Pogram all over again, as if he had been abroad for a twelvemonth in
the meantime, and they met, now, at a funeral.
But by this time Mr Pogram had freshened himself up, and had composed
his hair and features after the Pogram statue, so that any one with half
an eye might cry out, 'There he is! as he delivered the Defiance!'
The Committee were embellished also; and when they entered the ladies'
ordinary in a body, there was much clapping of hands from ladies and
gentlemen, accompanied by cries of 'Pogram! Pogram!' and some standing
up on chairs to see him.
The object of the popular caress looked round the room as he walked up
it, and smiled; at the same time observing to the shrill boy, that he
knew something of the beauty of the daughters of their common country,
but had never seen it in such lustre and perfection as at that moment.
Which the shrill boy put in the paper next day; to Elijah Pogram's great
surprise.
'We will re-quest you, sir, if you please,' said Buffum, laying hands on
Mr Pogram as if he were taking his measure for a coat, 'to stand up with
your back agin the wall right in the furthest corner, that there may
be more room for our fellow citizens. If you could set your back right
slap agin that curtain-peg, sir, keeping your left leg everlastingly
behind the stove, we should be fixed quite slick.'
Mr Pogram did as he was told, and wedged himself into such a little
corner that the Pogram statue wouldn't have known him.
The entertainments of the evening then began. Gentlemen brought ladies
up, and brought themselves up, and brought each other up; and asked
Elijah Pogram what he thought of this political question, and what
he thought of that; and looked at him, and looked at one another, and
seemed very unhappy indeed. The ladies on the chairs looked at Elijah
Pogram through their glasses, and said audibly, 'I wish he'd speak.
Why don't he speak? Oh, do ask him to speak!' And Elijah Pogram looked
sometimes at the ladies and sometimes elsewhere, delivering senatorial
opinions, as he was asked for them. But the great end and object of the
meeting seemed to be, not to let Elijah Pogram out of the corner on any
account; so there they kept him, hard and fast.
A great bustle at the door, in the course of the evening, announced the
arrival of some remarkable person; and immediately afterwards an elderly
gentleman, much excited, was seen to precipitate himself upon the crowd,
and battle his way towards the Honourable Elijah Pogram. Martin, who had
found a snug place of observation in a distant corner, where he
stood with Mark beside him (for he did not so often forget him now
as formerly, though he still did sometimes), thought he knew this
gentleman, but had no doubt of it, when he cried as loud as he could,
with his eyes starting out of his head:
'Sir, Mrs Hominy!'
'Lord bless that woman, Mark. She has turned up again!'
'Here she comes, sir,' answered Mr Tapley. 'Pogram knows her. A public
character! Always got her eye upon her country, sir! If that there
lady's husband is of my opinion, what a jolly old gentleman he must be!'
A lane was made; and Mrs Hominy, with the aristocratic stalk, the pocket
handkerchief, the clasped hands, and the classical cap, came slowly up
it, in a procession of one. Mr Pogram testified emotions of delight on
seeing her, and a general hush prevailed. For it was known that when
a woman like Mrs Hominy encountered a man like Pogram, something
interesting must be said.
Their first salutations were exchanged in a voice too low to reach the
impatient ears of the throng; but they soon became audible, for Mrs
Hominy felt her position, and knew what was expected of her.
Mrs H. was hard upon him at first; and put him through a rigid catechism
in reference to a certain vote he had given, which she had found it
necessary, as the mother of the modern Gracchi, to deprecate in a line
by itself, set up expressly for the purpose in German text. But Mr
Pogram evading it by a well-timed allusion to the star-spangled banner,
which, it appeared, had the remarkable peculiarity of flouting the
breeze whenever it was hoisted where the wind blew, she forgave him.
They now enlarged on certain questions of tariff, commercial treaty,
boundary, importation and exportation with great effect. And Mrs Hominy
not only talked, as the saying is, like a book, but actually did talk
her own books, word for word.
'My! what is this!' cried Mrs Hominy, opening a little note which was
handed her by her excited gentleman-usher. 'Do tell! oh, well, now! on'y
think!'
And then she read aloud, as follows:
'Two literary ladies present their compliments to the mother of the
modern Gracchi, and claim her kind introduction, as their talented
countrywoman, to the honourable (and distinguished) Elijah Pogram, whom
the two L. L.'s have often contemplated in the speaking marble of the
soul-subduing Chiggle. On a verbal intimation from the mother of the M.
G., that she will comply with the request of the two L. L.'s, they will
have the immediate pleasure of joining the galaxy assembled to do honour
to the patriotic conduct of a Pogram. It may be another bond of union
between the two L. L.'s and the mother of the M. G. to observe, that the
two L. L.'s are Transcendental.'
Mrs Hominy promptly rose, and proceeded to the door, whence she
returned, after a minute's interval, with the two L. L.'s, whom she led,
through the lane in the crowd, with all that stateliness of deportment
which was so remarkably her own, up to the great Elijah Pogram. It was
(as the shrill boy cried out in an ecstasy) quite the Last Scene from
Coriolanus. One of the L. L.'s wore a brown wig of uncommon size.
Sticking on the forehead of the other, by invisible means, was a massive
cameo, in size and shape like the raspberry tart which is ordinarily
sold for a penny, representing on its front the Capitol at Washington.
'Miss Toppit, and Miss Codger!' said Mrs Hominy.
'Codger's the lady so often mentioned in the English newspapers I should
think, sir,' whispered Mark. 'The oldest inhabitant as never remembers
anything.'
'To be presented to a Pogram,' said Miss Codger, 'by a Hominy, indeed,
a thrilling moment is it in its impressiveness on what we call our
feelings. But why we call them so, or why impressed they are, or if
impressed they are at all, or if at all we are, or if there really is,
oh gasping one! a Pogram or a Hominy, or any active principle to which
we give those titles, is a topic, Spirit searching, light abandoned,
much too vast to enter on, at this unlooked-for crisis.'
'Mind and matter,' said the lady in the wig, 'glide swift into the
vortex of immensity. Howls the sublime, and softly sleeps the calm
Ideal, in the whispering chambers of Imagination. To hear it, sweet
it is. But then, outlaughs the stern philosopher, and saith to the
Grotesque, "What ho! arrest for me that Agency. Go, bring it here!" And
so the vision fadeth.'
After this, they both took Mr Pogram by the hand, and pressed it to
their lips, as a patriotic palm. That homage paid, the mother of the
modern Gracchi called for chairs, and the three literary ladies went to
work in earnest, to bring poor Pogram out, and make him show himself in
all his brilliant colours.
How Pogram got out of his depth instantly, and how the three L. L.'s
were never in theirs, is a piece of history not worth recording. Suffice
it, that being all four out of their depths, and all unable to swim,
they splashed up words in all directions, and floundered about famously.
On the whole, it was considered to have been the severest mental
exercise ever heard in the National Hotel. Tears stood in the shrill
boy's eyes several times; and the whole company observed that their
heads ached with the effort--as well they might.
When it at last became necessary to release Elijah Pogram from the
corner, and the Committee saw him safely back again to the next room,
they were fervent in their admiration.
'Which,' said Mr Buffum, 'must have vent, or it will bust. Toe you,
Mr Pogram, I am grateful. Toe-wards you, sir, I am inspired with lofty
veneration, and with deep e-mo-tion. The sentiment Toe which I would
propose to give ex-pression, sir, is this: "May you ever be as firm,
sir, as your marble statter! May it ever be as great a terror Toe its
ene-mies as you."'
There is some reason to suppose that it was rather terrible to its
friends; being a statue of the Elevated or Goblin School, in which the
Honourable Elijah Pogram was represented as in a very high wind, with
his hair all standing on end, and his nostrils blown wide open. But Mr
Pogram thanked his friend and countryman for the aspiration to which he
had given utterance, and the Committee, after another solemn shaking of
hands, retired to bed, except the Doctor; who immediately repaired to
the newspaper-office, and there wrote a short poem suggested by the
events of the evening, beginning with fourteen stars, and headed, 'A
Fragment. Suggested by witnessing the Honourable Elijah Pogram engaged
in a philosophical disputation with three of Columbia's fairest
daughters. By Doctor Ginery Dunkle. Of Troy.'
If Pogram was as glad to get to bed as Martin was, he must have been
well rewarded for his labours. They started off again next day (Martin
and Mark previously disposing of their goods to the storekeepers of whom
they had purchased them, for anything they would bring), and were fellow
travellers to within a short distance of New York. When Pogram was about
to leave them he grew thoughtful, and after pondering for some time,
took Martin aside.
'We air going to part, sir,' said Pogram.
'Pray don't distress yourself,' said Martin; 'we must bear it.'
'It ain't that, sir,' returned Pogram, 'not at all. But I should wish
you to accept a copy of My oration.'
'Thank you,' said Martin, 'you are very good. I shall be most happy.'
'It ain't quite that, sir, neither,' resumed Pogram; 'air you bold
enough to introduce a copy into your country?'
'Certainly,' said Martin. 'Why not?'
'Its sentiments air strong, sir,' hinted Pogram, darkly.
'That makes no difference,' said Martin. 'I'll take a dozen if you
like.'
'No, sir,' retorted Pogram. 'Not A dozen. That is more than I require.
If you are content to run the hazard, sir, here is one for your Lord
Chancellor,' producing it, 'and one for Your principal Secretary of
State. I should wish them to see it, sir, as expressing what my opinions
air. That they may not plead ignorance at a future time. But don't get
into danger, sir, on my account!'
'There is not the least danger, I assure you,' said Martin. So he put
the pamphlets in his pocket, and they parted.
Mr Bevan had written in his letter that, at a certain time, which fell
out happily just then, he would be at a certain hotel in the city,
anxiously expecting to see them. To this place they repaired without a
moment's delay. They had the satisfaction of finding him within; and of
being received by their good friend, with his own warmth and heartiness.
'I am truly sorry and ashamed,' said Martin, 'to have begged of you. But
look at us. See what we are, and judge to what we are reduced!'
'So far from claiming to have done you any service,' returned the other,
'I reproach myself with having been, unwittingly, the original cause
of your misfortunes. I no more supposed you would go to Eden on such
representations as you received; or, indeed, that you would do anything
but be dispossessed, by the readiest means, of your idea that fortunes
were so easily made here; than I thought of going to Eden myself.'
'The fact is, I closed with the thing in a mad and sanguine manner,'
said Martin, 'and the less said about it the better for me. Mark, here,
hadn't a voice in the matter.'
'Well! but he hadn't a voice in any other matter, had he?' returned Mr
Bevan; laughing with an air that showed his understanding of Mark and
Martin too.
'Not a very powerful one, I am afraid,' said Martin with a blush. 'But
live and learn, Mr Bevan! Nearly die and learn; we learn the quicker.'
'Now,' said their friend, 'about your plans. You mean to return home at
once?'
'Oh, I think so,' returned Martin hastily, for he turned pale at the
thought of any other suggestion. 'That is your opinion too, I hope?'
'Unquestionably. For I don't know why you ever came here; though it's
not such an unusual case, I am sorry to say, that we need go any farther
into that. You don't know that the ship in which you came over with our
friend General Fladdock, is in port, of course?'
'Indeed!' said Martin.
'Yes. And is advertised to sail to-morrow.'
This was tempting news, but tantalising too; for Martin knew that his
getting any employment on board a ship of that class was hopeless. The
money in his pocket would not pay one-fourth of the sum he had already
borrowed, and if it had been enough for their passage-money, he could
hardly have resolved to spend it. He explained this to Mr Bevan, and
stated what their project was.
'Why, that's as wild as Eden every bit,' returned his friend. 'You must
take your passage like a Christian; at least, as like a Christian as a
fore-cabin passenger can; and owe me a few more dollars than you intend.
If Mark will go down to the ship and see what passengers there are,
and finds that you can go in her without being actually suffocated, my
advice is, go! You and I will look about us in the meantime (we won't
call at the Norris's unless you like), and we will all three dine
together in the afternoon.'
Martin had nothing to express but gratitude, and so it was arranged.
But he went out of the room after Mark, and advised him to take their
passage in the Screw, though they lay upon the bare deck; which Mr
Tapley, who needed no entreaty on the subject readily promised to do.
When he and Martin met again, and were alone, he was in high spirits,
and evidently had something to communicate, in which he gloried very
much.
'I've done Mr Bevan, sir,' said Mark.
'Done Mr Bevan!' repeated Martin.
'The cook of the Screw went and got married yesterday, sir,' said Mr
Tapley.
Martin looked at him for farther explanation.
'And when I got on board, and the word was passed that it was me,' said
Mark, 'the mate he comes and asks me whether I'd engage to take this
said cook's place upon the passage home. "For you're used to it," he
says; "you were always a-cooking for everybody on your passage out."
And so I was,' said Mark, 'although I never cooked before, I'll take my
oath.'
'What did you say?' demanded Martin.
'Say!' cried Mark. 'That I'd take anything I could get. "If that's
so," says the mate, "why, bring a glass of rum;" which they brought
according. And my wages, sir,' said Mark in high glee, 'pays your
passage; and I've put the rolling-pin in your berth to take it (it's
the easy one up in the corner); and there we are, Rule Britannia, and
Britons strike home!'
'There never was such a good fellow as you are!' cried Martin seizing
him by the hand. 'But what do you mean by "doing" Mr Bevan, Mark?'
'Why, don't you see?' said Mark. 'We don't tell him, you know. We take
his money, but we don't spend it, and we don't keep it. What we do is,
write him a little note, explaining this engagement, and roll it up,
and leave it at the bar, to be given to him after we are gone. Don't you
see?'
Martin's delight in this idea was not inferior to Mark's. It was all
done as he proposed. They passed a cheerful evening; slept at the hotel;
left the letter as arranged; and went off to the ship betimes next
morning, with such light hearts as the weight of their past miseries
engendered.
'Good-bye! a hundred thousand times good-bye!' said Martin to their
friend. 'How shall I remember all your kindness! How shall I ever thank
you!'
'If you ever become a rich man, or a powerful one,' returned his friend,
'you shall try to make your Government more careful of its subjects when
they roam abroad to live. Tell it what you know of emigration in your
own case, and impress upon it how much suffering may be prevented with a
little pains!'
Cheerily, lads, cheerily! Anchor weighed. Ship in full sail. Her sturdy
bowsprit pointing true to England. America a cloud upon the sea behind
them!
'Why, Cook! what are you thinking of so steadily?' said Martin.
'Why, I was a-thinking, sir,' returned Mark, 'that if I was a painter
and was called upon to paint the American Eagle, how should I do it?'
'Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose.'
'No,' said Mark. 'That wouldn't do for me, sir. I should want to draw it
like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging;
like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like a
ostrich, for its putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees
it--'
'And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its
faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!' said Martin. 'Well,
Mark. Let us hope so.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
ARRIVING IN ENGLAND, MARTIN WITNESSES A CEREMONY, FROM WHICH HE DERIVES
THE CHEERING INFORMATION THAT HE HAS NOT BEEN FORGOTTEN IN HIS ABSENCE
It was mid-day, and high water in the English port for which the Screw
was bound, when, borne in gallantly upon the fullness of the tide, she
let go her anchor in the river.
Bright as the scene was; fresh, and full of motion; airy, free, and
sparkling; it was nothing to the life and exultation in the breasts of
the two travellers, at sight of the old churches, roofs, and darkened
chimney stacks of Home. The distant roar that swelled up hoarsely from
the busy streets, was music in their ears; the lines of people gazing
from the wharves, were friends held dear; the canopy of smoke that
overhung the town was brighter and more beautiful to them than if the
richest silks of Persia had been waving in the air. And though the water
going on its glistening track, turned, ever and again, aside to dance
and sparkle round great ships, and heave them up; and leaped from off
the blades of oars, a shower of diving diamonds; and wantoned with
the idle boats, and swiftly passed, in many a sportive chase, through
obdurate old iron rings, set deep into the stone-work of the quays;
not even it was half so buoyant, and so restless, as their fluttering
hearts, when yearning to set foot, once more, on native ground.
A year had passed since those same spires and roofs had faded from their
eyes. It seemed to them, a dozen years. Some trifling changes, here
and there, they called to mind; and wondered that they were so few and
slight. In health and fortune, prospect and resource, they came back
poorer men than they had gone away. But it was home. And though home is
a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke,
or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.
Being set ashore, with very little money in their pockets, and no
definite plan of operation in their heads, they sought out a cheap
tavern, where they regaled upon a smoking steak, and certain flowing
mugs of beer, as only men just landed from the sea can revel in
the generous dainties of the earth. When they had feasted, as two
grateful-tempered giants might have done, they stirred the fire, drew
back the glowing curtain from the window, and making each a sofa for
himself, by union of the great unwieldy chairs, gazed blissfully into
the street.
Even the street was made a fairy street, by being half hidden in an
atmosphere of steak, and strong, stout, stand-up English beer. For on
the window-glass hung such a mist, that Mr Tapley was obliged to rise
and wipe it with his handkerchief, before the passengers appeared like
common mortals. And even then, a spiral little cloud went curling up
from their two glasses of hot grog, which nearly hid them from each
other.
It was one of those unaccountable little rooms which are never seen
anywhere but in a tavern, and are supposed to have got into taverns by
reason of the facilities afforded to the architect for getting drunk
while engaged in their construction. It had more corners in it than the
brain of an obstinate man; was full of mad closets, into which nothing
could be put that was not specially invented and made for that purpose;
had mysterious shelvings and bulkheads, and indications of staircases in
the ceiling; and was elaborately provided with a bell that rung in
the room itself, about two feet from the handle, and had no connection
whatever with any other part of the establishment. It was a little
below the pavement, and abutted close upon it; so that passengers grated
against the window-panes with their buttons, and scraped it with their
baskets; and fearful boys suddenly coming between a thoughtful guest
and the light, derided him, or put out their tongues as if he were a
physician; or made white knobs on the ends of their noses by flattening
the same against the glass, and vanished awfully, like spectres.
Martin and Mark sat looking at the people as they passed, debating every
now and then what their first step should be.
'We want to see Miss Mary, of course,' said Mark.
'Of course,' said Martin. 'But I don't know where she is. Not having had
the heart to write in our distress--you yourself thought silence most
advisable--and consequently, never having heard from her since we left
New York the first time, I don't know where she is, my good fellow.'
'My opinion is, sir,' returned Mark, 'that what we've got to do is to
travel straight to the Dragon. There's no need for you to go there,
where you're known, unless you like. You may stop ten mile short of it.
I'll go on. Mrs Lupin will tell me all the news. Mr Pinch will give me
every information that we want; and right glad Mr Pinch will be to do
it. My proposal is: To set off walking this afternoon. To stop when we
are tired. To get a lift when we can. To walk when we can't. To do it at
once, and do it cheap.'
'Unless we do it cheap, we shall have some difficulty in doing it at
all,' said Martin, pulling out the bank, and telling it over in his
hand.
'The greater reason for losing no time, sir,' replied Mark. 'Whereas,
when you've seen the young lady; and know what state of mind the old
gentleman's in, and all about it; then you'll know what to do next.'
'No doubt,' said Martin. 'You are quite right.'
They were raising their glasses to their lips, when their hands stopped
midway, and their gaze was arrested by a figure which slowly, very
slowly, and reflectively, passed the window at that moment.
Mr Pecksniff. Placid, calm, but proud. Honestly proud. Dressed with
peculiar care, smiling with even more than usual blandness, pondering
on the beauties of his art with a mild abstraction from all sordid
thoughts, and gently travelling across the disc, as if he were a figure
in a magic lantern.
As Mr Pecksniff passed, a person coming in the opposite direction
stopped to look after him with great interest and respect, almost with
veneration; and the landlord bouncing out of the house, as if he had
seen him too, joined this person, and spoke to him, and shook his head
gravely, and looked after Mr Pecksniff likewise.
Martin and Mark sat staring at each other, as if they could not believe
it; but there stood the landlord, and the other man still. In spite of
the indignation with which this glimpse of Mr Pecksniff had inspired
him, Martin could not help laughing heartily. Neither could Mark.
'We must inquire into this!' said Martin. 'Ask the landlord in, Mark.'
Mr Tapley retired for that purpose, and immediately returned with their
large-headed host in safe convoy.
'Pray, landlord!' said Martin, 'who is that gentleman who passed just
now, and whom you were looking after?'
The landlord poked the fire as if, in his desire to make the most of
his answer, he had become indifferent even to the price of coals; and
putting his hands in his pockets, said, after inflating himself to give
still further effect to his reply:
'That, gentlemen, is the great Mr Pecksniff! The celebrated architect,
gentlemen!'
He looked from one to the other while he said it, as if he were ready to
assist the first man who might be overcome by the intelligence.
'The great Mr Pecksniff, the celebrated architect, gentlemen.' said the
landlord, 'has come down here, to help to lay the first stone of a new
and splendid public building.'
'Is it to be built from his designs?' asked Martin.
'The great Mr Pecksniff, the celebrated architect, gentlemen,'
returned the landlord, who seemed to have an unspeakable delight in
the repetition of these words, 'carried off the First Premium, and will
erect the building.'
'Who lays the stone?' asked Martin.
'Our member has come down express,' returned the landlord. 'No scrubs
would do for no such a purpose. Nothing less would satisfy our Directors
than our member in the House of Commons, who is returned upon the
Gentlemanly Interest.'
'Which interest is that?' asked Martin.
'What, don't you know!' returned the landlord.
It was quite clear the landlord didn't. They always told him at election
time, that it was the Gentlemanly side, and he immediately put on his
top-boots, and voted for it.
'When does the ceremony take place?' asked Martin.
'This day,' replied the landlord. Then pulling out his watch, he added,
impressively, 'almost this minute.'
Martin hastily inquired whether there was any possibility of getting
in to witness it; and finding that there would be no objection to the
admittance of any decent person, unless indeed the ground were full,
hurried off with Mark, as hard as they could go.
They were fortunate enough to squeeze themselves into a famous corner on
the ground, where they could see all that passed, without much dread of
being beheld by Mr Pecksniff in return. They were not a minute too soon,
for as they were in the act of congratulating each other, a great noise
was heard at some distance, and everybody looked towards the gate.
Several ladies prepared their pocket handkerchiefs for waving; and a
stray teacher belonging to the charity school being much cheered by
mistake, was immensely groaned at when detected.
'Perhaps he has Tom Pinch with him,' Martin whispered Mr Tapley.
'It would be rather too much of a treat for him, wouldn't it, sir?'
whispered Mr Tapley in return.
There was no time to discuss the probabilities either way, for the
charity school, in clean linen, came filing in two and two, so much to
the self-approval of all the people present who didn't subscribe to
it, that many of them shed tears. A band of music followed, led by
a conscientious drummer who never left off. Then came a great many
gentlemen with wands in their hands, and bows on their breasts, whose
share in the proceedings did not appear to be distinctly laid down, and
who trod upon each other, and blocked up the entry for a considerable
period. These were followed by the Mayor and Corporation, all clustering
round the member for the Gentlemanly Interest; who had the great Mr
Pecksniff, the celebrated architect on his right hand, and conversed
with him familiarly as they came along. Then the ladies waved their
handkerchiefs, and the gentlemen their hats, and the charity children
shrieked, and the member for the Gentlemanly Interest bowed.
Silence being restored, the member for the Gentlemanly Interest rubbed
his hands, and wagged his head, and looked about him pleasantly; and
there was nothing this member did, at which some lady or other did not
burst into an ecstatic waving of her pocket handkerchief. When he looked
up at the stone, they said how graceful! when he peeped into the hole,
they said how condescending! when he chatted with the Mayor, they
said how easy! when he folded his arms they cried with one accord, how
statesman-like!
Mr Pecksniff was observed too, closely. When he talked to the Mayor,
they said, Oh, really, what a courtly man he was! When he laid his
hand upon the mason's shoulder, giving him directions, how pleasant his
demeanour to the working classes; just the sort of man who made their
toil a pleasure to them, poor dear souls!
But now a silver trowel was brought; and when the member for the
Gentlemanly Interest, tucking up his coat-sleeve, did a little sleight
of hand with the mortar, the air was rent, so loud was the applause.
The workman-like manner in which he did it was amazing. No one could
conceive where such a gentlemanly creature could have picked the
knowledge up.
When he had made a kind of dirt-pie under the direction of the mason,
they brought a little vase containing coins, the which the member
for the Gentlemanly Interest jingled, as if he were going to conjure.
Whereat they said how droll, how cheerful, what a flow of spirits! This
put into its place, an ancient scholar read the inscription, which
was in Latin; not in English; that would never do. It gave great
satisfaction; especially every time there was a good long substantive
in the third declension, ablative case, with an adjective to match; at
which periods the assembly became very tender, and were much affected.
And now the stone was lowered down into its place, amidst the shouting
of the concourse. When it was firmly fixed, the member for the
Gentlemanly Interest struck upon it thrice with the handle of the
trowel, as if inquiring, with a touch of humour, whether anybody was at
home. Mr Pecksniff then unrolled his Plans (prodigious plans they were),
and people gathered round to look at and admire them.
Martin, who had been fretting himself--quite unnecessarily, as Mark
thought--during the whole of these proceedings, could no longer restrain
his impatience; but stepping forward among several others, looked
straight over the shoulder of the unconscious Mr Pecksniff, at the
designs and plans he had unrolled. He returned to Mark, boiling with
rage.
'Why, what's the matter, sir?' cried Mark.
'Matter! This is MY building.'
'Your building, sir!' said Mark.
'My grammar-school. I invented it. I did it all. He has only put four
windows in, the villain, and spoilt it!'
Mark could hardly believe it at first, but being assured that it was
really so, actually held him to prevent his interference foolishly,
until his temporary heat was past. In the meantime, the member addressed
the company on the gratifying deed which he had just performed.
He said that since he had sat in Parliament to represent the Gentlemanly
Interest of that town; and he might add, the Lady Interest, he hoped,
besides (pocket handkerchiefs); it had been his pleasant duty to come
among them, and to raise his voice on their behalf in Another Place
(pocket handkerchiefs and laughter), often. But he had never come among
them, and had never raised his voice, with half such pure, such deep,
such unalloyed delight, as now. 'The present occasion,' he said, 'will
ever be memorable to me; not only for the reasons I have assigned, but
because it has afforded me an opportunity of becoming personally known
to a gentleman--'
Here he pointed the trowel at Mr Pecksniff, who was greeted with
vociferous cheering, and laid his hand upon his heart.
'To a gentleman who, I am happy to believe, will reap both distinction
and profit from this field; whose fame had previously penetrated to
me--as to whose ears has it not!--but whose intellectual countenance I
never had the distinguished honour to behold until this day, and whose
intellectual conversation I had never before the improving pleasure to
enjoy.'
Everybody seemed very glad of this, and applauded more than ever.
'But I hope my Honourable Friend,' said the Gentlemanly member--of
course he added "if he will allow me to call him so," and of course Mr
Pecksniff bowed--'will give me many opportunities of cultivating the
knowledge of him; and that I may have the extraordinary gratification of
reflecting in after-time that I laid on this day two first stones, both
belonging to structures which shall last my life!'
Great cheering again. All this time, Martin was cursing Mr Pecksniff up
hill and down dale.
'My friends!' said Mr Pecksniff, in reply. 'My duty is to build, not
speak; to act, not talk; to deal with marble, stone, and brick; not
language. I am very much affected. God bless you!'
This address, pumped out apparently from Mr Pecksniff's very heart,
brought the enthusiasm to its highest pitch. The pocket handkerchiefs
were waved again; the charity children were admonished to grow up
Pecksniffs, every boy among them; the Corporation, gentlemen with wands,
member for the Gentlemanly Interest, all cheered for Mr Pecksniff. Three
cheers for Mr Pecksniff! Three more for Mr Pecksniff! Three more for
Mr Pecksniff, gentlemen, if you please! One more, gentlemen, for Mr
Pecksniff, and let it be a good one to finish with!
In short, Mr Pecksniff was supposed to have done a great work and was
very kindly, courteously, and generously rewarded. When the procession
moved away, and Martin and Mark were left almost alone upon the ground,
his merits and a desire to acknowledge them formed the common topic. He
was only second to the Gentlemanly member.
'Compare the fellow's situation to-day with ours!' said Martin bitterly.
'Lord bless you, sir!' cried Mark, 'what's the use? Some architects are
clever at making foundations, and some architects are clever at building
on 'em when they're made. But it'll all come right in the end, sir;
it'll all come right!'
'And in the meantime--' began Martin.
'In the meantime, as you say, sir, we have a deal to do, and far to go.
So sharp's the word, and Jolly!'
'You are the best master in the world, Mark,' said Martin, 'and I will
not be a bad scholar if I can help it, I am resolved! So come! Best foot
foremost, old fellow!'
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
TOM PINCH DEPARTS TO SEEK HIS FORTUNE. WHAT HE FINDS AT STARTING
Oh! What a different town Salisbury was in Tom Pinch's eyes to be sure,
when the substantial Pecksniff of his heart melted away into an idle
dream! He possessed the same faith in the wonderful shops, the same
intensified appreciation of the mystery and wickedness of the place;
made the same exalted estimate of its wealth, population, and resources;
and yet it was not the old city nor anything like it. He walked into the
market while they were getting breakfast ready for him at the Inn; and
though it was the same market as of old, crowded by the same buyers and
sellers; brisk with the same business; noisy with the same confusion of
tongues and cluttering of fowls in coops; fair with the same display
of rolls of butter, newly made, set forth in linen cloths of dazzling
whiteness; green with the same fresh show of dewy vegetables; dainty
with the same array in higglers' baskets of small shaving-glasses,
laces, braces, trouser-straps, and hardware; savoury with the same
unstinted show of delicate pigs' feet, and pies made precious by the
pork that once had walked upon them; still it was strangely changed to
Tom. For, in the centre of the market-place, he missed a statue he
had set up there as in all other places of his personal resort; and it
looked cold and bare without that ornament.
The change lay no deeper than this, for Tom was far from being sage
enough to know, that, having been disappointed in one man, it would have
been a strictly rational and eminently wise proceeding to have revenged
himself upon mankind in general, by mistrusting them one and all. Indeed
this piece of justice, though it is upheld by the authority of divers
profound poets and honourable men, bears a nearer resemblance to the
justice of that good Vizier in the Thousand-and-one Nights, who issues
orders for the destruction of all the Porters in Bagdad because one of
that unfortunate fraternity is supposed to have misconducted himself,
than to any logical, not to say Christian, system of conduct, known to
the world in later times.
Tom had so long been used to steep the Pecksniff of his fancy in his
tea, and spread him out upon his toast, and take him as a relish with
his beer, that he made but a poor breakfast on the first morning after
his expulsion. Nor did he much improve his appetite for dinner by
seriously considering his own affairs, and taking counsel thereon with
his friend the organist's assistant.
The organist's assistant gave it as his decided opinion that whatever
Tom did, he must go to London; for there was no place like it. Which
may be true in the main, though hardly, perhaps, in itself, a sufficient
reason for Tom's going there.
But Tom had thought of London before, and had coupled with it thoughts
of his sister, and of his old friend John Westlock, whose advice
he naturally felt disposed to seek in this important crisis of his
fortunes. To London, therefore, he resolved to go; and he went away to
the coach-office at once, to secure his place. The coach being already
full, he was obliged to postpone his departure until the next night; but
even this circumstance had its bright side as well as its dark one, for
though it threatened to reduce his poor purse with unexpected country
charges, it afforded him an opportunity of writing to Mrs Lupin and
appointing his box to be brought to the old finger-post at the old time;
which would enable him to take that treasure with him to the metropolis,
and save the expense of its carriage. 'So,' said Tom, comforting
himself, 'it's very nearly as broad as it's long.'
And it cannot be denied that, when he had made up his mind to even this
extent, he felt an unaccustomed sense of freedom--a vague and indistinct
impression of holiday-making--which was very luxurious. He had his
moments of depression and anxiety, and they were, with good reason,
pretty numerous; but still, it was wonderfully pleasant to reflect that
he was his own master, and could plan and scheme for himself. It was
startling, thrilling, vast, difficult to understand; it was a stupendous
truth, teeming with responsibility and self-distrust; but in spite of
all his cares, it gave a curious relish to the viands at the Inn, and
interposed a dreamy haze between him and his prospects, in which they
sometimes showed to magical advantage.
In this unsettled state of mind, Tom went once more to bed in the low
four-poster, to the same immovable surprise of the effigies of the
former landlord and the fat ox; and in this condition, passed the whole
of the succeeding day. When the coach came round at last with 'London'
blazoned in letters of gold upon the boot, it gave Tom such a turn, that
he was half disposed to run away. But he didn't do it; for he took his
seat upon the box instead, and looking down upon the four greys, felt
as if he were another grey himself, or, at all events, a part of the
turn-out; and was quite confused by the novelty and splendour of his
situation.
And really it might have confused a less modest man than Tom to find
himself sitting next that coachman; for of all the swells that ever
flourished a whip professionally, he might have been elected emperor. He
didn't handle his gloves like another man, but put them on--even when he
was standing on the pavement, quite detached from the coach--as if the
four greys were, somehow or other, at the ends of the fingers. It was
the same with his hat. He did things with his hat, which nothing but an
unlimited knowledge of horses and the wildest freedom of the road, could
ever have made him perfect in. Valuable little parcels were brought to
him with particular instructions, and he pitched them into this hat, and
stuck it on again; as if the laws of gravity did not admit of such
an event as its being knocked off or blown off, and nothing like an
accident could befall it. The guard, too! Seventy breezy miles a day
were written in his very whiskers. His manners were a canter; his
conversation a round trot. He was a fast coach upon a down-hill turnpike
road; he was all pace. A waggon couldn't have moved slowly, with that
guard and his key-bugle on the top of it.
These were all foreshadowings of London, Tom thought, as he sat upon
the box, and looked about him. Such a coachman, and such a guard, never
could have existed between Salisbury and any other place. The coach
was none of your steady-going, yokel coaches, but a swaggering, rakish,
dissipated London coach; up all night, and lying by all day, and leading
a devil of a life. It cared no more for Salisbury than if it had been
a hamlet. It rattled noisily through the best streets, defied the
Cathedral, took the worst corners sharpest, went cutting in everywhere,
making everything get out of its way; and spun along the open
country-road, blowing a lively defiance out of its key-bugle, as its
last glad parting legacy.
It was a charming evening. Mild and bright. And even with the weight
upon his mind which arose out of the immensity and uncertainty of
London, Tom could not resist the captivating sense of rapid motion
through the pleasant air. The four greys skimmed along, as if they liked
it quite as well as Tom did; the bugle was in as high spirits as the
greys; the coachman chimed in sometimes with his voice; the wheels
hummed cheerfully in unison; the brass work on the harness was an
orchestra of little bells; and thus, as they went clinking, jingling,
rattling smoothly on, the whole concern, from the buckles of the
leaders' coupling-reins to the handle of the hind boot, was one great
instrument of music.
Yoho, past hedges, gates, and trees; past cottages and barns, and people
going home from work. Yoho, past donkey-chaises, drawn aside into the
ditch, and empty carts with rampant horses, whipped up at a bound upon
the little watercourse, and held by struggling carters close to the
five-barred gate, until the coach had passed the narrow turning in the
road. Yoho, by churches dropped down by themselves in quiet nooks,
with rustic burial-grounds about them, where the graves are green, and
daisies sleep--for it is evening--on the bosoms of the dead. Yoho, past
streams, in which the cattle cool their feet, and where the rushes grow;
past paddock-fences, farms, and rick-yards; past last year's stacks,
cut, slice by slice, away, and showing, in the waning light, like ruined
gables, old and brown. Yoho, down the pebbly dip, and through the merry
water-splash and up at a canter to the level road again. Yoho! Yoho!
Was the box there, when they came up to the old finger-post? The box!
Was Mrs Lupin herself? Had she turned out magnificently as a hostess
should, in her own chaise-cart, and was she sitting in a mahogany chair,
driving her own horse Dragon (who ought to have been called Dumpling),
and looking lovely? Did the stage-coach pull up beside her, shaving her
very wheel, and even while the guard helped her man up with the trunk,
did he send the glad echoes of his bugle careering down the chimneys of
the distant Pecksniff, as if the coach expressed its exultation in the
rescue of Tom Pinch?
'This is kind indeed!' said Tom, bending down to shake hands with her.
'I didn't mean to give you this trouble.'
'Trouble, Mr Pinch!' cried the hostess of the Dragon.
'Well! It's a pleasure to you, I know,' said Tom, squeezing her hand
heartily. 'Is there any news?'
The hostess shook her head.
'Say you saw me,' said Tom, 'and that I was very bold and cheerful, and
not a bit down-hearted; and that I entreated her to be the same, for all
is certain to come right at last. Good-bye!'
'You'll write when you get settled, Mr Pinch?' said Mrs Lupin.
'When I get settled!' cried Tom, with an involuntary opening of his
eyes. 'Oh, yes, I'll write when I get settled. Perhaps I had better
write before, because I may find that it takes a little time to settle
myself; not having too much money, and having only one friend. I shall
give your love to the friend, by the way. You were always great with Mr
Westlock, you know. Good-bye!'
'Good-bye!' said Mrs Lupin, hastily producing a basket with a long
bottle sticking out of it. 'Take this. Good-bye!'
'Do you want me to carry it to London for you?' cried Tom. She was
already turning the chaise-cart round.
'No, no,' said Mrs Lupin. 'It's only a little something for refreshment
on the road. Sit fast, Jack. Drive on, sir. All right! Good-bye!'
She was a quarter of a mile off, before Tom collected himself; and then
he was waving his hand lustily; and so was she.
'And that's the last of the old finger-post,' thought Tom, straining
his eyes, 'where I have so often stood to see this very coach go by,
and where I have parted with so many companions! I used to compare this
coach to some great monster that appeared at certain times to bear my
friends away into the world. And now it's bearing me away, to seek my
fortune, Heaven knows where and how!'
It made Tom melancholy to picture himself walking up the lane and back
to Pecksniff's as of old; and being melancholy, he looked downwards at
the basket on his knee, which he had for the moment forgotten.
'She is the kindest and most considerate creature in the world,' thought
Tom. 'Now I KNOW that she particularly told that man of hers not to look
at me, on purpose to prevent my throwing him a shilling! I had it ready
for him all the time, and he never once looked towards me; whereas that
man naturally, (for I know him very well,) would have done nothing but
grin and stare. Upon my word, the kindness of people perfectly melts
me.'
Here he caught the coachman's eye. The coachman winked. 'Remarkable fine
woman for her time of life,' said the coachman.
'I quite agree with you,' returned Tom. 'So she is.'
'Finer than many a young 'un, I mean to say,' observed the coachman.
'Eh?'
'Than many a young one,' Tom assented.
'I don't care for 'em myself when they're too young,' remarked the
coachman.
This was a matter of taste, which Tom did not feel himself called upon
to discuss.
'You'll seldom find 'em possessing correct opinions about refreshment,
for instance, when they're too young, you know,' said the coachman; 'a
woman must have arrived at maturity, before her mind's equal to coming
provided with a basket like that.'
'Perhaps you would like to know what it contains?' said Tom, smiling.
As the coachman only laughed, and as Tom was curious himself, he
unpacked it, and put the articles, one by one, upon the footboard. A
cold roast fowl, a packet of ham in slices, a crusty loaf, a piece of
cheese, a paper of biscuits, half a dozen apples, a knife, some butter,
a screw of salt, and a bottle of old sherry. There was a letter besides,
which Tom put in his pocket.
The coachman was so earnest in his approval of Mrs Lupin's provident
habits, and congratulated Torn so warmly on his good fortune, that Tom
felt it necessary, for the lady's sake, to explain that the basket was
a strictly Platonic basket, and had merely been presented to him in the
way of friendship. When he had made the statement with perfect gravity;
for he felt it incumbent on him to disabuse the mind of this lax rover
of any incorrect impressions on the subject; he signified that he would
be happy to share the gifts with him, and proposed that they should
attack the basket in a spirit of good fellowship at any time in the
course of the night which the coachman's experience and knowledge of the
road might suggest, as being best adapted to the purpose. From this time
they chatted so pleasantly together, that although Tom knew infinitely
more of unicorns than horses, the coachman informed his friend the guard
at the end of the next stage, 'that rum as the box-seat looked, he was
as good a one to go, in pint of conversation, as ever he'd wish to sit
by.'
Yoho, among the gathering shades; making of no account the deep
reflections of the trees, but scampering on through light and darkness,
all the same, as if the light of London fifty miles away, were quite
enough to travel by, and some to spare. Yoho, beside the village green,
where cricket-players linger yet, and every little indentation made in
the fresh grass by bat or wicket, ball or player's foot, sheds out its
perfume on the night. Away with four fresh horses from the Bald-faced
Stag, where topers congregate about the door admiring; and the last
team with traces hanging loose, go roaming off towards the pond, until
observed and shouted after by a dozen throats, while volunteering boys
pursue them. Now, with a clattering of hoofs and striking out of fiery
sparks, across the old stone bridge, and down again into the shadowy
road, and through the open gate, and far away, away, into the wold.
Yoho!
Yoho, behind there, stop that bugle for a moment! Come creeping over to
the front, along the coach-roof, guard, and make one at this basket! Not
that we slacken in our pace the while, not we; we rather put the bits
of blood upon their metal, for the greater glory of the snack. Ah! It
is long since this bottle of old wine was brought into contact with the
mellow breath of night, you may depend, and rare good stuff it is to wet
a bugler's whistle with. Only try it. Don't be afraid of turning up your
finger, Bill, another pull! Now, take your breath, and try the bugle,
Bill. There's music! There's a tone!' over the hills and far away,'
indeed. Yoho! The skittish mare is all alive to-night. Yoho! Yoho!
See the bright moon! High up before we know it; making the earth reflect
the objects on its breast like water. Hedges, trees, low cottages,
church steeples, blighted stumps and flourishing young slips, have
all grown vain upon the sudden, and mean to contemplate their own fair
images till morning. The poplars yonder rustle that their quivering
leaves may see themselves upon the ground. Not so the oak; trembling
does not become HIM; and he watches himself in his stout old burly
steadfastness, without the motion of a twig. The moss-grown gate,
ill-poised upon its creaking hinges, crippled and decayed swings to and
fro before its glass, like some fantastic dowager; while our own ghostly
likeness travels on, Yoho! Yoho! through ditch and brake, upon the
ploughed land and the smooth, along the steep hillside and steeper wall,
as if it were a phantom-Hunter.
Clouds too! And a mist upon the Hollow! Not a dull fog that hides it,
but a light airy gauze-like mist, which in our eyes of modest admiration
gives a new charm to the beauties it is spread before; as real gauze has
done ere now, and would again, so please you, though we were the Pope.
Yoho! Why now we travel like the Moon herself. Hiding this minute in a
grove of trees; next minute in a patch of vapour; emerging now upon our
broad clear course; withdrawing now, but always dashing on, our journey
is a counter-part of hers. Yoho! A match against the Moon!
The beauty of the night is hardly felt, when Day comes rushing up. Yoho!
Two stages, and the country roads are almost changed to a continuous
street. Yoho, past market-gardens, rows of houses, villas, crescents,
terraces, and squares; past waggons, coaches, carts; past early workmen,
late stragglers, drunken men, and sober carriers of loads; past brick
and mortar in its every shape; and in among the rattling pavements,
where a jaunty-seat upon a coach is not so easy to preserve! Yoho,
down countless turnings, and through countless mazy ways, until an old
Innyard is gained, and Tom Pinch, getting down quite stunned and giddy,
is in London!
'Five minutes before the time, too!' said the driver, as he received his
fee of Tom.
'Upon my word,' said Tom, 'I should not have minded very much, if we had
been five hours after it; for at this early hour I don't know where to
go, or what to do with myself.'
'Don't they expect you then?' inquired the driver.
'Who?' said Tom.
'Why them,' returned the driver.
His mind was so clearly running on the assumption of Tom's having come
to town to see an extensive circle of anxious relations and friends,
that it would have been pretty hard work to undeceive him. Tom did not
try. He cheerfully evaded the subject, and going into the Inn, fell fast
asleep before a fire in one of the public rooms opening from the yard.
When he awoke, the people in the house were all astir, so he washed and
dressed himself; to his great refreshment after the journey; and, it
being by that time eight o'clock, went forth at once to see his old
friend John.
John Westlock lived in Furnival's Inn, High Holborn, which was within a
quarter of an hour's walk of Tom's starting-point, but seemed a long way
off, by reason of his going two or three miles out of the straight road
to make a short cut. When at last he arrived outside John's door, two
stories up, he stood faltering with his hand upon the knocker, and
trembled from head to foot. For he was rendered very nervous by the
thought of having to relate what had fallen out between himself and
Pecksniff; and he had a misgiving that John would exult fearfully in the
disclosure.
'But it must be made,' thought Tom, 'sooner or later; and I had better
get it over.'
Rat tat.
'I am afraid that's not a London knock,' thought Tom. 'It didn't sound
bold. Perhaps that's the reason why nobody answers the door.'
It is quite certain that nobody came, and that Tom stood looking at the
knocker; wondering whereabouts in the neighbourhood a certain gentleman
resided, who was roaring out to somebody 'Come in!' with all his might.
'Bless my soul!' thought Tom at last. 'Perhaps he lives here, and is
calling to me. I never thought of that. Can I open the door from the
outside, I wonder. Yes, to be sure I can.'
To be sure he could, by turning the handle; and to be sure when he did
turn it the same voice came rushing out, crying 'Why don't you come
in? Come in, do you hear? What are you standing there for?'--quite
violently.
Tom stepped from the little passage into the room from which these
sounds proceeded, and had barely caught a glimpse of a gentleman in a
dressing-gown and slippers (with his boots beside him ready to put on),
sitting at his breakfast with a newspaper in his hand, when the said
gentleman, at the imminent hazard of oversetting his tea-table, made a
plunge at Tom, and hugged him.
'Why, Tom, my boy!' cried the gentleman. 'Tom!'
'How glad I am to see you, Mr Westlock!' said Tom Pinch, shaking both
his hands, and trembling more than ever. 'How kind you are!'
'Mr Westlock!' repeated John, 'what do you mean by that, Pinch? You have
not forgotten my Christian name, I suppose?'
'No, John, no. I have not forgotten,' said Thomas Pinch. 'Good gracious
me, how kind you are!'
'I never saw such a fellow in all my life!' cried John. 'What do you
mean by saying THAT over and over again? What did you expect me to be, I
wonder! Here, sit down, Tom, and be a reasonable creature. How are you,
my boy? I am delighted to see you!'
'And I am delighted to see YOU,' said Tom.
'It's mutual, of course,' returned John. 'It always was, I hope. If
I had known you had been coming, Tom, I would have had something for
breakfast. I would rather have such a surprise than the best breakfast
in the world, myself; but yours is another case, and I have no doubt you
are as hungry as a hunter. You must make out as well as you can, Tom,
and we'll recompense ourselves at dinner-time. You take sugar, I know;
I recollect the sugar at Pecksniff's. Ha, ha, ha! How IS Pecksniff? When
did you come to town? DO begin at something or other, Tom. There are
only scraps here, but they are not at all bad. Boar's Head potted. Try
it, Tom. Make a beginning whatever you do. What an old Blade you are! I
am delighted to see you.'
While he delivered himself of these words in a state of great commotion,
John was constantly running backwards and forwards to and from the
closet, bringing out all sorts of things in pots, scooping extraordinary
quantities of tea out of the caddy, dropping French rolls into his
boots, pouring hot water over the butter, and making a variety of
similar mistakes without disconcerting himself in the least.
'There!' said John, sitting down for the fiftieth time, and instantly
starting up again to make some other addition to the breakfast. 'Now we
are as well off as we are likely to be till dinner. And now let us have
the news, Tom. Imprimis, how's Pecksniff?'
'I don't know how he is,' was Tom's grave answer.
John Westlock put the teapot down, and looked at him, in astonishment.
'I don't know how he is,' said Thomas Pinch; 'and, saving that I wish
him no ill, I don't care. I have left him, John. I have left him for
ever.'
'Voluntarily?'
'Why, no, for he dismissed me. But I had first found out that I was
mistaken in him; and I could not have remained with him under any
circumstances. I grieve to say that you were right in your estimate of
his character. It may be a ridiculous weakness, John, but it has been
very painful and bitter to me to find this out, I do assure you.'
Tom had no need to direct that appealing look towards his friend, in
mild and gentle deprecation of his answering with a laugh. John Westlock
would as soon have thought of striking him down upon the floor.
'It was all a dream of mine,' said Tom, 'and it is over. I'll tell you
how it happened, at some other time. Bear with my folly, John. I do not,
just now, like to think or speak about it.'
'I swear to you, Tom,' returned his friend, with great earnestness of
manner, after remaining silent for a few moments, 'that when I see, as
I do now, how deeply you feel this, I don't know whether to be glad or
sorry that you have made the discovery at last. I reproach myself with
the thought that I ever jested on the subject; I ought to have known
better.'
'My dear friend,' said Tom, extending his hand, 'it is very generous and
gallant in you to receive me and my disclosure in this spirit; it makes
me blush to think that I should have felt a moment's uneasiness as I
came along. You can't think what a weight is lifted off my mind,' said
Tom, taking up his knife and fork again, and looking very cheerful. 'I
shall punish the Boar's Head dreadfully.'
The host, thus reminded of his duties, instantly betook himself to
piling up all kinds of irreconcilable and contradictory viands in Tom's
plate, and a very capital breakfast Tom made, and very much the better
for it Tom felt.
'That's all right,' said John, after contemplating his visitor's
proceedings with infinite satisfaction. 'Now, about our plans. You are
going to stay with me, of course. Where's your box?'
'It's at the Inn,' said Tom. 'I didn't intend--'
'Never mind what you didn't intend,' John Westlock interposed. 'What you
DID intend is more to the purpose. You intended, in coming here, to ask
my advice, did you not, Tom?'
'Certainly.'
'And to take it when I gave it to you?'
'Yes,' rejoined Tom, smiling, 'if it were good advice, which, being
yours, I have no doubt it will be.'
'Very well. Then don't be an obstinate old humbug in the outset, Tom, or
I shall shut up shop and dispense none of that invaluable commodity. You
are on a visit to me. I wish I had an organ for you, Tom!'
'So do the gentlemen downstairs, and the gentlemen overhead I have no
doubt,' was Tom's reply.
'Let me see. In the first place, you will wish to see your sister this
morning,' pursued his friend, 'and of course you will like to go there
alone. I'll walk part of the way with you; and see about a little
business of my own, and meet you here again in the afternoon. Put that
in your pocket, Tom. It's only the key of the door. If you come home
first you'll want it.'
'Really,' said Tom, 'quartering one's self upon a friend in this way--'
'Why, there are two keys,' interposed John Westlock. 'I can't open the
door with them both at once, can I? What a ridiculous fellow you are,
Tom? Nothing particular you'd like for dinner, is there?'
'Oh dear no,' said Tom.
'Very well, then you may as well leave it to me. Have a glass of cherry
brandy, Tom?'
'Not a drop! What remarkable chambers these are!' said Pinch 'there's
everything in 'em!'
'Bless your soul, Tom, nothing but a few little bachelor contrivances!
the sort of impromptu arrangements that might have suggested themselves
to Philip Quarll or Robinson Crusoe, that's all. What do you say? Shall
we walk?'
'By all means,' cried Tom. 'As soon as you like.'
Accordingly John Westlock took the French rolls out of his boots, and
put his boots on, and dressed himself; giving Tom the paper to read in
the meanwhile. When he returned, equipped for walking, he found Tom in a
brown study, with the paper in his hand.
'Dreaming, Tom?'
'No,' said Mr Pinch, 'No. I have been looking over the advertising
sheet, thinking there might be something in it which would be likely
to suit me. But, as I often think, the strange thing seems to be that
nobody is suited. Here are all kinds of employers wanting all sorts of
servants, and all sorts of servants wanting all kinds of employers, and
they never seem to come together. Here is a gentleman in a public office
in a position of temporary difficulty, who wants to borrow five hundred
pounds; and in the very next advertisement here is another gentleman who
has got exactly that sum to lend. But he'll never lend it to him, John,
you'll find! Here is a lady possessing a moderate independence, who
wants to board and lodge with a quiet, cheerful family; and here is a
family describing themselves in those very words, "a quiet, cheerful
family," who want exactly such a lady to come and live with them. But
she'll never go, John! Neither do any of these single gentlemen who want
an airy bedroom, with the occasional use of a parlour, ever appear to
come to terms with these other people who live in a rural situation
remarkable for its bracing atmosphere, within five minutes' walk of
the Royal Exchange. Even those letters of the alphabet who are always
running away from their friends and being entreated at the tops of
columns to come back, never DO come back, if we may judge from the
number of times they are asked to do it and don't. It really seems,'
said Tom, relinquishing the paper with a thoughtful sigh, 'as if people
had the same gratification in printing their complaints as in making
them known by word of mouth; as if they found it a comfort and
consolation to proclaim "I want such and such a thing, and I can't get
it, and I don't expect I ever shall!"'
John Westlock laughed at the idea, and they went out together. So many
years had passed since Tom was last in London, and he had known so
little of it then, that his interest in all he saw was very great. He
was particularly anxious, among other notorious localities, to have
those streets pointed out to him which were appropriated to the
slaughter of countrymen; and was quite disappointed to find, after
half-an-hour's walking, that he hadn't had his pocket picked. But
on John Westlock's inventing a pickpocket for his gratification, and
pointing out a highly respectable stranger as one of that fraternity, he
was much delighted.
His friend accompanied him to within a short distance of Camberwell
and having put him beyond the possibility of mistaking the wealthy
brass-and-copper founder's, left him to make his visit. Arriving before
the great bell-handle, Tom gave it a gentle pull. The porter appeared.
'Pray does Miss Pinch live here?' said Tom.
'Miss Pinch is governess here,' replied the porter.
At the same time he looked at Tom from head to foot, as if he would have
said, 'You are a nice man, YOU are; where did YOU come from?'
'It's the same young lady,' said Tom. 'It's quite right. Is she at
home?'
'I don't know, I'm sure,' rejoined the porter.
'Do you think you could have the goodness to ascertain?' said Tom. He
had quite a delicacy in offering the suggestion, for the possibility
of such a step did not appear to present itself to the porter's mind at
all.
The fact was that the porter in answering the gate-bell had, according
to usage, rung the house-bell (for it is as well to do these things in
the Baronial style while you are about it), and that there the functions
of his office had ceased. Being hired to open and shut the gate, and
not to explain himself to strangers, he left this little incident to be
developed by the footman with the tags, who, at this juncture, called
out from the door steps:
'Hollo, there! wot are you up to? This way, young man!'
'Oh!' said Tom, hurrying towards him. 'I didn't observe that there was
anybody else. Pray is Miss Pinch at home?'
'She's IN,' replied the footman. As much as to say to Tom: 'But if you
think she has anything to do with the proprietorship of this place you
had better abandon that idea.'
'I wish to see her, if you please,' said Tom.
The footman, being a lively young man, happened to have his attention
caught at that moment by the flight of a pigeon, in which he took so
warm an interest that his gaze was rivetted on the bird until it was
quite out of sight. He then invited Tom to come in, and showed him into
a parlour.
'Hany neem?' said the young man, pausing languidly at the door.
It was a good thought; because without providing the stranger, in case
he should happen to be of a warm temper, with a sufficient excuse for
knocking him down, it implied this young man's estimate of his quality,
and relieved his breast of the oppressive burden of rating him in secret
as a nameless and obscure individual.
'Say her brother, if you please,' said Tom.
'Mother?' drawled the footman.
'Brother,' repeated Tom, slightly raising his voice. 'And if you will
say, in the first instance, a gentleman, and then say her brother,
I shall be obliged to you, as she does not expect me or know I am in
London, and I do not wish to startle her.'
The young man's interest in Tom's observations had ceased long before
this time, but he kindly waited until now; when, shutting the door, he
withdrew.
'Dear me!' said Tom. 'This is very disrespectful and uncivil behaviour.
I hope these are new servants here, and that Ruth is very differently
treated.'
His cogitations were interrupted by the sound of voices in the adjoining
room. They seemed to be engaged in high dispute, or in indignant
reprimand of some offender; and gathering strength occasionally, broke
out into a perfect whirlwind. It was in one of these gusts, as it
appeared to Tom, that the footman announced him; for an abrupt and
unnatural calm took place, and then a dead silence. He was standing
before the window, wondering what domestic quarrel might have caused
these sounds, and hoping Ruth had nothing to do with it, when the door
opened, and his sister ran into his arms.
'Why, bless my soul!' said Tom, looking at her with great pride, when
they had tenderly embraced each other, 'how altered you are Ruth! I
should scarcely have known you, my love, if I had seen you anywhere
else, I declare! You are so improved,' said Tom, with inexpressible
delight; 'you are so womanly; you are so--positively, you know, you are
so handsome!'
'If YOU think so Tom--'
'Oh, but everybody must think so, you know,' said Tom, gently smoothing
down her hair. 'It's matter of fact; not opinion. But what's the
matter?' said Tom, looking at her more intently, 'how flushed you are!
and you have been crying.'
'No, I have not, Tom.'
'Nonsense,' said her brother stoutly. 'That's a story. Don't tell me! I
know better. What is it, dear? I'm not with Mr Pecksniff now. I am going
to try and settle myself in London; and if you are not happy here (as I
very much fear you are not, for I begin to think you have been deceiving
me with the kindest and most affectionate intention) you shall not
remain here.'
Oh! Tom's blood was rising; mind that! Perhaps the Boar's Head had
something to do with it, but certainly the footman had. So had the sight
of his pretty sister--a great deal to do with it. Tom could bear a good
deal himself, but he was proud of her, and pride is a sensitive thing.
He began to think, 'there are more Pecksniffs than one, perhaps,' and by
all the pins and needles that run up and down in angry veins, Tom was in
a most unusual tingle all at once!
'We will talk about it, Tom,' said Ruth, giving him another kiss to
pacify him. 'I am afraid I cannot stay here.'
'Cannot!' replied Tom. 'Why then, you shall not, my love. Heyday! You
are not an object of charity! Upon my word!'
Tom was stopped in these exclamations by the footman, who brought a
message from his master, importing that he wished to speak with him
before he went, and with Miss Pinch also.
'Show the way,' said Tom. 'I'll wait upon him at once.'
Accordingly they entered the adjoining room from which the noise of
altercation had proceeded; and there they found a middle-aged gentleman,
with a pompous voice and manner, and a middle-aged lady, with what may
be termed an excisable face, or one in which starch and vinegar were
decidedly employed. There was likewise present that eldest pupil of Miss
Pinch, whom Mrs Todgers, on a previous occasion, had called a syrup, and
who was now weeping and sobbing spitefully.
'My brother, sir,' said Ruth Pinch, timidly presenting Tom.
'Oh!' cried the gentleman, surveying Tom attentively. 'You really are
Miss Pinch's brother, I presume? You will excuse my asking. I don't
observe any resemblance.'
'Miss Pinch has a brother, I know,' observed the lady.
'Miss Pinch is always talking about her brother, when she ought to be
engaged upon my education,' sobbed the pupil.
'Sophia! Hold your tongue!' observed the gentleman. 'Sit down, if you
please,' addressing Tom.
Tom sat down, looking from one face to another, in mute surprise.
'Remain here, if you please, Miss Pinch,' pursued the gentleman, looking
slightly over his shoulder.
Tom interrupted him here, by rising to place a chair for his sister.
Having done which he sat down again.
'I am glad you chance to have called to see your sister to-day, sir,'
resumed the brass-and-copper founder. 'For although I do not approve, as
a principle, of any young person engaged in my family in the capacity
of a governess, receiving visitors, it happens in this case to be well
timed. I am sorry to inform you that we are not at all satisfied with
your sister.'
'We are very much DISsatisfied with her,' observed the lady.
'I'd never say another lesson to Miss Pinch if I was to be beat to death
for it!' sobbed the pupil.
'Sophia!' cried her father. 'Hold your tongue!'
'Will you allow me to inquire what your ground of dissatisfaction is?'
asked Tom.
'Yes,' said the gentleman, 'I will. I don't recognize it as a right;
but I will. Your sister has not the slightest innate power of commanding
respect. It has been a constant source of difference between us.
Although she has been in this family for some time, and although the
young lady who is now present has almost, as it were, grown up under
her tuition, that young lady has no respect for her. Miss Pinch has
been perfectly unable to command my daughter's respect, or to win my
daughter's confidence. Now,' said the gentleman, allowing the palm of
his hand to fall gravely down upon the table: 'I maintain that there is
something radically wrong in that! You, as her brother, may be disposed
to deny it--'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Tom. 'I am not at all disposed to
deny it. I am sure that there is something radically wrong; radically
monstrous, in that.'
'Good Heavens!' cried the gentleman, looking round the room with
dignity, 'what do I find to be the case! what results obtrude themselves
upon me as flowing from this weakness of character on the part of
Miss Pinch! What are my feelings as a father, when, after my desire
(repeatedly expressed to Miss Pinch, as I think she will not venture to
deny) that my daughter should be choice in her expressions, genteel in
her deportment, as becomes her station in life, and politely distant to
her inferiors in society, I find her, only this very morning, addressing
Miss Pinch herself as a beggar!'
'A beggarly thing,' observed the lady, in correction.
'Which is worse,' said the gentleman, triumphantly; 'which is worse. A
beggarly thing. A low, coarse, despicable expression!'
'Most despicable,' cried Tom. 'I am glad to find that there is a just
appreciation of it here.'
'So just, sir,' said the gentleman, lowering his voice to be the more
impressive. 'So just, that, but for my knowing Miss Pinch to be an
unprotected young person, an orphan, and without friends, I would, as
I assured Miss Pinch, upon my veracity and personal character, a few
minutes ago, I would have severed the connection between us at that
moment and from that time.'
'Bless my soul, sir!' cried Tom, rising from his seat; for he was now
unable to contain himself any longer; 'don't allow such considerations
as those to influence you, pray. They don't exist, sir. She is not
unprotected. She is ready to depart this instant. Ruth, my dear, get
your bonnet on!'
'Oh, a pretty family!' cried the lady. 'Oh, he's her brother! There's no
doubt about that!'
'As little doubt, madam,' said Tom, 'as that the young lady yonder is
the child of your teaching, and not my sister's. Ruth, my dear, get your
bonnet on!'
'When you say, young man,' interposed the brass-and-copper founder,
haughtily, 'with that impertinence which is natural to you, and which I
therefore do not condescend to notice further, that the young lady, my
eldest daughter, has been educated by any one but Miss Pinch, you--I
needn't proceed. You comprehend me fully. I have no doubt you are used
to it.'
'Sir!' cried Tom, after regarding him in silence for some little time.
'If you do not understand what I mean, I will tell you. If you do
understand what I mean, I beg you not to repeat that mode of expressing
yourself in answer to it. My meaning is, that no man can expect his
children to respect what he degrades.'
'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed the gentleman. 'Cant! cant! The common cant!'
'The common story, sir!' said Tom; 'the story of a common mind. Your
governess cannot win the confidence and respect of your children,
forsooth! Let her begin by winning yours, and see what happens then.'
'Miss Pinch is getting her bonnet on, I trust, my dear?' said the
gentleman.
'I trust she is,' said Tom, forestalling the reply. 'I have no doubt
she is. In the meantime I address myself to you, sir. You made your
statement to me, sir; you required to see me for that purpose; and I
have a right to answer it. I am not loud or turbulent,' said Tom, which
was quite true, 'though I can scarcely say as much for you, in your
manner of addressing yourself to me. And I wish, on my sister's behalf,
to state the simple truth.'
'You may state anything you like, young man,' returned the gentleman,
affecting to yawn. 'My dear, Miss Pinch's money.'
'When you tell me,' resumed Tom, who was not the less indignant for
keeping himself quiet, 'that my sister has no innate power of commanding
the respect of your children, I must tell you it is not so; and that she
has. She is as well bred, as well taught, as well qualified by nature
to command respect, as any hirer of a governess you know. But when you
place her at a disadvantage in reference to every servant in your house,
how can you suppose, if you have the gift of common sense, that she is
not in a tenfold worse position in reference to your daughters?'
'Pretty well! Upon my word,' exclaimed the gentleman, 'this is pretty
well!'
'It is very ill, sir,' said Tom. 'It is very bad and mean, and wrong and
cruel. Respect! I believe young people are quick enough to observe and
imitate; and why or how should they respect whom no one else respects,
and everybody slights? And very partial they must grow--oh, very
partial!--to their studies, when they see to what a pass proficiency in
those same tasks has brought their governess! Respect! Put anything the
most deserving of respect before your daughters in the light in which
you place her, and you will bring it down as low, no matter what it is!'
'You speak with extreme impertinence, young man,' observed the
gentleman.
'I speak without passion, but with extreme indignation and contempt
for such a course of treatment, and for all who practice it,' said
Tom. 'Why, how can you, as an honest gentleman, profess displeasure or
surprise at your daughter telling my sister she is something beggarly
and humble, when you are for ever telling her the same thing yourself in
fifty plain, outspeaking ways, though not in words; and when your very
porter and footman make the same delicate announcement to all comers? As
to your suspicion and distrust of her; even of her word; if she is not
above their reach, you have no right to employ her.'
'No right!' cried the brass-and-copper founder.
'Distinctly not,' Tom answered. 'If you imagine that the payment of an
annual sum of money gives it to you, you immensely exaggerate its power
and value. Your money is the least part of your bargain in such a case.
You may be punctual in that to half a second on the clock, and yet
be Bankrupt. I have nothing more to say,' said Tom, much flushed and
flustered, now that it was over, 'except to crave permission to stand in
your garden until my sister is ready.'
Not waiting to obtain it, Tom walked out.
Before he had well begun to cool, his sister joined him. She was crying;
and Tom could not bear that any one about the house should see her doing
that.
'They will think you are sorry to go,' said Tom. 'You are not sorry to
go?'
'No, Tom, no. I have been anxious to go for a very long time.'
'Very well, then! Don't cry!' said Tom.
'I am so sorry for YOU, dear,' sobbed Tom's sister.
'But you ought to be glad on my account,' said Tom. 'I shall be twice as
happy with you for a companion. Hold up your head. There! Now we go
out as we ought. Not blustering, you know, but firm and confident in
ourselves.'
The idea of Tom and his sister blustering, under any circumstances, was
a splendid absurdity. But Tom was very far from feeling it to be so,
in his excitement; and passed out at the gate with such severe
determination written in his face that the porter hardly knew him again.
It was not until they had walked some short distance, and Tom found
himself getting cooler and more collected, that he was quite restored to
himself by an inquiry from his sister, who said in her pleasant little
voice:
'Where are we going, Tom?'
'Dear me!' said Tom, stopping, 'I don't know.'
'Don't you--don't you live anywhere, dear?' asked Tom's sister looking
wistfully in his face.
'No,' said Tom. 'Not at present. Not exactly. I only arrived this
morning. We must have some lodgings.'
He didn't tell her that he had been going to stay with his friend John,
and could on no account think of billeting two inmates upon him, of whom
one was a young lady; for he knew that would make her uncomfortable,
and would cause her to regard herself as being an inconvenience to him.
Neither did he like to leave her anywhere while he called on John, and
told him of this change in his arrangements; for he was delicate of
seeming to encroach upon the generous and hospitable nature of his
friend. Therefore he said again, 'We must have some lodgings, of
course;' and said it as stoutly as if he had been a perfect Directory
and Guide-Book to all the lodgings in London.
'Where shall we go and look for 'em?' said Tom. 'What do you think?'
Tom's sister was not much wiser on such a topic than he was. So she
squeezed her little purse into his coat-pocket, and folding the little
hand with which she did so on the other little hand with which she
clasped his arm, said nothing.
'It ought to be a cheap neighbourhood,' said Tom, 'and not too far from
London. Let me see. Should you think Islington a good place?'
'I should think it was an excellent place, Tom.'
'It used to be called Merry Islington, once upon a time,' said Tom.
'Perhaps it's merry now; if so, it's all the better. Eh?'
'If it's not too dear,' said Tom's sister.
'Of course, if it's not too dear,' assented Tom. 'Well, where IS
Islington? We can't do better than go there, I should think. Let's go.'
Tom's sister would have gone anywhere with him; so they walked off, arm
in arm, as comfortably as possible. Finding, presently, that Islington
was not in that neighbourhood, Tom made inquiries respecting a public
conveyance thither; which they soon obtained. As they rode along they
were very full of conversation indeed, Tom relating what had happened
to him, and Tom's sister relating what had happened to her, and both
finding a great deal more to say than time to say it in; for they had
only just begun to talk, in comparison with what they had to tell each
other, when they reached their journey's end.
'Now,' said Tom, 'we must first look out for some very unpretending
streets, and then look out for bills in the windows.'
So they walked off again, quite as happily as if they had just stepped
out of a snug little house of their own, to look for lodgings on account
of somebody else. Tom's simplicity was unabated, Heaven knows; but
now that he had somebody to rely upon him, he was stimulated to rely a
little more upon himself, and was, in his own opinion, quite a desperate
fellow.
After roaming up and down for hours, looking at some scores of lodgings,
they began to find it rather fatiguing, especially as they saw none
which were at all adapted to their purpose. At length, however, in a
singular little old-fashioned house, up a blind street, they discovered
two small bedrooms and a triangular parlour, which promised to suit
them well enough. Their desiring to take possession immediately was a
suspicious circumstance, but even this was surmounted by the payment
of their first week's rent, and a reference to John Westlock, Esquire,
Furnival's Inn, High Holborn.
Ah! It was a goodly sight, when this important point was settled,
to behold Tom and his sister trotting round to the baker's, and the
butcher's, and the grocer's, with a kind of dreadful delight in the
unaccustomed cares of housekeeping; taking secret counsel together as
they gave their small orders, and distracted by the least suggestion
on the part of the shopkeeper! When they got back to the triangular
parlour, and Tom's sister, bustling to and fro, busy about a thousand
pleasant nothings, stopped every now and then to give old Tom a kiss or
smile upon him, Tom rubbed his hands as if all Islington were his.
It was late in the afternoon now, though, and high time for Tom to
keep his appointment. So, after agreeing with his sister that
in consideration of not having dined, they would venture on the
extravagance of chops for supper at nine, he walked out again to narrate
these marvellous occurrences to John.
'I am quite a family man all at once,' thought Tom. 'If I can only get
something to do, how comfortable Ruth and I may be! Ah, that if!
But it's of no use to despond. I can but do that, when I have tried
everything and failed; and even then it won't serve me much. Upon my
word,' thought Tom, quickening his pace, 'I don't know what John will
think has become of me. He'll begin to be afraid I have strayed into one
of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been
made meat pies of, or some such horrible thing.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
TOM PINCH, GOING ASTRAY, FINDS THAT HE IS NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN THAT
PREDICAMENT. HE RETALIATES UPON A FALLEN FOE
Tom's evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those
preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard
country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis;
nor did it mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers, pea and
thimble-riggers, duffers, touters, or any of those bloodless sharpers,
who are, perhaps, a little better known to the Police. He fell into
conversation with no gentleman who took him into a public-house, where
there happened to be another gentleman who swore he had more money than
any gentleman, and very soon proved he had more money than one gentleman
by taking his away from him; neither did he fall into any other of
the numerous man-traps which are set up without notice, in the public
grounds of this city. But he lost his way. He very soon did that; and in
trying to find it again he lost it more and more.
Now, Tom, in his guileless distrust of London, thought himself very
knowing in coming to the determination that he would not ask to be
directed to Furnival's Inn, if he could help it; unless, indeed, he
should happen to find himself near the Mint, or the Bank of England; in
which case he would step in, and ask a civil question or two, confiding
in the perfect respectability of the concern. So on he went, looking up
all the streets he came near, and going up half of them; and thus,
by dint of not being true to Goswell Street, and filing off into
Aldermanbury, and bewildering himself in Barbican, and being constant to
the wrong point of the compass in London Wall, and then getting himself
crosswise into Thames Street, by an instinct that would have been
marvellous if he had had the least desire or reason to go there, he
found himself, at last, hard by the Monument.
The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to Tom as the
Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him that the lonely creature
who held himself aloof from all mankind in that pillar like some old
hermit was the very man of whom to ask his way. Cold, he might be;
little sympathy he had, perhaps, with human passion--the column seemed
too tall for that; but if Truth didn't live in the base of the Monument,
notwithstanding Pope's couplet about the outside of it, where in London
(thought Tom) was she likely to be found!
Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement to Tom to
find that the Man in the Monument had simple tastes; that stony
and artificial as his residence was, he still preserved some rustic
recollections; that he liked plants, hung up bird-cages, was not wholly
cut off from fresh groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs. The Man in
the Monument, himself, was sitting outside the door--his own door: the
Monument-door: what a grand idea!--and was actually yawning, as if there
were no Monument to stop his mouth, and give him a perpetual interest in
his own existence.
Tom was advancing towards this remarkable creature, to inquire the way
to Furnival's Inn, when two people came to see the Monument. They were a
gentleman and a lady; and the gentleman said, 'How much a-piece?'
The Man in the Monument replied, 'A Tanner.'
It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument.
The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in the Monument
opened a dark little door. When the gentleman and lady had passed out of
view, he shut it again, and came slowly back to his chair.
He sat down and laughed.
'They don't know what a many steps there is!' he said. 'It's worth twice
the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!'
The Man in the Monument was a Cynic; a worldly man! Tom couldn't ask his
way of HIM. He was prepared to put no confidence in anything he said.
'My gracious!' cried a well-known voice behind Mr Pinch. 'Why, to be
sure it is!'
At the same time he was poked in the back by a parasol. Turning round
to inquire into this salute, he beheld the eldest daughter of his late
patron.
'Miss Pecksniff!' said Tom.
'Why, my goodness, Mr Pinch!' cried Cherry. 'What are you doing here?'
'I have rather wandered from my way,' said Tom. 'I--'
'I hope you have run away,' said Charity. 'It would be quite spirited
and proper if you had, when my Papa so far forgets himself.'
'I have left him,' returned Tom. 'But it was perfectly understood on
both sides. It was not done clandestinely.'
'Is he married?' asked Cherry, with a spasmodic shake of her chin.
'No, not yet,' said Tom, colouring; 'to tell you the truth, I don't
think he is likely to be, if--if Miss Graham is the object of his
passion.'
'Tcha, Mr Pinch!' cried Charity, with sharp impatience, 'you're very
easily deceived. You don't know the arts of which such a creature is
capable. Oh! it's a wicked world.'
'You are not married?' Tom hinted, to divert the conversation.
'N--no!' said Cherry, tracing out one particular paving-stone in
Monument Yard with the end of her parasol. 'I--but really it's quite
impossible to explain. Won't you walk in?'
'You live here, then?' said Tom
'Yes,' returned Miss Pecksniff, pointing with her parasol to Todgers's;
'I reside with this lady, AT PRESENT.'
The great stress on the two last words suggested to Tom that he was
expected to say something in reference to them. So he said.
'Only at present! Are you going home again soon?'
'No, Mr Pinch,' returned Charity. 'No, thank you. No! A mother-in-law
who is younger than--I mean to say, who is as nearly as possible about
the same age as one's self, would not quite suit my spirit. Not quite!'
said Cherry, with a spiteful shiver.
'I thought from your saying "at present"'--Tom observed.
'Really, upon my word! I had no idea you would press me so very closely
on the subject, Mr Pinch,' said Charity, blushing, 'or I should not have
been so foolish as to allude to--oh really!--won't you walk in?'
Tom mentioned, to excuse himself, that he had an appointment in
Furnival's Inn, and that coming from Islington he had taken a few wrong
turnings, and arrived at the Monument instead. Miss Pecksniff simpered
very much when he asked her if she knew the way to Furnival's Inn, and
at length found courage to reply.
'A gentleman who is a friend of mine, or at least who is not exactly a
friend so much as a sort of acquaintance--Oh upon my word, I hardly
know what I say, Mr Pinch; you mustn't suppose there is any engagement
between us; or at least if there is, that it is at all a settled thing
as yet--is going to Furnival's Inn immediately, I believe upon a little
business, and I am sure he would be very glad to accompany you, so as
to prevent your going wrong again. You had better walk in. You will very
likely find my sister Merry here,' she said with a curious toss of her
head, and anything but an agreeable smile.
'Then, I think, I'll endeavour to find my way alone,' said Tom, 'for I
fear she would not be very glad to see me. That unfortunate occurrence,
in relation to which you and I had some amicable words together, in
private, is not likely to have impressed her with any friendly feeling
towards me. Though it really was not my fault.'
'She has never heard of that, you may depend,' said Cherry, gathering up
the corners of her mouth, and nodding at Tom. 'I am far from sure that
she would bear you any mighty ill will for it, if she had.'
'You don't say so?' cried Tom, who was really concerned by this
insinuation.
'I say nothing,' said Charity. 'If I had not already known what shocking
things treachery and deceit are in themselves, Mr Pinch, I might perhaps
have learnt it from the success they meet with--from the success they
meet with.' Here she smiled as before. 'But I don't say anything. On the
contrary, I should scorn it. You had better walk in!'
There was something hidden here, which piqued Tom's interest and
troubled his tender heart. When, in a moment's irresolution, he looked
at Charity, he could not but observe a struggle in her face between
a sense of triumph and a sense of shame; nor could he but remark how,
meeting even his eyes, which she cared so little for, she turned away
her own, for all the splenetic defiance in her manner.
An uneasy thought entered Tom's head; a shadowy misgiving that the
altered relations between himself and Pecksniff were somehow to involve
an altered knowledge on his part of other people, and were to give him
an insight into much of which he had had no previous suspicion. And yet
he put no definite construction upon Charity's proceedings. He certainly
had no idea that as he had been the audience and spectator of her
mortification, she grasped with eager delight at any opportunity of
reproaching her sister with his presence in HER far deeper misery; for
he knew nothing of it, and only pictured that sister as the same giddy,
careless, trivial creature she always had been, with the same slight
estimation of himself which she had never been at the least pains
to conceal. In short, he had merely a confused impression that Miss
Pecksniff was not quite sisterly or kind; and being curious to set it
right, accompanied her as she desired.
The house-door being opened, she went in before Tom, requesting him to
follow her; and led the way to the parlour door.
'Oh, Merry!' she said, looking in, 'I am so glad you have not gone home.
Who do you think I have met in the street, and brought to see you! Mr
Pinch! There. Now you ARE surprised, I am sure!'
Not more surprised than Tom was, when he looked upon her. Not so much.
Not half so much.
'Mr Pinch has left Papa, my dear,' said Cherry, 'and his prospects are
quite flourishing. I have promised that Augustus, who is going that way,
shall escort him to the place he wants. Augustus, my child, where are
you?'
With these words Miss Pecksniff screamed her way out of the parlour,
calling on Augustus Moddle to appear; and left Tom Pinch alone with her
sister.
If she had always been his kindest friend; if she had treated him
through all his servitude with such consideration as was never yet
received by struggling man; if she had lightened every moment of those
many years, and had ever spared and never wounded him; his honest heart
could not have swelled before her with a deeper pity, or a purer freedom
from all base remembrance than it did then.
'My gracious me! You are really the last person in the world I should
have thought of seeing, I am sure!'
Tom was sorry to hear her speaking in her old manner. He had not
expected that. Yet he did not feel it a contradiction that he should be
sorry to see her so unlike her old self, and sorry at the same time
to hear her speaking in her old manner. The two things seemed quite
natural.
'I wonder you find any gratification in coming to see me. I can't think
what put it in your head. I never had much in seeing you. There was no
love lost between us, Mr Pinch, at any time, I think.'
Her bonnet lay beside her on the sofa, and she was very busy with the
ribbons as she spoke. Much too busy to be conscious of the work her
fingers did.
'We never quarrelled,' said Tom.--Tom was right in that, for one person
can no more quarrel without an adversary, than one person can play at
chess, or fight a duel. 'I hoped you would be glad to shake hands with
an old friend. Don't let us rake up bygones,' said Tom. 'If I ever
offended you, forgive me.'
She looked at him for a moment; dropped her bonnet from her hands;
spread them before her altered face, and burst into tears.
'Oh, Mr Pinch!' she said, 'although I never used you well, I did believe
your nature was forgiving. I did not think you could be cruel.'
She spoke as little like her old self now, for certain, as Tom
could possibly have wished. But she seemed to be appealing to him
reproachfully, and he did not understand her.
'I seldom showed it--never--I know that. But I had that belief in you,
that if I had been asked to name the person in the world least likely to
retort upon me, I would have named you, confidently.'
'Would have named me!' Tom repeated.
'Yes,' she said with energy, 'and I have often thought so.'
After a moment's reflection, Tom sat himself upon a chair beside her.
'Do you believe,' said Tom, 'oh, can you think, that what I said just
now, I said with any but the true and plain intention which my words
professed? I mean it, in the spirit and the letter. If I ever offended
you, forgive me; I may have done so, many times. You never injured or
offended me. How, then, could I possibly retort, if even I were stern
and bad enough to wish to do it!'
After a little while she thanked him, through her tears and sobs, and
told him she had never been at once so sorry and so comforted, since she
left home. Still she wept bitterly; and it was the greater pain to Tom
to see her weeping, from her standing in especial need, just then, of
sympathy and tenderness.
'Come, come!' said Tom, 'you used to be as cheerful as the day was
long.'
'Ah! used!' she cried, in such a tone as rent Tom's heart.
'And will be again,' said Tom.
'No, never more. No, never, never more. If you should talk with old Mr
Chuzzlewit, at any time,' she added, looking hurriedly into his face--'I
sometimes thought he liked you, but suppressed it--will you promise me
to tell him that you saw me here, and that I said I bore in mind the
time we talked together in the churchyard?'
Tom promised that he would.
'Many times since then, when I have wished I had been carried there
before that day, I have recalled his words. I wish that he should know
how true they were, although the least acknowledgment to that effect has
never passed my lips and never will.'
Tom promised this, conditionally too. He did not tell her how improbable
it was that he and the old man would ever meet again, because he thought
it might disturb her more.
'If he should ever know this, through your means, dear Mr Pinch,' said
Mercy, 'tell him that I sent the message, not for myself, but that he
might be more forbearing and more patient, and more trustful to some
other person, in some other time of need. Tell him that if he could know
how my heart trembled in the balance that day, and what a very little
would have turned the scale, his own would bleed with pity for me.'
'Yes, yes,' said Tom, 'I will.'
'When I appeared to him the most unworthy of his help, I was--I know I
was, for I have often, often, thought about it since--the most inclined
to yield to what he showed me. Oh! if he had relented but a little more;
if he had thrown himself in my way for but one other quarter of an hour;
if he had extended his compassion for a vain, unthinking, miserable
girl, in but the least degree; he might, and I believe he would, have
saved her! Tell him that I don't blame him, but am grateful for the
effort that he made; but ask him for the love of God, and youth, and
in merciful consideration for the struggle which an ill-advised and
unwakened nature makes to hide the strength it thinks its weakness--ask
him never, never, to forget this, when he deals with one again!'
Although Tom did not hold the clue to her full meaning, he could guess
it pretty nearly. Touched to the quick, he took her hand and said, or
meant to say, some words of consolation. She felt and understood them,
whether they were spoken or no. He was not quite certain, afterwards,
but that she had tried to kneel down at his feet, and bless him.
He found that he was not alone in the room when she had left it. Mrs
Todgers was there, shaking her head. Tom had never seen Mrs Todgers, it
is needless to say, but he had a perception of her being the lady of the
house; and he saw some genuine compassion in her eyes, that won his good
opinion.
'Ah, sir! You are an old friend, I see,' said Mrs Todgers.
'Yes,' said Tom.
'And yet,' quoth Mrs Todgers, shutting the door softly, 'she hasn't told
you what her troubles are, I'm certain.'
Tom was struck by these words, for they were quite true. 'Indeed,' he
said, 'she has not.'
'And never would,' said Mrs Todgers, 'if you saw her daily. She never
makes the least complaint to me, or utters a single word of explanation
or reproach. But I know,' said Mrs Todgers, drawing in her breath, 'I
know!'
Tom nodded sorrowfully, 'So do I.'
'I fully believe,' said Mrs Todgers, taking her pocket-handkerchief
from the flat reticule, 'that nobody can tell one half of what that poor
young creature has to undergo. But though she comes here, constantly,
to ease her poor full heart without his knowing it; and saying, "Mrs
Todgers, I am very low to-day; I think that I shall soon be dead," sits
crying in my room until the fit is past; I know no more from her. And,
I believe,' said Mrs Todgers, putting back her handkerchief again, 'that
she considers me a good friend too.'
Mrs Todgers might have said her best friend. Commercial gentlemen and
gravy had tried Mrs Todgers's temper; the main chance--it was such a
very small one in her case, that she might have been excused for looking
sharp after it, lest it should entirely vanish from her sight--had taken
a firm hold on Mrs Todgers's attention. But in some odd nook in Mrs
Todgers's breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be
overlooked, there was a secret door, with 'Woman' written on the spring,
which, at a touch from Mercy's hand, had flown wide open, and admitted
her for shelter.
When boarding-house accounts are balanced with all other ledgers, and
the books of the Recording Angel are made up for ever, perhaps there may
be seen an entry to thy credit, lean Mrs Todgers, which shall make thee
beautiful!
She was growing beautiful so rapidly in Tom's eyes; for he saw that she
was poor, and that this good had sprung up in her from among the sordid
strivings of her life; that she might have been a very Venus in a minute
more, if Miss Pecksniff had not entered with her friend.
'Mr Thomas Pinch!' said Charity, performing the ceremony of introduction
with evident pride. 'Mr Moddle. Where's my sister?'
'Gone, Miss Pecksniff,' Mrs Todgers answered. 'She had appointed to be
home.'
'Ah!' said Charity, looking at Tom. 'Oh, dear me!'
'She's greatly altered since she's been Anoth--since she's been married,
Mrs Todgers!' observed Moddle.
'My dear Augustus!' said Miss Pecksniff, in a low voice. 'I verily
believe you have said that fifty thousand times, in my hearing. What a
Prose you are!'
This was succeeded by some trifling love passages, which appeared to
originate with, if not to be wholly carried on by Miss Pecksniff. At any
rate, Mr Moddle was much slower in his responses than is customary
with young lovers, and exhibited a lowness of spirits which was quite
oppressive.
He did not improve at all when Tom and he were in the streets, but
sighed so dismally that it was dreadful to hear him. As a means of
cheering him up, Tom told him that he wished him joy.
'Joy!' cried Moddle. 'Ha, ha!'
'What an extraordinary young man!' thought Tom.
'The Scorner has not set his seal upon you. YOU care what becomes of
you?' said Moddle.
Tom admitted that it was a subject in which he certainly felt some
interest.
'I don't,' said Mr Moddle. 'The Elements may have me when they please.
I'm ready.'
Tom inferred from these, and other expressions of the same nature, that
he was jealous. Therefore he allowed him to take his own course; which
was such a gloomy one, that he felt a load removed from his mind when
they parted company at the gate of Furnival's Inn.
It was now a couple of hours past John Westlock's dinner-time; and he
was walking up and down the room, quite anxious for Tom's safety. The
table was spread; the wine was carefully decanted; and the dinner smelt
delicious.
'Why, Tom, old boy, where on earth have you been? Your box is here. Get
your boots off instantly, and sit down!'
'I am sorry to say I can't stay, John,' replied Tom Pinch, who was
breathless with the haste he had made in running up the stairs.
'Can't stay!'
'If you'll go on with your dinner,' said Tom, 'I'll tell you my reason
the while. I mustn't eat myself, or I shall have no appetite for the
chops.'
'There are no chops here, my food fellow.'
'No. But there are at Islington,' said Tom.
John Westlock was perfectly confounded by this reply, and vowed he would
not touch a morsel until Tom had explained himself fully. So Tom sat
down, and told him all; to which he listened with the greatest interest.
He knew Tom too well, and respected his delicacy too much, to ask him
why he had taken these measures without communicating with him first. He
quite concurred in the expediency of Tom's immediately returning to his
sister, as he knew so little of the place in which he had left her, and
good-humouredly proposed to ride back with him in a cab, in which he
might convey his box. Tom's proposition that he should sup with them
that night, he flatly rejected, but made an appointment with him for the
morrow. 'And now Tom,' he said, as they rode along, 'I have a question
to ask you to which I expect a manly and straightforward answer. Do you
want any money? I am pretty sure you do.'
'I don't indeed,' said Tom.
'I believe you are deceiving me.'
'No. With many thanks to you, I am quite in earnest,' Tom replied. 'My
sister has some money, and so have I. If I had nothing else, John, I
have a five-pound note, which that good creature, Mrs Lupin, of the
Dragon, handed up to me outside the coach, in a letter begging me to
borrow it; and then drove off as hard as she could go.'
'And a blessing on every dimple in her handsome face, say I!' cried
John, 'though why you should give her the preference over me, I don't
know. Never mind. I bide my time, Tom.'
'And I hope you'll continue to bide it,' returned Tom, gayly. 'For I
owe you more, already, in a hundred other ways, than I can ever hope to
pay.'
They parted at the door of Tom's new residence. John Westlock, sitting
in the cab, and, catching a glimpse of a blooming little busy creature
darting out to kiss Tom and to help him with his box, would not have had
the least objection to change places with him.
Well! she WAS a cheerful little thing; and had a quaint, bright
quietness about her that was infinitely pleasant. Surely she was the
best sauce for chops ever invented. The potatoes seemed to take a
pleasure in sending up their grateful steam before her; the froth upon
the pint of porter pouted to attract her notice. But it was all in vain.
She saw nothing but Tom. Tom was the first and last thing in the world.
As she sat opposite to Tom at supper, fingering one of Tom's pet tunes
upon the table-cloth, and smiling in his face, he had never been so
happy in his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SECRET SERVICE
In walking from the city with his sentimental friend, Tom Pinch had
looked into the face, and brushed against the threadbare sleeve, of Mr
Nadgett, man of mystery to the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and
Life Assurance Company. Mr Nadgett naturally passed away from Tom's
remembrance as he passed out of his view; for he didn't know him, and
had never heard his name.
As there are a vast number of people in the huge metropolis of England
who rise up every morning not knowing where their heads will rest at
night, so there are a multitude who shooting arrows over houses as their
daily business, never know on whom they fall. Mr Nadgett might have
passed Tom Pinch ten thousand times; might even have been quite familiar
with his face, his name, pursuits, and character; yet never once have
dreamed that Tom had any interest in any act or mystery of his. Tom
might have done the like by him of course. But the same private man out
of all the men alive, was in the mind of each at the same moment; was
prominently connected though in a different manner, with the day's
adventures of both; and formed, when they passed each other in the
street, the one absorbing topic of their thoughts.
Why Tom had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his mind requires no explanation. Why Mr
Nadgett should have had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his, is quite another thing.
But, somehow or other, that amiable and worthy orphan had become a part
of the mystery of Mr Nadgett's existence. Mr Nadgett took an interest
in his lightest proceedings; and it never flagged or wavered. He watched
him in and out of the Assurance Office, where he was now formally
installed as a Director; he dogged his footsteps in the streets; he
stood listening when he talked; he sat in coffee-rooms entering his
name in the great pocket-book, over and over again; he wrote letters to
himself about him constantly; and, when he found them in his pocket, put
them in the fire, with such distrust and caution that he would bend down
to watch the crumpled tinder while it floated upwards, as if his mind
misgave him, that the mystery it had contained might come out at the
chimney-pot.
And yet all this was quite a secret. Mr Nadgett kept it to himself, and
kept it close. Jonas had no more idea that Mr Nadgett's eyes were fixed
on him, than he had that he was living under the daily inspection and
report of a whole order of Jesuits. Indeed Mr Nadgett's eyes were seldom
fixed on any other objects than the ground, the clock, or the fire; but
every button on his coat might have been an eye, he saw so much.
The secret manner of the man disarmed suspicion in this wise;
suggesting, not that he was watching any one, but that he thought
some other man was watching him. He went about so stealthily, and kept
himself so wrapped up in himself, that the whole object of his life
appeared to be, to avoid notice and preserve his own mystery. Jonas
sometimes saw him in the street, hovering in the outer office, waiting
at the door for the man who never came, or slinking off with his
immovable face and drooping head, and the one beaver glove dangling
before him; but he would as soon have thought of the cross upon the top
of St. Paul's Cathedral taking note of what he did, or slowly winding
a great net about his feet, as of Nadgett's being engaged in such an
occupation.
Mr Nadgett made a mysterious change about this time in his mysterious
life: for whereas he had, until now, been first seen every morning
coming down Cornhill, so exactly like the Nadgett of the day before
as to occasion a popular belief that he never went to bed or took his
clothes off, he was now first seen in Holborn, coming out of Kingsgate
Street; and it was soon discovered that he actually went every morning
to a barber's shop in that street to get shaved; and that the barber's
name was Sweedlepipe. He seemed to make appointments with the man who
never came, to meet him at this barber's; for he would frequently take
long spells of waiting in the shop, and would ask for pen and ink, and
pull out his pocket-book, and be very busy over it for an hour at a
time. Mrs Gamp and Mr Sweedlepipe had many deep discoursings on the
subject of this mysterious customer; but they usually agreed that he had
speculated too much and was keeping out of the way.
He must have appointed the man who never kept his word, to meet him at
another new place too; for one day he was found, for the first time,
by the waiter at the Mourning Coach-Horse, the House-of-call for
Undertakers, down in the City there, making figures with a pipe-stem in
the sawdust of a clean spittoon; and declining to call for anything, on
the ground of expecting a gentleman presently. As the gentleman was not
honourable enough to keep his engagement, he came again next day, with
his pocket-book in such a state of distention that he was regarded in
the bar as a man of large property. After that, he repeated his visits
every day, and had so much writing to do, that he made nothing of
emptying a capacious leaden inkstand in two sittings. Although he never
talked much, still, by being there among the regular customers, he made
their acquaintance, and in course of time became quite intimate with Mr
Tacker, Mr Mould's foreman; and even with Mr Mould himself, who openly
said he was a long-headed man, a dry one, a salt fish, a deep file, a
rasper; and made him the subject of many other flattering encomiums.
At the same time, too, he told the people at the Assurance Office, in
his own mysterious way, that there was something wrong (secretly wrong,
of course) in his liver, and that he feared he must put himself
under the doctor's hands. He was delivered over to Jobling upon this
representation; and though Jobling could not find out where his liver
was wrong, wrong Mr Nadgett said it was; observing that it was his
own liver, and he hoped he ought to know. Accordingly, he became Mr
Jobling's patient; and detailing his symptoms in his slow and secret
way, was in and out of that gentleman's room a dozen times a day.
As he pursued all these occupations at once; and all steadily; and all
secretly; and never slackened in his watchfulness of everything that
Mr Jonas said and did, and left unsaid and undone; it is not improbable
that they were, secretly, essential parts of some great scheme which Mr
Nadgett had on foot.
It was on the morning of this very day on which so much had happened to
Tom Pinch, that Nadgett suddenly appeared before Mr Montague's house in
Pall Mall--he always made his appearance as if he had that moment come
up a trap--when the clocks were striking nine. He rang the bell in a
covert under-handed way, as though it were a treasonable act; and passed
in at the door, the moment it was opened wide enough to receive his
body. That done, he shut it immediately with his own hands.
Mr Bailey, taking up his name without delay, returned with a request
that he would follow him into his master's chamber. The chairman of the
Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Board was dressing,
and received him as a business person who was often backwards and
forwards, and was received at all times for his business' sake.
'Well, Mr Nadgett?'
Mr Nadgett put his hat upon the ground and coughed. The boy having
withdrawn and shut the door, he went to it softly, examined the handle,
and returned to within a pace or two of the chair in which Mr Montague
sat.
'Any news, Mr Nadgett?'
'I think we have some news at last, sir.'
'I am happy to hear it. I began to fear you were off the scent, Mr
Nadgett.'
'No, sir. It grows cold occasionally. It will sometimes. We can't help
that.'
'You are truth itself, Mr Nadgett. Do you report a great success?'
'That depends upon your judgment and construction of it,' was his
answer, as he put on his spectacles.
'What do you think of it yourself? Have you pleased yourself?'
Mr Nadgett rubbed his hands slowly, stroked his chin, looked round the
room, and said, 'Yes, yes, I think it's a good case. I am disposed to
think it's a good case. Will you go into it at once?'
'By all means.'
Mr Nadgett picked out a certain chair from among the rest, and having
planted it in a particular spot, as carefully as if he had been going to
vault over it, placed another chair in front of it; leaving room for his
own legs between them. He then sat down in chair number two, and laid
his pocket-book, very carefully, on chair number one. He then untied the
pocket-book, and hung the string over the back of chair number one. He
then drew both the chairs a little nearer Mr Montague, and opening
the pocket-book spread out its contents. Finally he selected a certain
memorandum from the rest, and held it out to his employer, who, during
the whole of these preliminary ceremonies, had been making violent
efforts to conceal his impatience.
'I wish you wouldn't be so fond of making notes, my excellent friend,'
said Tigg Montague with a ghastly smile. 'I wish you would consent to
give me their purport by word of mouth.'
'I don't like word of mouth,' said Mr Nadgett gravely. 'We never know
who's listening.'
Mr Montague was going to retort, when Nadgett handed him the paper, and
said, with quiet exultation in his tone, 'We'll begin at the beginning,
and take that one first, if you please, sir.'
The chairman cast his eyes upon it, coldly, and with a smile which did
not render any great homage to the slow and methodical habits of his
spy. But he had not read half-a-dozen lines when the expression of his
face began to change, and before he had finished the perusal of the
paper, it was full of grave and serious attention.
'Number Two,' said Mr Nadgett, handing him another, and receiving back
the first. 'Read Number Two, sir, if you please. There is more interest
as you go on.'
Tigg Montague leaned backward in his chair, and cast upon his emissary
such a look of vacant wonder (not unmingled with alarm), that Mr Nadgett
considered it necessary to repeat the request he had already twice
preferred; with the view to recalling his attention to the point in
hand. Profiting by the hint, Mr Montague went on with Number Two, and
afterwards with Numbers Three, and Four, and Five, and so on.
These documents were all in Mr Nadgett's writing, and were apparently a
series of memoranda, jotted down from time to time upon the backs of old
letters, or any scrap of paper that came first to hand. Loose straggling
scrawls they were, and of very uninviting exterior; but they had weighty
purpose in them, if the chairman's face were any index to the character
of their contents.
The progress of Mr Nadgett's secret satisfaction arising out of the
effect they made, kept pace with the emotions of the reader. At first,
Mr Nadgett sat with his spectacles low down upon his nose, looking over
them at his employer, and nervously rubbing his hands. After a little
while, he changed his posture in his chair for one of greater ease, and
leisurely perused the next document he held ready as if an occasional
glance at his employer's face were now enough and all occasion for
anxiety or doubt were gone. And finally he rose and looked out of the
window, where he stood with a triumphant air until Tigg Montague had
finished.
'And this is the last, Mr Nadgett!' said that gentleman, drawing a long
breath.
'That, sir, is the last.'
'You are a wonderful man, Mr Nadgett!'
'I think it is a pretty good case,' he returned as he gathered up his
papers. 'It cost some trouble, sir.'
'The trouble shall be well rewarded, Mr Nadgett.' Nadgett bowed. 'There
is a deeper impression of Somebody's Hoof here, than I had expected, Mr
Nadgett. I may congratulate myself upon your being such a good hand at a
secret.'
'Oh! nothing has an interest to me that's not a secret,' replied
Nadgett, as he tied the string about his pocket-book, and put it up. 'It
always takes away any pleasure I may have had in this inquiry even to
make it known to you.'
'A most invaluable constitution,' Tigg retorted. 'A great gift for a
gentleman employed as you are, Mr Nadgett. Much better than discretion;
though you possess that quality also in an eminent degree. I think I
heard a double knock. Will you put your head out of window, and tell me
whether there is anybody at the door?'
Mr Nadgett softly raised the sash, and peered out from the very corner,
as a man might who was looking down into a street from whence a brisk
discharge of musketry might be expected at any moment. Drawing in his
head with equal caution, he observed, not altering his voice or manner:
'Mr Jonas Chuzzlewit!'
'I thought so,' Tigg retorted.
'Shall I go?'
'I think you had better. Stay though! No! remain here, Mr Nadgett, if
you please.'
It was remarkable how pale and flurried he had become in an instant.
There was nothing to account for it. His eye had fallen on his razors;
but what of them!
Mr Chuzzlewit was announced.
'Show him up directly. Nadgett! don't you leave us alone together. Mind
you don't, now! By the Lord!' he added in a whisper to himself: 'We
don't know what may happen.'
Saying this, he hurriedly took up a couple of hair-brushes, and began
to exercise them on his own head, as if his toilet had not been
interrupted. Mr Nadgett withdrew to the stove, in which there was a
small fire for the convenience of heating curling-irons; and
taking advantage of so favourable an opportunity for drying his
pocket-handkerchief, produced it without loss of time. There he stood,
during the whole interview, holding it before the bars, and sometimes,
but not often, glancing over his shoulder.
'My dear Chuzzlewit!' cried Montague, as Jonas entered. 'You rise with
the lark. Though you go to bed with the nightingale, you rise with the
lark. You have superhuman energy, my dear Chuzzlewit!'
'Ecod!' said Jonas, with an air of langour and ill-humour, as he took
a chair, 'I should be very glad not to get up with the lark, if I could
help it. But I am a light sleeper; and it's better to be up than lying
awake, counting the dismal old church-clocks, in bed.'
'A light sleeper!' cried his friend. 'Now, what is a light sleeper?
I often hear the expression, but upon my life I have not the least
conception what a light sleeper is.'
'Hallo!' said Jonas, 'Who's that? Oh, old what's-his-name: looking (as
usual) as if he wanted to skulk up the chimney.'
'Ha, ha! I have no doubt he does.'
'Well! He's not wanted here, I suppose,' said Jonas. 'He may go, mayn't
he?'
'Oh, let him stay, let him stay!' said Tigg. 'He's a mere piece of
furniture. He has been making his report, and is waiting for further
orders. He has been told,' said Tigg, raising his voice, 'not to lose
sight of certain friends of ours, or to think that he has done with them
by any means. He understands his business.'
'He need,' replied Jonas; 'for of all the precious old dummies in
appearance that I ever saw, he's about the worst. He's afraid of me, I
think.'
'It's my belief,' said Tigg, 'that you are Poison to him. Nadgett! give
me that towel!'
He had as little occasion for a towel as Jonas had for a start. But
Nadgett brought it quickly; and, having lingered for a moment, fell back
upon his old post by the fire.
'You see, my dear fellow,' resumed Tigg, 'you are too--what's the matter
with your lips? How white they are!'
'I took some vinegar just now,' said Jonas. 'I had oysters for my
breakfast. Where are they white?' he added, muttering an oath, and
rubbing them upon his handkerchief. 'I don't believe they ARE white.'
'Now I look again, they are not,' replied his friend. 'They are coming
right again.'
'Say what you were going to say,' cried Jonas angrily, 'and let my face
be! As long as I can show my teeth when I want to (and I can do that
pretty well), the colour of my lips is not material.'
'Quite true,' said Tigg. 'I was only going to say that you are too quick
and active for our friend. He is too shy to cope with such a man as you,
but does his duty well. Oh, very well! But what is a light sleeper?'
'Hang a light sleeper!' exclaimed Jonas pettishly.
'No, no,' interrupted Tigg. 'No. We'll not do that.'
'A light sleeper ain't a heavy one,' said Jonas in his sulky way; 'don't
sleep much, and don't sleep well, and don't sleep sound.'
'And dreams,' said Tigg, 'and cries out in an ugly manner; and when the
candle burns down in the night, is in an agony; and all that sort of
thing. I see!'
They were silent for a little time. Then Jonas spoke:
'Now we've done with child's talk, I want to have a word with you. I
want to have a word with you before we meet up yonder to-day. I am not
satisfied with the state of affairs.'
'Not satisfied!' cried Tigg. 'The money comes in well.'
'The money comes in well enough,' retorted Jonas, 'but it don't come
out well enough. It can't be got at easily enough. I haven't sufficient
power; it is all in your hands. Ecod! what with one of your by-laws, and
another of your by-laws, and your votes in this capacity, and your votes
in that capacity, and your official rights, and your individual rights,
and other people's rights who are only you again, there are no rights
left for me. Everybody else's rights are my wrongs. What's the use of my
having a voice if it's always drowned? I might as well be dumb, and
it would be much less aggravating. I'm not a-going to stand that, you
know.'
'No!' said Tigg in an insinuating tone.
'No!' returned Jonas, 'I'm not indeed. I'll play old Gooseberry with the
office, and make you glad to buy me out at a good high figure, if you
try any of your tricks with me.'
'I give you my honour--' Montague began.
'Oh! confound your honour,' interrupted Jonas, who became more coarse
and quarrelsome as the other remonstrated, which may have been a part of
Mr Montague's intention; 'I want a little more control over the money.
You may have all the honour, if you like; I'll never bring you to book
for that. But I'm not a-going to stand it, as it is now. If you should
take it into your honourable head to go abroad with the bank, I don't
see much to prevent you. Well! That won't do. I've had some very good
dinners here, but they'd come too dear on such terms; and therefore,
that won't do.'
'I am unfortunate to find you in this humour,' said Tigg, with a
remarkable kind of smile; 'for I was going to propose to you--for your
own advantage; solely for your own advantage--that you should venture a
little more with us.'
'Was you, by G--?' said Jonas, with a short laugh.
'Yes. And to suggest,' pursued Montague, 'that surely you have friends;
indeed, I know you have; who would answer our purpose admirably, and
whom we should be delighted to receive.'
'How kind of you! You'd be delighted to receive 'em, would you?' said
Jonas, bantering.
'I give you my sacred honour, quite transported. As your friends,
observe!'
'Exactly,' said Jonas; 'as my friends, of course. You'll be very much
delighted when you get 'em, I have no doubt. And it'll be all to my
advantage, won't it?'
'It will be very much to your advantage,' answered Montague poising a
brush in each hand, and looking steadily upon him. 'It will be very much
to your advantage, I assure you.'
'And you can tell me how,' said Jonas, 'can't you?'
'SHALL I tell you how?' returned the other.
'I think you had better,' said Jonas. 'Strange things have been done
in the Assurance way before now, by strange sorts of men, and I mean to
take care of myself.'
'Chuzzlewit!' replied Montague, leaning forward, with his arms upon his
knees, and looking full into his face. 'Strange things have been done,
and are done every day; not only in our way, but in a variety of other
ways; and no one suspects them. But ours, as you say, my good friend,
is a strange way; and we strangely happen, sometimes, to come into the
knowledge of very strange events.'
He beckoned to Jonas to bring his chair nearer; and looking slightly
round, as if to remind him of the presence of Nadgett, whispered in his
ear.
From red to white; from white to red again; from red to yellow; then to
a cold, dull, awful, sweat-bedabbled blue. In that short whisper, all
these changes fell upon the face of Jonas Chuzzlewit; and when at last
he laid his hand upon the whisperer's mouth, appalled, lest any syllable
of what he said should reach the ears of the third person present, it
was as bloodless and as heavy as the hand of Death.
He drew his chair away, and sat a spectacle of terror, misery, and
rage. He was afraid to speak, or look, or move, or sit still. Abject,
crouching, and miserable, he was a greater degradation to the form he
bore, than if he had been a loathsome wound from head to heel.
His companion leisurely resumed his dressing, and completed it, glancing
sometimes with a smile at the transformation he had effected, but never
speaking once.
'You'll not object,' he said, when he was quite equipped, 'to venture
further with us, Chuzzlewit, my friend?'
His pale lips faintly stammered out a 'No.'
'Well said! That's like yourself. Do you know I was thinking yesterday
that your father-in-law, relying on your advice as a man of great
sagacity in money matters, as no doubt you are, would join us, if the
thing were well presented to him. He has money?'
'Yes, he has money.'
'Shall I leave Mr Pecksniff to you? Will you undertake for Mr
Pecksniff.'
'I'll try. I'll do my best.'
'A thousand thanks,' replied the other, clapping him upon the shoulder.
'Shall we walk downstairs? Mr Nadgett! Follow us, if you please.'
They went down in that order. Whatever Jonas felt in reference to
Montague; whatever sense he had of being caged, and barred, and trapped,
and having fallen down into a pit of deepest ruin; whatever thoughts
came crowding on his mind even at that early time, of one terrible
chance of escape, of one red glimmer in a sky of blackness; he no more
thought that the slinking figure half-a-dozen stairs behind him was
his pursuing Fate, than that the other figure at his side was his Good
Angel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CONTAINING SOME FURTHER PARTICULARS OF THE DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF THE
PINCHES; WITH STRANGE NEWS FROM THE CITY, NARROWLY CONCERNING TOM
Pleasant little Ruth! Cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet little Ruth! No
doll's house ever yielded greater delight to its young mistress, than
little Ruth derived from her glorious dominion over the triangular
parlour and the two small bedrooms.
To be Tom's housekeeper. What dignity! Housekeeping, upon the commonest
terms, associated itself with elevated responsibilities of all sorts and
kinds; but housekeeping for Tom implied the utmost complication of
grave trusts and mighty charges. Well might she take the keys out of
the little chiffonier which held the tea and sugar; and out of the
two little damp cupboards down by the fireplace, where the very black
beetles got mouldy, and had the shine taken out of their backs by
envious mildew; and jingle them upon a ring before Tom's eyes when he
came down to breakfast! Well might she, laughing musically, put them
up in that blessed little pocket of hers with a merry pride! For it was
such a grand novelty to be mistress of anything, that if she had been
the most relentless and despotic of all little housekeepers, she might
have pleaded just that much for her excuse, and have been honourably
acquitted.
So far from being despotic, however, there was a coyness about her very
way of pouring out the tea, which Tom quite revelled in. And when
she asked him what he would like to have for dinner, and faltered
out 'chops' as a reasonably good suggestion after their last
night's successful supper, Tom grew quite facetious, and rallied her
desperately.
'I don't know, Tom,' said his sister, blushing, 'I am not quite
confident, but I think I could make a beef-steak pudding, if I tried,
Tom.'
'In the whole catalogue of cookery, there is nothing I should like so
much as a beef-steak pudding!' cried Tom, slapping his leg to give the
greater force to this reply.
'Yes, dear, that's excellent! But if it should happen not to come quite
right the first time,' his sister faltered; 'if it should happen not
to be a pudding exactly, but should turn out a stew, or a soup, or
something of that sort, you'll not be vexed, Tom, will you?'
The serious way in which she looked at Tom; the way in which Tom looked
at her; and the way in which she gradually broke into a merry laugh at
her own expense, would have enchanted you.
'Why,' said Tom 'this is capital. It gives us a new, and quite an
uncommon interest in the dinner. We put into a lottery for a beefsteak
pudding, and it is impossible to say what we may get. We may make some
wonderful discovery, perhaps, and produce such a dish as never was known
before.'
'I shall not be at all surprised if we do, Tom,' returned his sister,
still laughing merrily, 'or if it should prove to be such a dish as we
shall not feel very anxious to produce again; but the meat must come out
of the saucepan at last, somehow or other, you know. We can't cook it
into nothing at all; that's a great comfort. So if you like to venture,
I will.'
'I have not the least doubt,' rejoined Tom, 'that it will come out an
excellent pudding, or at all events, I am sure that I shall think it so.
There is naturally something so handy and brisk about you, Ruth, that
if you said you could make a bowl of faultless turtle soup, I should
believe you.'
And Tom was right. She was precisely that sort of person. Nobody ought
to have been able to resist her coaxing manner; and nobody had any
business to try. Yet she never seemed to know it was her manner at all.
That was the best of it.
Well! she washed up the breakfast cups, chatting away the whole time,
and telling Tom all sorts of anecdotes about the brass-and-copper
founder; put everything in its place; made the room as neat as
herself;--you must not suppose its shape was half as neat as hers
though, or anything like it--and brushed Tom's old hat round and
round and round again, until it was as sleek as Mr Pecksniff. Then she
discovered, all in a moment, that Tom's shirt-collar was frayed at the
edge; and flying upstairs for a needle and thread, came flying down
again with her thimble on, and set it right with wonderful expertness;
never once sticking the needle into his face, although she was humming
his pet tune from first to last, and beating time with the fingers of
her left hand upon his neckcloth. She had no sooner done this, than off
she was again; and there she stood once more, as brisk and busy as a
bee, tying that compact little chin of hers into an equally compact
little bonnet; intent on bustling out to the butcher's, without a
minute's loss of time; and inviting Tom to come and see the steak cut,
with his own eyes. As to Tom, he was ready to go anywhere; so off they
trotted, arm-in-arm, as nimbly as you please; saying to each other what
a quiet street it was to lodge in, and how very cheap, and what an airy
situation.
To see the butcher slap the steak, before he laid it on the block, and
give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was
agreeable, too--it really was--to see him cut it off, so smooth and
juicy. There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large
and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch,
clearness of tone, skillful handling of the subject, fine shading. It
was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.
Perhaps the greenest cabbage-leaf ever grown in a garden was wrapped
about this steak, before it was delivered over to Tom. But the butcher
had a sentiment for his business, and knew how to refine upon it. When
he saw Tom putting the cabbage-leaf into his pocket awkwardly, he begged
to be allowed to do it for him; 'for meat,' he said with some emotion,
'must be humoured, not drove.'
Back they went to the lodgings again, after they had bought some eggs,
and flour, and such small matters; and Tom sat gravely down to write at
one end of the parlour table, while Ruth prepared to make the pudding at
the other end; for there was nobody in the house but an old woman (the
landlord being a mysterious sort of man, who went out early in the
morning, and was scarcely ever seen); and saving in mere household
drudgery, they waited on themselves.
'What are you writing, Tom?' inquired his sister, laying her hand upon
his shoulder.
'Why, you see, my dear,' said Tom, leaning back in his chair, and
looking up in her face, 'I am very anxious, of course, to obtain some
suitable employment; and before Mr Westlock comes this afternoon,
I think I may as well prepare a little description of myself and my
qualifications; such as he could show to any friend of his.'
'You had better do the same for me, Tom, also,' said his sister, casting
down her eyes. 'I should dearly like to keep house for you and take care
of you always, Tom; but we are not rich enough for that.'
'We are not rich,' returned Tom, 'certainly; and we may be much poorer.
But we will not part if we can help it. No, no; we will make up our
minds Ruth, that unless we are so very unfortunate as to render me quite
sure that you would be better off away from me than with me, we will
battle it out together. I am certain we shall be happier if we can
battle it out together. Don't you think we shall?'
'Think, Tom!'
'Oh, tut, tut!' interposed Tom, tenderly. 'You mustn't cry.'
'No, no; I won't, Tom. But you can't afford it, dear. You can't,
indeed.'
'We don't know that,' said Tom. 'How are we to know that, yet awhile,
and without trying? Lord bless my soul!'--Tom's energy became quite
grand--'there is no knowing what may happen, if we try hard. And I am
sure we can live contentedly upon a very little--if we can only get it.'
'Yes; that I am sure we can, Tom.'
'Why, then,' said Tom, 'we must try for it. My friend, John Westlock, is
a capital fellow, and very shrewd and intelligent. I'll take his advice.
We'll talk it over with him--both of us together. You'll like John very
much, when you come to know him, I am certain. Don't cry, don't cry. YOU
make a beef-steak pudding, indeed!' said Tom, giving her a gentle push.
'Why, you haven't boldness enough for a dumpling!'
'You WILL call it a pudding, Tom. Mind! I told you not!'
'I may as well call it that, till it proves to be something else,' said
Tom. 'Oh, you are going to work in earnest, are you?'
Aye, aye! That she was. And in such pleasant earnest, moreover, that
Tom's attention wandered from his writing every moment. First, she
tripped downstairs into the kitchen for the flour, then for the
pie-board, then for the eggs, then for the butter, then for a jug of
water, then for the rolling-pin, then for a pudding-basin, then for the
pepper, then for the salt; making a separate journey for everything, and
laughing every time she started off afresh. When all the materials were
collected she was horrified to find she had no apron on, and so ran
UPstairs by way of variety, to fetch it. She didn't put it on upstairs,
but came dancing down with it in her hand; and being one of those little
women to whom an apron is a most becoming little vanity, it took
an immense time to arrange; having to be carefully smoothed down
beneath--Oh, heaven, what a wicked little stomacher!--and to be gathered
up into little plaits by the strings before it could be tied, and to
be tapped, rebuked, and wheedled, at the pockets, before it would set
right, which at last it did, and when it did--but never mind; this is
a sober chronicle. And then, there were her cuffs to be tucked up, for
fear of flour; and she had a little ring to pull off her finger, which
wouldn't come off (foolish little ring!); and during the whole of these
preparations she looked demurely every now and then at Tom, from under
her dark eyelashes, as if they were all a part of the pudding, and
indispensable to its composition.
For the life and soul of him, Tom could get no further in his
writing than, 'A respectable young man, aged thirty-five,' and this,
notwithstanding the show she made of being supernaturally quiet, and
going about on tiptoe, lest she should disturb him; which only served
as an additional means of distracting his attention, and keeping it upon
her.
'Tom,' she said at last, in high glee. 'Tom!'
'What now?' said Tom, repeating to himself, 'aged thirty-five!'
'Will you look here a moment, please?'
As if he hadn't been looking all the time!
'I am going to begin, Tom. Don't you wonder why I butter the inside of
the basin?' said his busy little sister.
'Not more than you do, I dare say,' replied Tom, laughing. 'For I
believe you don't know anything about it.'
'What an infidel you are, Tom! How else do you think it would turn out
easily when it was done! For a civil-engineer and land-surveyor not to
know that! My goodness, Tom!'
It was wholly out of the question to try to write. Tom lined out
'respectable young man, aged thirty-five;' and sat looking on, pen in
hand, with one of the most loving smiles imaginable.
Such a busy little woman as she was! So full of self-importance and
trying so hard not to smile, or seem uncertain about anything! It was a
perfect treat to Tom to see her with her brows knit, and her rosy lips
pursed up, kneading away at the crust, rolling it out, cutting it up
into strips, lining the basin with it, shaving it off fine round the
rim, chopping up the steak into small pieces, raining down pepper and
salt upon them, packing them into the basin, pouring in cold water for
gravy, and never venturing to steal a look in his direction, lest her
gravity should be disturbed; until, at last, the basin being quite full
and only wanting the top crust, she clapped her hands all covered with
paste and flour, at Tom, and burst out heartily into such a charming
little laugh of triumph, that the pudding need have had no other
seasoning to commend it to the taste of any reasonable man on earth.
'Where's the pudding?' said Tom. For he was cutting his jokes, Tom was.
'Where!' she answered, holding it up with both hands. 'Look at it!'
'THAT a pudding!' said Tom.
'It WILL be, you stupid fellow, when it's covered in,' returned his
sister. Tom still pretending to look incredulous, she gave him a tap on
the head with the rolling-pin, and still laughing merrily, had returned
to the composition of the top crust, when she started and turned very
red. Tom started, too, for following her eyes, he saw John Westlock in
the room.
'Why, my goodness, John! How did YOU come in?'
'I beg pardon,' said John--' your sister's pardon especially--but I met
an old lady at the street door, who requested me to enter here; and as
you didn't hear me knock, and the door was open, I made bold to do so.
I hardly know,' said John, with a smile, 'why any of us should be
disconcerted at my having accidentally intruded upon such an agreeable
domestic occupation, so very agreeably and skillfully pursued; but I
must confess that I am. Tom, will you kindly come to my relief?'
'Mr John Westlock,' said Tom. 'My sister.'
'I hope that, as the sister of so old a friend,' said John, laughing
'you will have the goodness to detach your first impressions of me from
my unfortunate entrance.'
'My sister is not indisposed perhaps to say the same to you on her own
behalf,' retorted Tom.
John said, of course, that this was quite unnecessary, for he had been
transfixed in silent admiration; and he held out his hand to Miss Pinch;
who couldn't take it, however, by reason of the flour and paste upon her
own. This, which might seem calculated to increase the general confusion
and render matters worse, had in reality the best effect in the
world, for neither of them could help laughing; and so they both found
themselves on easy terms immediately.
'I am delighted to see you,' said Tom. 'Sit down.'
'I can only think of sitting down on one condition,' returned his
friend; 'and that is, that your sister goes on with the pudding, as if
you were still alone.'
'That I am sure she will,' said Tom. 'On one other condition, and that
is, that you stay and help us to eat it.'
Poor little Ruth was seized with a palpitation of the heart when Tom
committed this appalling indiscretion, for she felt that if the dish
turned out a failure, she never would be able to hold up her head
before John Westlock again. Quite unconscious of her state of mind,
John accepted the invitation with all imaginable heartiness; and after a
little more pleasantry concerning this same pudding, and the tremendous
expectations he made believe to entertain of it, she blushingly resumed
her occupation, and he took a chair.
'I am here much earlier than I intended, Tom; but I will tell you, what
brings me, and I think I can answer for your being glad to hear it. Is
that anything you wish to show me?'
'Oh dear no!' cried Tom, who had forgotten the blotted scrap of paper
in his hand, until this inquiry brought it to his recollection. '"A
respectable young man, aged thirty-five"--The beginning of a description
of myself. That's all.'
'I don't think you will have occasion to finish it, Tom. But how is it
you never told me you had friends in London?'
Tom looked at his sister with all his might; and certainly his sister
looked with all her might at him.
'Friends in London!' echoed Tom.
'Ah!' said Westlock, 'to be sure.'
'Have YOU any friends in London, Ruth, my dear!' asked Tom.
'No, Tom.'
'I am very happy to hear that I have,' said Tom, 'but it's news to me. I
never knew it. They must be capital people to keep a secret, John.'
'You shall judge for yourself,' returned the other. 'Seriously, Tom,
here is the plain state of the case. As I was sitting at breakfast this
morning, there comes a knock at my door.'
'On which you cried out, very loud, "Come in!"' suggested Tom.
'So I did. And the person who knocked, not being a respectable young
man, aged thirty-five, from the country, came in when he was invited,
instead of standing gaping and staring about him on the landing. Well!
When he came in, I found he was a stranger; a grave, business-like,
sedate-looking, stranger. "Mr Westlock?" said he. "That is my name,"
said I. "The favour of a few words with you?" said he. "Pray be seated,
sir," said I.'
Here John stopped for an instant, to glance towards the table, where
Tom's sister, listening attentively, was still busy with the basin,
which by this time made a noble appearance. Then he resumed:
'The pudding having taken a chair, Tom--'
'What!' cried Tom.
'Having taken a chair.'
'You said a pudding.'
'No, no,' replied John, colouring rather; 'a chair. The idea of a
stranger coming into my rooms at half-past eight o'clock in the morning,
and taking a pudding! Having taken a chair, Tom, a chair--amazed me by
opening the conversation thus: "I believe you are acquainted, sir, with
Mr Thomas Pinch?"
'No!' cried Tom.
'His very words, I assure you. I told him I was. Did I know where you
were at present residing? Yes. In London? Yes. He had casually heard,
in a roundabout way, that you had left your situation with Mr Pecksniff.
Was that the fact? Yes, it was. Did you want another? Yes, you did.'
'Certainly,' said Tom, nodding his head.
'Just what I impressed upon him. You may rest assured that I set that
point beyond the possibility of any mistake, and gave him distinctly to
understand that he might make up his mind about it. Very well.'
"Then," said he, "I think I can accommodate him."'
Tom's sister stopped short.
'Lord bless me!' cried Tom. 'Ruth, my dear, "think I can accommodate
him."'
'Of course I begged him,' pursued John Westlock, glancing at Tom's
sister, who was not less eager in her interest than Tom himself, 'to
proceed, and said that I would undertake to see you immediately. He
replied that he had very little to say, being a man of few words,
but such as it was, it was to the purpose--and so, indeed, it turned
out--for he immediately went on to tell me that a friend of his was in
want of a kind of secretary and librarian; and that although the salary
was small, being only a hundred pounds a year, with neither board
nor lodging, still the duties were not heavy, and there the post was.
Vacant, and ready for your acceptance.'
'Good gracious me!' cried Tom; 'a hundred pounds a year! My dear John!
Ruth, my love! A hundred pounds a year!'
'But the strangest part of the story,' resumed John Westlock, laying his
hand on Tom's wrist, to bespeak his attention, and repress his ecstasies
for the moment; 'the strangest part of the story, Miss Pinch, is this. I
don't know this man from Adam; neither does this man know Tom.'
'He can't,' said Tom, in great perplexity, 'if he's a Londoner. I don't
know any one in London.'
'And on my observing,' John resumed, still keeping his hand upon Tom's
wrist, 'that I had no doubt he would excuse the freedom I took in
inquiring who directed him to me; how he came to know of the change
which had taken place in my friend's position; and how he came to be
acquainted with my friend's peculiar fitness for such an office as he
had described; he drily said that he was not at liberty to enter into
any explanations.'
'Not at liberty to enter into any explanations!' repeated Tom, drawing a
long breath.
'"I must be perfectly aware," he said,' John added, '"that to any person
who had ever been in Mr Pecksniff's neighbourhood, Mr Thomas Pinch and
his acquirements were as well known as the Church steeple, or the Blue
Dragon."'
'The Blue Dragon!' repeated Tom, staring alternately at his friend and
his sister.
'Aye, think of that! He spoke as familiarly of the Blue Dragon, I give
you my word, as if he had been Mark Tapley. I opened my eyes, I can
tell you, when he did so; but I could not fancy I had ever seen the man
before, although he said with a smile, "You know the Blue Dragon, Mr
Westlock; you kept it up there, once or twice, yourself." Kept it up
there! So I did. You remember, Tom?'
Tom nodded with great significance, and, falling into a state of deeper
perplexity than before, observed that this was the most unaccountable
and extraordinary circumstance he had ever heard of in his life.
'Unaccountable?' his friend repeated. 'I became afraid of the man.
Though it was broad day, and bright sunshine, I was positively afraid
of him. I declare I half suspected him to be a supernatural visitor,
and not a mortal, until he took out a common-place description of
pocket-book, and handed me this card.'
'Mr Fips,' said Tom, reading it aloud. 'Austin Friars. Austin Friars
sounds ghostly, John.'
'Fips don't, I think,' was John's reply. 'But there he lives, Tom, and
there he expects us to call this morning. And now you know as much of
this strange incident as I do, upon my honour.'
Tom's face, between his exultation in the hundred pounds a year, and
his wonder at this narration, was only to be equalled by the face of his
sister, on which there sat the very best expression of blooming surprise
that any painter could have wished to see. What the beef-steak pudding
would have come to, if it had not been by this time finished, astrology
itself could hardly determine.
'Tom,' said Ruth, after a little hesitation, 'perhaps Mr Westlock, in
his friendship for you, knows more of this than he chooses to tell.'
'No, indeed!' cried John, eagerly. 'It is not so, I assure you. I wish
it were. I cannot take credit to myself, Miss Pinch, for any such thing.
All that I know, or, so far as I can judge, am likely to know, I have
told you.'
'Couldn't you know more, if you thought proper?' said Ruth, scraping the
pie-board industriously.
'No,' retorted John. 'Indeed, no. It is very ungenerous in you to be so
suspicious of me when I repose implicit faith in you. I have unbounded
confidence in the pudding, Miss Pinch.'
She laughed at this, but they soon got back into a serious vein, and
discussed the subject with profound gravity. Whatever else was obscure
in the business, it appeared to be quite plain that Tom was offered a
salary of one hundred pounds a year; and this being the main point, the
surrounding obscurity rather set it off than otherwise.
Tom, being in a great flutter, wished to start for Austin Friars
instantly, but they waited nearly an hour, by John's advice, before they
departed. Tom made himself as spruce as he could before leaving home,
and when John Westlock, through the half-opened parlour door, had
glimpses of that brave little sister brushing the collar of his coat in
the passage, taking up loose stitches in his gloves and hovering lightly
about and about him, touching him up here and there in the height of
her quaint, little, old-fashioned tidiness, he called to mind the
fancy-portraits of her on the wall of the Pecksniffian workroom, and
decided with uncommon indignation that they were gross libels, and not
half pretty enough; though, as hath been mentioned in its place, the
artists always made those sketches beautiful, and he had drawn at least
a score of them with his own hands.
'Tom,' he said, as they were walking along, 'I begin to think you must
be somebody's son.'
'I suppose I am,' Tom answered in his quiet way.
'But I mean somebody's of consequence.'
'Bless your heart,' replied Tom, 'my poor father was of no consequence,
nor my mother either.'
'You remember them perfectly, then?'
'Remember them? oh dear yes. My poor mother was the last. She died when
Ruth was a mere baby, and then we both became a charge upon the savings
of that good old grandmother I used to tell you of. You remember! Oh!
There's nothing romantic in our history, John.'
'Very well,' said John in quiet despair. 'Then there is no way of
accounting for my visitor of this morning. So we'll not try, Tom.'
They did try, notwithstanding, and never left off trying until they
got to Austin Friars, where, in a very dark passage on the first floor,
oddly situated at the back of a house, across some leads, they found a
little blear-eyed glass door up in one corner, with Mr FIPS painted on
it in characters which were meant to be transparent. There was also a
wicked old sideboard hiding in the gloom hard by, meditating designs
upon the ribs of visitors; and an old mat, worn into lattice work,
which, being useless as a mat (even if anybody could have seen it, which
was impossible), had for many years directed its industry into another
channel, and regularly tripped up every one of Mr Fips's clients.
Mr Fips, hearing a violent concussion between a human hat and his office
door, was apprised, by the usual means of communication, that somebody
had come to call upon him, and giving that somebody admission, observed
that it was 'rather dark.'
'Dark indeed,' John whispered in Tom Pinch's ear. 'Not a bad place to
dispose of a countryman in, I should think, Tom.'
Tom had been already turning over in his mind the possibility of their
having been tempted into that region to furnish forth a pie; but the
sight of Mr Fips, who was small and spare, and looked peaceable, and
wore black shorts and powder, dispelled his doubts.
'Walk in,' said Mr Fips.
They walked in. And a mighty yellow-jaundiced little office Mr Fips
had of it; with a great, black, sprawling splash upon the floor in one
corner, as if some old clerk had cut his throat there, years ago, and
had let out ink instead of blood.
'I have brought my friend Mr Pinch, sir,' said John Westlock.
'Be pleased to sit,' said Mr Fips.
They occupied the two chairs, and Mr Fips took the office stool from the
stuffing whereof he drew forth a piece of horse-hair of immense length,
which he put into his mouth with a great appearance of appetite.
He looked at Tom Pinch curiously, but with an entire freedom from any
such expression as could be reasonably construed into an unusual
display of interest. After a short silence, during which Mr Fips was
so perfectly unembarrassed as to render it manifest that he could have
broken it sooner without hesitation, if he had felt inclined to do so,
he asked if Mr Westlock had made his offer fully known to Mr Pinch.
John answered in the affirmative.
'And you think it worth your while, sir, do you?' Mr Fips inquired of
Tom.
'I think it a piece of great good fortune, sir,' said Tom. 'I am
exceedingly obliged to you for the offer.'
'Not to me,' said Mr Fips. 'I act upon instructions.'
'To your friend, sir, then,' said Tom. 'To the gentleman with whom I am
to engage, and whose confidence I shall endeavour to deserve. When he
knows me better, sir, I hope he will not lose his good opinion of me.
He will find me punctual and vigilant, and anxious to do what is right.
That I think I can answer for, and so,' looking towards him, 'can Mr
Westlock.'
'Most assuredly,' said John.
Mr Fips appeared to have some little difficulty in resuming the
conversation. To relieve himself, he took up the wafer-stamp, and began
stamping capital F's all over his legs.
'The fact is,' said Mr Fips, 'that my friend is not, at this present
moment, in town.'
Tom's countenance fell; for he thought this equivalent to telling him
that his appearance did not answer; and that Fips must look out for
somebody else.
'When do you think he will be in town, sir?' he asked.
'I can't say; it's impossible to tell. I really have no idea. But,' said
Fips, taking off a very deep impression of the wafer-stamp upon the calf
of his left leg, and looking steadily at Tom, 'I don't know that it's a
matter of much consequence.'
Poor Tom inclined his head deferentially, but appeared to doubt that.
'I say,' repeated Mr Fips, 'that I don't know it's a matter of much
consequence. The business lies entirely between yourself and me, Mr
Pinch. With reference to your duties, I can set you going; and with
reference to your salary, I can pay it. Weekly,' said Mr Fips, putting
down the wafer-stamp, and looking at John Westlock and Tom Pinch by
turns, 'weekly; in this office; at any time between the hours of four
and five o'clock in the afternoon.' As Mr Fips said this, he made up his
face as if he were going to whistle. But he didn't.
'You are very good,' said Tom, whose countenance was now suffused with
pleasure; 'and nothing can be more satisfactory or straightforward. My
attendance will be required--'
'From half-past nine to four o'clock or so, I should say,' interrupted
Mr Fips. 'About that.'
'I did not mean the hours of attendance,' retorted Tom, 'which are light
and easy, I am sure; but the place.'
'Oh, the place! The place is in the Temple.'
Tom was delighted.
'Perhaps,' said Mr Fips, 'you would like to see the place?'
'Oh, dear!' cried Tom. 'I shall only be too glad to consider myself
engaged, if you will allow me; without any further reference to the
place.'
'You may consider yourself engaged, by all means,' said Mr Fips; 'you
couldn't meet me at the Temple Gate in Fleet Street, in an hour from
this time, I suppose, could you?'
Certainly Tom could.
'Good,' said Mr Fips, rising. 'Then I will show you the place; and you
can begin your attendance to-morrow morning. In an hour, therefore, I
shall see you. You too, Mr Westlock? Very good. Take care how you go.
It's rather dark.'
With this remark, which seemed superfluous, he shut them out upon
the staircase, and they groped their way into the street again. The
interview had done so little to remove the mystery in which Tom's
new engagement was involved, and had done so much to thicken it, that
neither could help smiling at the puzzled looks of the other. They
agreed, however, that the introduction of Tom to his new office and
office companions could hardly fail to throw a light upon the subject;
and therefore postponed its further consideration until after the
fulfillment of the appointment they had made with Mr Fips.
After looking at John Westlock's chambers, and devoting a few spare
minutes to the Boar's Head, they issued forth again to the place of
meeting. The time agreed upon had not quite come; but Mr Fips was
already at the Temple Gate, and expressed his satisfaction at their
punctuality.
He led the way through sundry lanes and courts, into one more quiet and
more gloomy than the rest, and, singling out a certain house, ascended
a common staircase; taking from his pocket, as he went, a bunch of rusty
keys. Stopping before a door upon an upper story, which had nothing
but a yellow smear of paint where custom would have placed the
tenant's name, he began to beat the dust out of one of these keys, very
deliberately, upon the great broad handrail of the balustrade.
'You had better have a little plug made,' he said, looking round at Tom,
after blowing a shrill whistle into the barrel of the key. 'It's the
only way of preventing them from getting stopped up. You'll find the
lock go the better, too, I dare say, for a little oil.'
Tom thanked him; but was too much occupied with his own speculations,
and John Westlock's looks, to be very talkative. In the meantime Mr Fips
opened the door, which yielded to his hand very unwillingly, and with a
horribly discordant sound. He took the key out, when he had done so, and
gave it to Tom.
'Aye, aye!' said Mr Fips. 'The dust lies rather thick here.'
Truly, it did. Mr Fips might have gone so far as to say, very thick.
It had accumulated everywhere; lay deep on everything, and in one part,
where a ray of sun shone through a crevice in the shutter and struck
upon the opposite wall, it went twirling round and round, like a
gigantic squirrel-cage.
Dust was the only thing in the place that had any motion about it. When
their conductor admitted the light freely, and lifting up the heavy
window-sash, let in the summer air, he showed the mouldering furniture,
discoloured wainscoting and ceiling, rusty stove, and ashy hearth, in
all their inert neglect. Close to the door there stood a candlestick,
with an extinguisher upon it; as if the last man who had been there
had paused, after securing a retreat, to take a parting look at
the dreariness he left behind, and then had shut out light and life
together, and closed the place up like a tomb.
There were two rooms on that floor; and in the first or outer one a
narrow staircase, leading to two more above. These last were fitted
up as bed-chambers. Neither in them, nor in the rooms below, was any
scarcity of convenient furniture observable, although the fittings
were of a bygone fashion; but solitude and want of use seemed to have
rendered it unfit for any purposes of comfort, and to have given it a
grisly, haunted air.
Movables of every kind lay strewn about, without the least attempt at
order, and were intermixed with boxes, hampers, and all sorts of lumber.
On all the floors were piles of books, to the amount, perhaps, of some
thousands of volumes: these, still in bales; those, wrapped in paper,
as they had been purchased; others scattered singly or in heaps; not one
upon the shelves which lined the walls. To these Mr Fips called Tom's
attention.
'Before anything else can be done, we must have them put in order,
catalogued, and ranged upon the book-shelves, Mr Pinch. That will do to
begin with, I think, sir.'
Tom rubbed his hands in the pleasant anticipation of a task so congenial
to his taste, and said:
'An occupation full of interest for me, I assure you. It will occupy me,
perhaps, until Mr--'
'Until Mr--' repeated Fips; as much as to ask Tom what he was stopping
for.
'I forgot that you had not mentioned the gentleman's name,' said Tom.
'Oh!' cried Mr Fips, pulling on his glove, 'didn't I? No, by-the-bye,
I don't think I did. Ah! I dare say he'll be here soon. You will get on
very well together, I have no doubt. I wish you success I am sure. You
won't forget to shut the door? It'll lock of itself if you slam it.
Half-past nine, you know. Let us say from half-past nine to four, or
half-past four, or thereabouts; one day, perhaps, a little earlier,
another day, perhaps, a little later, according as you feel disposed,
and as you arrange your work. Mr Fips, Austin Friars of course you'll
remember? And you won't forget to slam the door, if you please!'
He said all this in such a comfortable, easy manner, that Tom could only
rub his hands, and nod his head, and smile in acquiescence which he was
still doing, when Mr Fips walked coolly out.
'Why, he's gone!' cried Tom.
'And what's more, Tom,' said John Westlock, seating himself upon a pile
of books, and looking up at his astonished friend, 'he is evidently not
coming back again; so here you are, installed. Under rather singular
circumstances, Tom!'
It was such an odd affair throughout, and Tom standing there among
the books with his hat in one hand and the key in the other, looked
so prodigiously confounded, that his friend could not help laughing
heartily. Tom himself was tickled; no less by the hilarity of his friend
than by the recollection of the sudden manner in which he had been
brought to a stop, in the very height of his urbane conference with
Mr Fips; so by degrees Tom burst out laughing too; and each making the
other laugh more, they fairly roared.
When they had had their laugh out, which did not happen very soon, for
give John an inch that way and he was sure to take several ells, being
a jovial, good-tempered fellow, they looked about them more closely,
groping among the lumber for any stray means of enlightenment that might
turn up. But no scrap or shred of information could they find. The books
were marked with a variety of owner's names, having, no doubt, been
bought at sales, and collected here and there at different times; but
whether any one of these names belonged to Tom's employer, and, if so,
which of them, they had no means whatever of determining. It occurred to
John as a very bright thought to make inquiry at the steward's office,
to whom the chambers belonged, or by whom they were held; but he came
back no wiser than he went, the answer being, 'Mr Fips, of Austin
Friars.'
'After all, Tom, I begin to think it lies no deeper than this. Fips
is an eccentric man; has some knowledge of Pecksniff; despises him, of
course; has heard or seen enough of you to know that you are the man he
wants; and engages you in his own whimsical manner.'
'But why in his own whimsical manner?' asked Tom.
'Oh! why does any man entertain his own whimsical taste? Why does Mr
Fips wear shorts and powder, and Mr Fips's next-door neighbour boots and
a wig?'
Tom, being in that state of mind in which any explanation is a great
relief, adopted this last one (which indeed was quite as feasible as any
other) readily, and said he had no doubt of it. Nor was his faith at all
shaken by his having said exactly the same thing to each suggestion of
his friend's in turn, and being perfectly ready to say it again if he
had any new solution to propose.
As he had not, Tom drew down the window-sash, and folded the shutter;
and they left the rooms. He closed the door heavily, as Mr Fips had
desired him; tried it, found it all safe, and put the key in his pocket.
They made a pretty wide circuit in going back to Islington, as they had
time to spare, and Tom was never tired of looking about him. It was well
he had John Westlock for his companion, for most people would have
been weary of his perpetual stoppages at shop-windows, and his frequent
dashes into the crowded carriage-way at the peril of his life, to get
the better view of church steeples, and other public buildings. But John
was charmed to see him so much interested, and every time Tom came back
with a beaming face from among the wheels of carts and hackney-coaches,
wholly unconscious of the personal congratulations addressed to him by
the drivers, John seemed to like him better than before.
There was no flour on Ruth's hands when she received them in the
triangular parlour, but there were pleasant smiles upon her face, and a
crowd of welcomes shining out of every smile, and gleaming in her bright
eyes. By the bye, how bright they were! Looking into them for but
a moment, when you took her hand, you saw, in each, such a capital
miniature of yourself, representing you as such a restless, flashing,
eager, brilliant little fellow--
Ah! if you could only have kept them for your own miniature! But,
wicked, roving, restless, too impartial eyes, it was enough for any one
to stand before them, and, straightway, there he danced and sparkled
quite as merrily as you!
The table was already spread for dinner; and though it was spread with
nothing very choice in the way of glass or linen, and with green-handled
knives, and very mountebanks of two-pronged forks, which seemed to be
trying how far asunder they could possibly stretch their legs without
converting themselves into double the number of iron toothpicks, it
wanted neither damask, silver, gold, nor china; no, nor any other
garniture at all. There it was; and, being there, nothing else would
have done as well.
The success of that initiative dish; that first experiment of hers in
cookery; was so entire, so unalloyed and perfect, that John Westlock and
Tom agreed she must have been studying the art in secret for a long time
past; and urged her to make a full confession of the fact. They were
exceedingly merry over this jest, and many smart things were said
concerning it; but John was not as fair in his behaviour as might
have been expected, for, after luring Tom Pinch on for a long time,
he suddenly went over to the enemy, and swore to everything his sister
said. However, as Tom observed the same night before going to bed, it
was only in joke, and John had always been famous for being polite
to ladies, even when he was quite a boy. Ruth said, 'Oh! indeed!' She
didn't say anything else.
It is astonishing how much three people may find to talk about. They
scarcely left off talking once. And it was not all lively chat which
occupied them; for when Tom related how he had seen Mr Pecksniff's
daughters, and what a change had fallen on the younger, they were very
serious.
John Westlock became quite absorbed in her fortunes; asking many
questions of Tom Pinch about her marriage, inquiring whether her husband
was the gentleman whom Tom had brought to dine with him at Salisbury;
in what degree of relationship they stood towards each other, being
different persons; and taking, in short, the greatest interest in the
subject. Tom then went into it, at full length; he told how Martin had
gone abroad, and had not been heard of for a long time; how Dragon Mark
had borne him company; how Mr Pecksniff had got the poor old doting
grandfather into his power; and how he basely sought the hand of Mary
Graham. But not a word said Tom of what lay hidden in his heart; his
heart, so deep, and true, and full of honour, and yet with so much room
for every gentle and unselfish thought; not a word.
Tom, Tom! The man in all this world most confident in his sagacity and
shrewdness; the man in all this world most proud of his distrust of
other men, and having most to show in gold and silver as the gains
belonging to his creed; the meekest favourer of that wise doctrine,
Every man for himself, and God for us all (there being high wisdom in
the thought that the Eternal Majesty of Heaven ever was, or can be, on
the side of selfish lust and love!); shall never find, oh, never find,
be sure of that, the time come home to him, when all his wisdom is an
idiot's folly, weighed against a simple heart!
Well, well, Tom, it was simple too, though simple in a different way, to
be so eager touching that same theatre, of which John said, when tea was
done, he had the absolute command, so far as taking parties in without
the payment of a sixpence was concerned; and simpler yet, perhaps, never
to suspect that when he went in first, alone, he paid the money! Simple
in thee, dear Tom, to laugh and cry so heartily at such a sorry show,
so poorly shown; simple to be so happy and loquacious trudging home
with Ruth; simple to be so surprised to find that merry present of
a cookery-book awaiting her in the parlour next morning, with the
beef-steak-pudding-leaf turned down and blotted out. There! Let
the record stand! Thy quality of soul was simple, simple, quite
contemptible, Tom Pinch!
CHAPTER FORTY
THE PINCHES MAKE A NEW ACQUAINTANCE, AND HAVE FRESH OCCASION FOR
SURPRISE AND WONDER
There was a ghostly air about these uninhabited chambers in the Temple,
and attending every circumstance of Tom's employment there, which had a
strange charm in it. Every morning when he shut his door at Islington,
he turned his face towards an atmosphere of unaccountable fascination,
as surely as he turned it to the London smoke; and from that moment it
thickened round and round him all day long, until the time arrived for
going home again, and leaving it, like a motionless cloud, behind.
It seemed to Tom, every morning, that he approached this ghostly
mist, and became enveloped in it, by the easiest succession of degrees
imaginable. Passing from the roar and rattle of the streets into the
quiet court-yards of the Temple, was the first preparation. Every echo
of his footsteps sounded to him like a sound from the old walls and
pavements, wanting language to relate the histories of the dim, dismal
rooms; to tell him what lost documents were decaying in forgotten
corners of the shut-up cellars, from whose lattices such mouldy sighs
came breathing forth as he went past; to whisper of dark bins of rare
old wine, bricked up in vaults among the old foundations of the Halls;
or mutter in a lower tone yet darker legends of the cross-legged
knights, whose marble effigies were in the church. With the first
planting of his foot upon the staircase of his dusty office, all these
mysteries increased; until, ascending step by step, as Tom ascended,
they attained their full growth in the solitary labours of the day.
Every day brought one recurring, never-failing source of speculation.
This employer; would he come to-day, and what would he be like? For
Tom could not stop short at Mr Fips; he quite believed that Mr Fips had
spoken truly, when he said he acted for another; and what manner of man
that other was, became a full-blown flower of wonder in the garden of
Tom's fancy, which never faded or got trodden down.
At one time, he conceived that Mr Pecksniff, repenting of his falsehood,
might, by exertion of his influence with some third person have
devised these means of giving him employment. He found this idea so
insupportable after what had taken place between that good man and
himself, that he confided it to John Westlock on the very same day;
informing John that he would rather ply for hire as a porter, than fall
so low in his own esteem as to accept the smallest obligation from the
hands of Mr Pecksniff. But John assured him that he (Tom Pinch) was far
from doing justice to the character of Mr Pecksniff yet, if he supposed
that gentleman capable of performing a generous action; and that he
might make his mind quite easy on that head until he saw the sun turn
green and the moon black, and at the same time distinctly perceived with
the naked eye, twelve first-rate comets careering round those planets.
In which unusual state of things, he said (and not before), it might
become not absolutely lunatic to suspect Mr Pecksniff of anything
so monstrous. In short he laughed the idea down completely; and Tom,
abandoning it, was thrown upon his beam-ends again, for some other
solution.
In the meantime Tom attended to his duties daily, and made considerable
progress with the books; which were already reduced to some sort of
order, and made a great appearance in his fairly-written catalogue.
During his business hours, he indulged himself occasionally with
snatches of reading; which were often, indeed, a necessary part of
his pursuit; and as he usually made bold to carry one of these goblin
volumes home at night (always bringing it back again next morning, in
case his strange employer should appear and ask what had become of it),
he led a happy, quiet, studious kind of life, after his own heart.
But though the books were never so interesting, and never so full of
novelty to Tom, they could not so enchain him, in those mysterious
chambers, as to render him unconscious, for a moment, of the lightest
sound. Any footstep on the flags without set him listening attentively
and when it turned into that house, and came up, up, up the stairs, he
always thought with a beating heart, 'Now I am coming face to face with
him at last!' But no footstep ever passed the floor immediately below:
except his own.
This mystery and loneliness engendered fancies in Tom's mind, the folly
of which his common sense could readily discover, but which his common
sense was quite unable to keep away, notwithstanding; that quality being
with most of us, in such a case, like the old French Police--quick at
detection, but very weak as a preventive power. Misgivings, undefined,
absurd, inexplicable, that there was some one hiding in the inner
room--walking softly overhead, peeping in through the door-chink, doing
something stealthy, anywhere where he was not--came over him a
hundred times a day, making it pleasant to throw up the sash, and hold
communication even with the sparrows who had built in the roof and
water-spout, and were twittering about the windows all day long.
He sat with the outer door wide open, at all times, that he might hear
the footsteps as they entered, and turned off into the chambers on the
lower floor. He formed odd prepossessions too, regarding strangers in
the streets; and would say within himself of such or such a man, who
struck him as having anything uncommon in his dress or aspect, 'I
shouldn't wonder, now, if that were he!' But it never was. And though
he actually turned back and followed more than one of these suspected
individuals, in a singular belief that they were going to the place he
was then upon his way from, he never got any other satisfaction by it,
than the satisfaction of knowing it was not the case.
Mr Fips, of Austin Friars, rather deepened than illumined the obscurity
of his position; for on the first occasion of Tom's waiting on him to
receive his weekly pay, he said:
'Oh! by the bye, Mr Pinch, you needn't mention it, if you please!'
Tom thought he was going to tell him a secret; so he said that he
wouldn't on any account, and that Mr Fips might entirely depend upon
him. But as Mr Fips said 'Very good,' in reply, and nothing more, Tom
prompted him:
'Not on any account,' repeated Tom.
Mr Fips repeated: 'Very good.'
'You were going to say'--Tom hinted.
'Oh dear no!' cried Fips. 'Not at all.' However, seeing Tom confused, he
added, 'I mean that you needn't mention any particulars about your place
of employment, to people generally. You'll find it better not.'
'I have not had the pleasure of seeing my employer yet, sir,' observed
Tom, putting his week's salary in his pocket.
'Haven't you?' said Fips. 'No, I don't suppose you have though.'
'I should like to thank him, and to know that what I have done so far,
is done to his satisfaction,' faltered Tom.
'Quite right,' said Mr Fips, with a yawn. 'Highly creditable. Very
proper.'
Tom hastily resolved to try him on another tack.
'I shall soon have finished with the books,' he said. 'I hope that will
not terminate my engagement, sir, or render me useless?'
'Oh dear no!' retorted Fips. 'Plenty to do; plen-ty to do! Be careful
how you go. It's rather dark.'
This was the very utmost extent of information Tom could ever get out of
HIM. So it was dark enough in all conscience; and if Mr Fips expressed
himself with a double meaning, he had good reason for doing so.
But now a circumstance occurred, which helped to divert Tom's thoughts
from even this mystery, and to divide them between it and a new channel,
which was a very Nile in itself.
The way it came about was this. Having always been an early riser and
having now no organ to engage him in sweet converse every morning,
it was his habit to take a long walk before going to the Temple; and
naturally inclining, as a stranger, towards those parts of the town
which were conspicuous for the life and animation pervading them, he
became a great frequenter of the market-places, bridges, quays, and
especially the steam-boat wharves; for it was very lively and fresh
to see the people hurrying away upon their many schemes of business or
pleasure, and it made Tom glad to think that there was that much change
and freedom in the monotonous routine of city lives.
In most of these morning excursions Ruth accompanied him. As their
landlord was always up and away at his business (whatever that might be,
no one seemed to know) at a very early hour, the habits of the people
of the house in which they lodged corresponded with their own. Thus they
had often finished their breakfast, and were out in the summer air, by
seven o'clock. After a two hours' stroll they parted at some convenient
point; Tom going to the Temple, and his sister returning home, as
methodically as you please.
Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in Covent Garden Market;
snuffing up the perfume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the
magnificence of the pineapples and melons; catching glimpses down side
avenues, of rows and rows of old women, seated on inverted baskets,
shelling peas; looking unutterable things at the fat bundles of
asparagus with which the dainty shops were fortified as with a
breastwork; and, at the herbalist's doors, gratefully inhaling scents
as of veal-stuffing yet uncooked, dreamily mixed up with capsicums,
brown-paper, seeds, even with hints of lusty snails and fine young curly
leeches. Many and many a pleasant stroll they had among the poultry
markets, where ducks and fowls, with necks unnaturally long, lay
stretched out in pairs, ready for cooking; where there were speckled
eggs in mossy baskets, white country sausages beyond impeachment by
surviving cat or dog, or horse or donkey; new cheeses to any wild
extent, live birds in coops and cages, looking much too big to be
natural, in consequence of those receptacles being much too little;
rabbits, alive and dead, innumerable. Many a pleasant stroll they
had among the cool, refreshing, silvery fish-stalls, with a kind of
moonlight effect about their stock-in-trade, excepting always for
the ruddy lobsters. Many a pleasant stroll among the waggon-loads of
fragrant hay, beneath which dogs and tired waggoners lay fast asleep,
oblivious of the pieman and the public-house. But never half so good a
stroll as down among the steamboats on a bright morning.
There they lay, alongside of each other; hard and fast for ever, to all
appearance, but designing to get out somehow, and quite confident of
doing it; and in that faith shoals of passengers, and heaps of luggage,
were proceeding hurriedly on board. Little steam-boats dashed up and
down the stream incessantly. Tiers upon tiers of vessels, scores
of masts, labyrinths of tackle, idle sails, splashing oars, gliding
row-boats, lumbering barges, sunken piles, with ugly lodgings for
the water-rat within their mud-discoloured nooks; church steeples,
warehouses, house-roofs, arches, bridges, men and women, children,
casks, cranes, boxes, horses, coaches, idlers, and hard-labourers; there
they were, all jumbled up together, any summer morning, far beyond Tom's
power of separation.
In the midst of all this turmoil there was an incessant roar from every
packet's funnel, which quite expressed and carried out the uppermost
emotion of the scene. They all appeared to be perspiring and bothering
themselves, exactly as their passengers did; they never left off
fretting and chafing, in their own hoarse manner, once; but were always
panting out, without any stops, 'Come along do make haste I'm very
nervous come along oh good gracious we shall never get there how late
you are do make haste I'm off directly come along!'
Even when they had left off, and had got safely out into the current,
on the smallest provocation they began again; for the bravest packet
of them all, being stopped by some entanglement in the river, would
immediately begin to fume and pant afresh, 'oh here's a stoppage what's
the matter do go on there I'm in a hurry it's done on purpose did you
ever oh my goodness DO go on here!' and so, in a state of mind bordering
on distraction, would be last seen drifting slowly through the mist into
the summer light beyond, that made it red.
Tom's ship, however; or, at least, the packet-boat in which Tom and his
sister took the greatest interest on one particular occasion; was not
off yet, by any means; but was at the height of its disorder. The press
of passengers was very great; another steam-boat lay on each side of
her; the gangways were choked up; distracted women, obviously bound
for Gravesend, but turning a deaf ear to all representations that this
particular vessel was about to sail for Antwerp, persisted in secreting
baskets of refreshments behind bulk-heads, and water-casks, and under
seats; and very great confusion prevailed.
It was so amusing, that Tom, with Ruth upon his arm, stood looking down
from the wharf, as nearly regardless as it was in the nature of flesh
and blood to be, of an elderly lady behind him, who had brought a large
umbrella with her, and didn't know what to do with it. This tremendous
instrument had a hooked handle; and its vicinity was first made known
to him by a painful pressure on the windpipe, consequent upon its having
caught him round the throat. Soon after disengaging himself with perfect
good humour, he had a sensation of the ferule in his back; immediately
afterwards, of the hook entangling his ankles; then of the umbrella
generally, wandering about his hat, and flapping at it like a great
bird; and, lastly, of a poke or thrust below the ribs, which give him
such exceeding anguish, that he could not refrain from turning round to
offer a mild remonstrance.
Upon his turning round, he found the owner of the umbrella struggling
on tip-toe, with a countenance expressive of violent animosity, to look
down upon the steam-boats; from which he inferred that she had attacked
him, standing in the front row, by design, and as her natural enemy.
'What a very ill-natured person you must be!' said Tom.
The lady cried out fiercely, 'Where's the pelisse!'--meaning the
constabulary--and went on to say, shaking the handle of the umbrella
at Tom, that but for them fellers never being in the way when they was
wanted, she'd have given him in charge, she would.
'If they greased their whiskers less, and minded the duties which
they're paid so heavy for, a little more,' she observed, 'no one needn't
be drove mad by scrouding so!'
She had been grievously knocked about, no doubt, for her bonnet was bent
into the shape of a cocked hat. Being a fat little woman, too, she was
in a state of great exhaustion and intense heat. Instead of pursuing the
altercation, therefore, Tom civilly inquired what boat she wanted to go
on board of?
'I suppose,' returned the lady, 'as nobody but yourself can want to look
at a steam package, without wanting to go a-boarding of it, can they!
Booby!'
'Which one do you want to look at then?' said Tom. 'We'll make room for
you if we can. Don't be so ill-tempered.'
'No blessed creetur as ever I was with in trying times,' returned the
lady, somewhat softened, 'and they're a many in their numbers, ever
brought it as a charge again myself that I was anythin' but mild and
equal in my spirits. Never mind a contradicting of me, if you seem
to feel it does you good, ma'am, I often says, for well you know that
Sairey may be trusted not to give it back again. But I will not denige
that I am worrited and wexed this day, and with good reagion, Lord
forbid!'
By this time, Mrs Gamp (for it was no other than that experienced
practitioner) had, with Tom's assistance, squeezed and worked herself
into a small corner between Ruth and the rail; where, after breathing
very hard for some little time, and performing a short series of
dangerous evolutions with her umbrella, she managed to establish herself
pretty comfortably.
'And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I wonder.
Goodness me!' cried Mrs Gamp.
'What boat did you want?' asked Ruth.
'The Ankworks package,' Mrs Gamp replied. 'I will not deceive you, my
sweet. Why should I?'
'That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,' said Ruth.
'And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do,' cried Mrs Gamp; appearing
to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous aspiration.
Ruth said nothing in reply; but, as Mrs Gamp, laying her chin against
the cool iron of the rail, continued to look intently at the Antwerp
boat, and every now and then to give a little groan, she inquired
whether any child of hers was going aboard that morning? Or perhaps her
husband, she said kindly.
'Which shows,' said Mrs Gamp, casting up her eyes, 'what a little way
you've travelled into this wale of life, my dear young creetur! As a
good friend of mine has frequent made remark to me, which her name,
my love, is Harris, Mrs Harris through the square and up the steps
a-turnin' round by the tobacker shop, "Oh Sairey, Sairey, little do we
know wot lays afore us!" "Mrs Harris, ma'am," I says, "not much, it's
true, but more than you suppoge. Our calcilations, ma'am," I says,
"respectin' wot the number of a family will be, comes most times within
one, and oftener than you would suppoge, exact." "Sairey," says Mrs
Harris, in a awful way, "Tell me wot is my indiwidgle number." "No, Mrs
Harris," I says to her, "ex-cuge me, if you please. My own," I says,
"has fallen out of three-pair backs, and had damp doorsteps settled
on their lungs, and one was turned up smilin' in a bedstead unbeknown.
Therefore, ma'am," I says, "seek not to proticipate, but take 'em as
they come and as they go." Mine,' says Mrs Gamp, 'mine is all gone, my
dear young chick. And as to husbands, there's a wooden leg gone likeways
home to its account, which in its constancy of walkin' into wine vaults,
and never comin' out again 'till fetched by force, was quite as weak as
flesh, if not weaker.'
When she had delivered this oration, Mrs Gamp leaned her chin upon the
cool iron again; and looking intently at the Antwerp packet, shook her
head and groaned.
'I wouldn't,' said Mrs Gamp, 'I wouldn't be a man and have such a think
upon my mind!--but nobody as owned the name of man, could do it!'
Tom and his sister glanced at each other; and Ruth, after a moment's
hesitation, asked Mrs Gamp what troubled her so much.
'My dear,' returned that lady, dropping her voice, 'you are single,
ain't you?'
Ruth laughed blushed, and said 'Yes.'
'Worse luck,' proceeded Mrs Gamp, 'for all parties! But others is
married, and in the marriage state; and there is a dear young creetur
a-comin' down this mornin' to that very package, which is no more fit to
trust herself to sea, than nothin' is!'
She paused here to look over the deck of the packet in question, and on
the steps leading down to it, and on the gangways. Seeming to have
thus assured herself that the object of her commiseration had not yet
arrived, she raised her eyes gradually up to the top of the escape-pipe,
and indignantly apostrophised the vessel:
'Oh, drat you!' said Mrs Gamp, shaking her umbrella at it, 'you're a
nice spluttering nisy monster for a delicate young creetur to go and
be a passinger by; ain't you! YOU never do no harm in that way, do
you? With your hammering, and roaring, and hissing, and lamp-iling, you
brute! Them Confugion steamers,' said Mrs Gamp, shaking her umbrella
again, 'has done more to throw us out of our reg'lar work and bring
ewents on at times when nobody counted on 'em (especially them
screeching railroad ones), than all the other frights that ever was
took. I have heerd of one young man, a guard upon a railway, only three
years opened--well does Mrs Harris know him, which indeed he is her own
relation by her sister's marriage with a master sawyer--as is godfather
at this present time to six-and-twenty blessed little strangers, equally
unexpected, and all on 'um named after the Ingeines as was the cause.
Ugh!' said Mrs Gamp, resuming her apostrophe, 'one might easy know you
was a man's inwention, from your disregardlessness of the weakness of
our naturs, so one might, you brute!'
It would not have been unnatural to suppose, from the first part of Mrs
Gamp's lamentations, that she was connected with the stage-coaching or
post-horsing trade. She had no means of judging of the effect of her
concluding remarks upon her young companion; for she interrupted herself
at this point, and exclaimed:
'There she identically goes! Poor sweet young creetur, there she goes,
like a lamb to the sacrifige! If there's any illness when that wessel
gets to sea,' said Mrs Gamp, prophetically, 'it's murder, and I'm the
witness for the persecution.'
She was so very earnest on the subject, that Tom's sister (being as kind
as Tom himself) could not help saying something to her in reply.
'Pray, which is the lady,' she inquired, 'in whom you are so much
interested?'
'There!' groaned Mrs Gamp. 'There she goes! A-crossin' the little wooden
bridge at this minute. She's a-slippin' on a bit of orangepeel!' tightly
clutching her umbrella. 'What a turn it give me.'
'Do you mean the lady who is with that man wrapped up from head to foot
in a large cloak, so that his face is almost hidden?'
'Well he may hide it!' Mrs Gamp replied. 'He's good call to be ashamed
of himself. Did you see him a-jerking of her wrist, then?'
'He seems to be hasty with her, indeed.'
'Now he's a-taking of her down into the close cabin!' said Mrs Gamp,
impatiently. 'What's the man about! The deuce is in him, I think. Why
can't he leave her in the open air?'
He did not, whatever his reason was, but led her quickly down and
disappeared himself, without loosening his cloak, or pausing on the
crowded deck one moment longer than was necessary to clear their way to
that part of the vessel.
Tom had not heard this little dialogue; for his attention had been
engaged in an unexpected manner. A hand upon his sleeve had caused
him to look round, just when Mrs Gamp concluded her apostrophe to the
steam-engine; and on his right arm, Ruth being on his left, he found
their landlord, to his great surprise.
He was not so much surprised at the man's being there, as at his having
got close to him so quietly and swiftly; for another person had been
at his elbow one instant before; and he had not in the meantime been
conscious of any change or pressure in the knot of people among whom he
stood. He and Ruth had frequently remarked how noiselessly this landlord
of theirs came into and went out of his own house; but Tom was not the
less amazed to see him at his elbow now.
'I beg your pardon, Mr Pinch,' he said in his ear. 'I am rather infirm,
and out of breath, and my eyes are not very good. I am not as young as I
was, sir. You don't see a gentleman in a large cloak down yonder, with a
lady on his arm; a lady in a veil and a black shawl; do you?'
If HE did not, it was curious that in speaking he should have singled
out from all the crowd the very people whom he described; and should
have glanced hastily from them to Tom, as if he were burning to direct
his wandering eyes.
'A gentleman in a large cloak!' said Tom, 'and a lady in a black shawl!
Let me see!'
'Yes, yes!' replied the other, with keen impatience. 'A gentleman
muffled up from head to foot--strangely muffled up for such a morning
as this--like an invalid, with his hand to his face at this minute,
perhaps. No, no, no! not there,' he added, following Tom's gaze; 'the
other way; in that direction; down yonder.' Again he indicated, but this
time in his hurry, with his outstretched finger, the very spot on which
the progress of these persons was checked at that moment.
'There are so many people, and so much motion, and so many objects,'
said Tom, 'that I find it difficult to--no, I really don't see a
gentleman in a large cloak, and a lady in a black shawl. There's a lady
in a red shawl over there!'
'No, no, no!' cried his landlord, pointing eagerly again, 'not there.
The other way; the other way. Look at the cabin steps. To the left. They
must be near the cabin steps. Do you see the cabin steps? There's the
bell ringing already! DO you see the steps?'
'Stay!' said Tom, 'you're right. Look! there they go now. Is that the
gentleman you mean? Descending at this minute, with the folds of a great
cloak trailing down after him?'
'The very man!' returned the other, not looking at what Tom pointed out,
however, but at Tom's own face. 'Will you do me a kindness, sir, a great
kindness? Will you put that letter in his hand? Only give him that!
He expects it. I am charged to do it by my employers, but I am late in
finding him, and, not being as young as I have been, should never be
able to make my way on board and off the deck again in time. Will you
pardon my boldness, and do me that great kindness?'
His hands shook, and his face bespoke the utmost interest and agitation,
as he pressed the letter upon Tom, and pointed to its destination, like
the Tempter in some grim old carving.
To hesitate in the performance of a good-natured or compassionate office
was not in Tom's way. He took the letter; whispered Ruth to wait till
he returned, which would be immediately; and ran down the steps with all
the expedition he could make. There were so many people going down, so
many others coming up, such heavy goods in course of transit to and
fro, such a ringing of bell, blowing-off of steam, and shouting of men's
voices, that he had much ado to force his way, or keep in mind to which
boat he was going. But he reached the right one with good speed, and
going down the cabin-stairs immediately, described the object of his
search standing at the upper end of the saloon, with his back towards
him, reading some notice which was hung against the wall. As Tom
advanced to give him the letter, he started, hearing footsteps, and
turned round.
What was Tom's astonishment to find in him the man with whom he had had
the conflict in the field--poor Mercy's husband. Jonas!
Tom understood him to say, what the devil did he want; but it was not
easy to make out what he said; he spoke so indistinctly.
'I want nothing with you for myself,' said Tom; 'I was asked, a moment
since, to give you this letter. You were pointed out to me, but I didn't
know you in your strange dress. Take it!'
He did so, opened it, and read the writing on the inside. The contents
were evidently very brief; not more perhaps than one line; but they
struck upon him like a stone from a sling. He reeled back as he read.
His emotion was so different from any Tom had ever seen before that he
stopped involuntarily. Momentary as his state of indecision was, the
bell ceased while he stood there, and a hoarse voice calling down the
steps, inquired if there was any to go ashore?
'Yes,' cried Jonas, 'I--I am coming. Give me time. Where's that woman!
Come back; come back here.'
He threw open another door as he spoke, and dragged, rather than led,
her forth. She was pale and frightened, and amazed to see her old
acquaintance; but had no time to speak, for they were making a great
stir above; and Jonas drew her rapidly towards the deck.
'Where are we going? What is the matter?'
'We are going back,' said Jonas. 'I have changed my mind. I can't go.
Don't question me, or I shall be the death of you, or some one else.
Stop there! Stop! We're for the shore. Do you hear? We're for the
shore!'
He turned, even in the madness of his hurry, and scowling darkly back
at Tom, shook his clenched hand at him. There are not many human faces
capable of the expression with which he accompanied that gesture.
He dragged her up, and Tom followed them. Across the deck, over the
side, along the crazy plank, and up the steps, he dragged her fiercely;
not bestowing any look on her, but gazing upwards all the while among
the faces on the wharf. Suddenly he turned again, and said to Tom with a
tremendous oath:
'Where is he?'
Before Tom, in his indignation and amazement, could return an answer to
a question he so little understood, a gentleman approached Tom behind,
and saluted Jonas Chuzzlewit by name. He has a gentleman of foreign
appearance, with a black moustache and whiskers; and addressed him with
a polite composure, strangely different from his own distracted and
desperate manner.
'Chuzzlewit, my good fellow!' said the gentleman, raising his hat in
compliment to Mrs Chuzzlewit, 'I ask your pardon twenty thousand times.
I am most unwilling to interfere between you and a domestic trip of this
nature (always so very charming and refreshing, I know, although I
have not the happiness to be a domestic man myself, which is the great
infelicity of my existence); but the beehive, my dear friend, the
beehive--will you introduce me?'
'This is Mr Montague,' said Jonas, whom the words appeared to choke.
'The most unhappy and most penitent of men, Mrs Chuzzlewit,' pursued
that gentleman, 'for having been the means of spoiling this excursion;
but as I tell my friend, the beehive, the beehive. You projected a short
little continental trip, my dear friend, of course?'
Jonas maintained a dogged silence.
'May I die,' cried Montague, 'but I am shocked! Upon my soul I am
shocked. But that confounded beehive of ours in the city must be
paramount to every other consideration, when there is honey to be made;
and that is my best excuse. Here is a very singular old female dropping
curtseys on my right,' said Montague, breaking off in his discourse,
and looking at Mrs Gamp, 'who is not a friend of mine. Does anybody know
her?'
'Ah! Well they knows me, bless their precious hearts!' said Mrs Gamp,
'not forgettin' your own merry one, sir, and long may it be so! Wishin'
as every one' (she delivered this in the form of a toast or sentiment)
'was as merry, and as handsome-lookin', as a little bird has whispered
me a certain gent is, which I will not name for fear I give offence
where none is doo! My precious lady,' here she stopped short in her
merriment, for she had until now affected to be vastly entertained,
'you're too pale by half!'
'YOU are here too, are you?' muttered Jonas. 'Ecod, there are enough of
you.'
'I hope, sir,' returned Mrs Gamp, dropping an indignant curtsey, 'as no
bones is broke by me and Mrs Harris a-walkin' down upon a public wharf.
Which was the very words she says to me (although they was the last
I ever had to speak) was these: "Sairey," she says, "is it a public
wharf?" "Mrs Harris," I makes answer, "can you doubt it? You have know'd
me now, ma'am, eight and thirty year; and did you ever know me go, or
wish to go, where I was not made welcome, say the words." "No, Sairey,"
Mrs Harris says, "contrairy quite." And well she knows it too. I am but
a poor woman, but I've been sought after, sir, though you may not think
it. I've been knocked up at all hours of the night, and warned out by
a many landlords, in consequence of being mistook for Fire. I goes out
workin' for my bread, 'tis true, but I maintains my independency, with
your kind leave, and which I will till death. I has my feelins as a
woman, sir, and I have been a mother likeways; but touch a pipkin as
belongs to me, or make the least remarks on what I eats or drinks, and
though you was the favouritest young for'ard hussy of a servant-gal as
ever come into a house, either you leaves the place, or me. My earnins
is not great, sir, but I will not be impoged upon. Bless the babe, and
save the mother, is my mortar, sir; but I makes so free as add to that,
Don't try no impogician with the Nuss, for she will not abear it!'
Mrs Gamp concluded by drawing her shawl tightly over herself with both
hands, and, as usual, referring to Mrs Harris for full corroboration of
these particulars. She had that peculiar trembling of the head which,
in ladies of her excitable nature, may be taken as a sure indication
of their breaking out again very shortly; when Jonas made a timely
interposition.
'As you ARE here,' he said, 'you had better see to her, and take her
home. I am otherwise engaged.' He said nothing more; but looked at
Montague as if to give him notice that he was ready to attend him.
'I am sorry to take you away,' said Montague.
Jonas gave him a sinister look, which long lived in Tom's memory, and
which he often recalled afterwards.
'I am, upon my life,' said Montague. 'Why did you make it necessary?'
With the same dark glance as before, Jonas replied, after a moment's
silence:
'The necessity is none of my making. You have brought it about
yourself.'
He said nothing more. He said even this as if he were bound, and in the
other's power, but had a sullen and suppressed devil within him, which
he could not quite resist. His very gait, as they walked away together,
was like that of a fettered man; but, striving to work out at his
clenched hands, knitted brows, and fast-set lips, was the same
imprisoned devil still.
They got into a handsome cabriolet which was waiting for them and drove
away.
The whole of this extraordinary scene had passed so rapidly and the
tumult which prevailed around as so unconscious of any impression from
it, that, although Tom had been one of the chief actors, it was like
a dream. No one had noticed him after they had left the packet. He had
stood behind Jonas, and so near him, that he could not help hearing all
that passed. He had stood there, with his sister on his arm, expecting
and hoping to have an opportunity of explaining his strange share in
this yet stranger business. But Jonas had not raised his eyes from the
ground; no one else had even looked towards him; and before he could
resolve on any course of action, they were all gone.
He gazed round for his landlord. But he had done that more than once
already, and no such man was to be seen. He was still pursuing this
search with his eyes, when he saw a hand beckoning to him from a
hackney-coach; and hurrying towards it, found it was Merry's. She
addressed him hurriedly, but bent out of the window, that she might not
be overheard by her companion, Mrs Gamp.
'What is it?' she said. 'Good heaven, what is it? Why did he tell me
last night to prepare for a long journey, and why have you brought us
back like criminals? Dear Mr Pinch!' she clasped her hands distractedly,
'be merciful to us. Whatever this dreadful secret is, be merciful, and
God will bless you!'
'If any power of mercy lay with me,' cried Tom, 'trust me, you shouldn't
ask in vain. But I am far more ignorant and weak than you.'
She withdrew into the coach again, and he saw the hand waving towards
him for a moment; but whether in reproachfulness or incredulity or
misery, or grief, or sad adieu, or what else, he could not, being so
hurried, understand. SHE was gone now; and Ruth and he were left to walk
away, and wonder.
Had Mr Nadgett appointed the man who never came, to meet him upon London
Bridge that morning? He was certainly looking over the parapet, and
down upon the steamboat-wharf at that moment. It could not have been
for pleasure; he never took pleasure. No. He must have had some business
there.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND, ARRIVING AT A PLEASANT UNDERSTANDING, SET FORTH
UPON AN ENTERPRISE
The office of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance
Company being near at hand, and Mr Montague driving Jonas straight
there, they had very little way to go. But the journey might have been
one of several hours' duration, without provoking a remark from either;
for it was clear that Jonas did not mean to break the silence which
prevailed between them, and that it was not, as yet, his dear friend's
cue to tempt them into conversation.
He had thrown aside his cloak, as having now no motive for concealment,
and with that garment huddled on his knees, sat as far removed from his
companion as the limited space in such a carriage would allow. There
was a striking difference in his manner, compared with what it had been,
within a few minutes, when Tom encountered him so unexpectedly on board
the packet, or when the ugly change had fallen on him in Mr Montague's
dressing-room. He had the aspect of a man found out and held at bay;
of being baffled, hunted, and beset; but there was now a dawning and
increasing purpose in his face, which changed it very much. It was
gloomy, distrustful, lowering; pale with anger and defeat; it still was
humbled, abject, cowardly and mean; but, let the conflict go on as it
would, there was one strong purpose wrestling with every emotion of his
mind, and casting the whole series down as they arose.
Not prepossessing in appearance at the best of times, it may be readily
supposed that he was not so now. He had left deep marks of his front
teeth in his nether lip; and those tokens of the agitation he had lately
undergone improved his looks as little as the heavy corrugations in his
forehead. But he was self-possessed now; unnaturally self-possessed,
indeed, as men quite otherwise than brave are known to be in desperate
extremities; and when the carriage stopped, he waited for no invitation,
but leapt hardily out, and went upstairs.
The chairman followed him; and closing the board-room door as soon as
they had entered, threw himself upon a sofa. Jonas stood before the
window, looking down into the street; and leaned against the sash,
resting his head upon his arms.
'This is not handsome, Chuzzlewit!' said Montague at length. 'Not
handsome upon my soul!'
'What would you have me do?' he answered, looking round abruptly; 'What
do you expect?'
'Confidence, my good fellow. Some confidence!' said Montague in an
injured tone.
'Ecod! You show great confidence in me,' retorted Jonas. 'Don't you?'
'Do I not?' said his companion, raising his head, and looking at him,
but he had turned again. 'Do I not? Have I not confided to you the easy
schemes I have formed for our advantage; OUR advantage, mind; not mine
alone; and what is my return? Attempted flight!'
'How do you know that? Who said I meant to fly?'
'Who said? Come, come. A foreign boat, my friend, an early hour, a
figure wrapped up for disguise! Who said? If you didn't mean to jilt
me, why were you there? If you didn't mean to jilt me, why did you come
back?'
'I came back,' said Jonas, 'to avoid disturbance.'
'You were wise,' rejoined his friend.
Jonas stood quite silent; still looking down into the street, and
resting his head upon his arms.
'Now, Chuzzlewit,' said Montague, 'notwithstanding what has passed I
will be plain with you. Are you attending to me there? I only see your
back.'
'I hear you. Go on!'
'I say that notwithstanding what has passed, I will be plain with you.'
'You said that before. And I have told you once I heard you say it. Go
on.'
'You are a little chafed, but I can make allowance for that, and am,
fortunately, myself in the very best of tempers. Now, let us see how
circumstances stand. A day or two ago, I mentioned to you, my dear
fellow, that I thought I had discovered--'
'Will you hold your tongue?' said Jonas, looking fiercely round, and
glancing at the door.
'Well, well!' said Montague. 'Judicious! Quite correct! My discoveries
being published, would be like many other men's discoveries in this
honest world; of no further use to me. You see, Chuzzlewit, how
ingenuous and frank I am in showing you the weakness of my own position!
To return. I make, or think I make, a certain discovery which I take
an early opportunity of mentioning in your ear, in that spirit of
confidence which I really hoped did prevail between us, and was
reciprocated by you. Perhaps there is something in it; perhaps there is
nothing. I have my knowledge and opinion on the subject. You have yours.
We will not discuss the question. But, my good fellow, you have been
weak; what I wish to point out to you is, that you have been weak. I may
desire to turn this little incident to my account (indeed, I do--I'll
not deny it), but my account does not lie in probing it, or using it
against you.'
'What do you call using it against me?' asked Jonas, who had not yet
changed his attitude.
'Oh!' said Montague, with a laugh. 'We'll not enter into that.'
'Using it to make a beggar of me. Is that the use you mean?'
'No.'
'Ecod,' muttered Jonas, bitterly. 'That's the use in which your account
DOES lie. You speak the truth there.'
'I wish you to venture (it's a very safe venture) a little more with
us, certainly, and to keep quiet,' said Montague. 'You promised me you
would; and you must. I say it plainly, Chuzzlewit, you MUST. Reason the
matter. If you don't, my secret is worthless to me: and being so, it
may as well become the public property as mine; better, for I shall
gain some credit, bringing it to light. I want you, besides, to act as a
decoy in a case I have already told you of. You don't mind that, I know.
You care nothing for the man (you care nothing for any man; you are
too sharp; so am I, I hope); and could bear any loss of his with
pious fortitude. Ha, ha, ha! You have tried to escape from the first
consequence. You cannot escape it, I assure you. I have shown you that
to-day. Now, I am not a moral man, you know. I am not the least in the
world affected by anything you may have done; by any little indiscretion
you may have committed; but I wish to profit by it if I can; and to a
man of your intelligence I make that free confession. I am not at all
singular in that infirmity. Everybody profits by the indiscretion of his
neighbour; and the people in the best repute, the most. Why do you give
me this trouble? It must come to a friendly agreement, or an unfriendly
crash. It must. If the former, you are very little hurt. If the
latter--well! you know best what is likely to happen then.'
Jonas left the window, and walked up close to him. He did not look
him in the face; it was not his habit to do that; but he kept his eyes
towards him--on his breast, or thereabouts--and was at great pains
to speak slowly and distinctly in reply. Just as a man in a state of
conscious drunkenness might be.
'Lying is of no use now,' he said. 'I DID think of getting away this
morning, and making better terms with you from a distance.'
'To be sure! to be sure!' replied Montague. 'Nothing more natural. I
foresaw that, and provided against it. But I am afraid I am interrupting
you.'
'How the devil,' pursued Jonas, with a still greater effort, 'you made
choice of your messenger, and where you found him, I'll not ask you. I
owed him one good turn before to-day. If you are so careless of men in
general, as you said you were just now, you are quite indifferent to
what becomes of such a crop-tailed cur as that, and will leave me to
settle my account with him in my own manner.'
If he had raised his eyes to his companion's face, he would have seen
that Montague was evidently unable to comprehend his meaning. But
continuing to stand before him, with his furtive gaze directed as
before, and pausing here only to moisten his dry lips with his tongue,
the fact was lost upon him. It might have struck a close observer that
this fixed and steady glance of Jonas's was a part of the alteration
which had taken place in his demeanour. He kept it riveted on one spot,
with which his thoughts had manifestly nothing to do; like as a juggler
walking on a cord or wire to any dangerous end, holds some object in his
sight to steady him, and never wanders from it, lest he trip.
Montague was quick in his rejoinder, though he made it at a venture.
There was no difference of opinion between him and his friend on THAT
point. Not the least.
'Your great discovery,' Jonas proceeded, with a savage sneer that
got the better of him for the moment, 'may be true, and may be false.
Whichever it is, I dare say I'm no worse than other men.'
'Not a bit,' said Tigg. 'Not a bit. We're all alike--or nearly so.'
'I want to know this,' Jonas went on to say; 'is it your own? You'll not
wonder at my asking the question.'
'My own!' repeated Montague.
'Aye!' returned the other, gruffly. 'Is it known to anybody else? Come!
Don't waver about that.'
'No!' said Montague, without the smallest hesitation. 'What would it be
worth, do you think, unless I had the keeping of it?'
Now, for the first time, Jonas looked at him. After a pause, he put out
his hand, and said, with a laugh:
'Come! make things easy to me, and I'm yours. I don't know that I may
not be better off here, after all, than if I had gone away this morning.
But here I am, and here I'll stay now. Take your oath!'
He cleared his throat, for he was speaking hoarsely and said in a
lighter tone:
'Shall I go to Pecksniff? When? Say when!'
'Immediately!' cried Montague. 'He cannot be enticed too soon.'
'Ecod!' cried Jonas, with a wild laugh. 'There's some fun in catching
that old hypocrite. I hate him. Shall I go to-night?'
'Aye! This,' said Montague, ecstatically, 'is like business! We
understand each other now! To-night, my good fellow, by all means.'
'Come with me,' cried Jonas. 'We must make a dash; go down in state, and
carry documents, for he's a deep file to deal with, and must be drawn
on with an artful hand, or he'll not follow. I know him. As I can't
take your lodgings or your dinners down, I must take you. Will you come
to-night?'
His friend appeared to hesitate; and neither to have anticipated this
proposal, nor to relish it very much.
'We can concert our plans upon the road,' said Jonas. 'We must not go
direct to him, but cross over from some other place, and turn out of our
way to see him. I may not want to introduce you, but I must have you on
the spot. I know the man, I tell you.'
'But what if the man knows me?' said Montague, shrugging his shoulders.
'He know!' cried Jonas. 'Don't you run that risk with fifty men a day!
Would your father know you? Did I know you? Ecod! You were another
figure when I saw you first. Ha, ha, ha! I see the rents and patches
now! No false hair then, no black dye! You were another sort of joker
in those days, you were! You even spoke different then. You've acted
the gentleman so seriously since, that you've taken in yourself. If he
should know you, what does it matter? Such a change is a proof of your
success. You know that, or you would not have made yourself known to me.
Will you come?'
'My good fellow,' said Montague, still hesitating, 'I can trust you
alone.'
'Trust me! Ecod, you may trust me now, far enough. I'll try to go away
no more--no more!' He stopped, and added in a more sober tone, 'I can't
get on without you. Will you come?'
'I will,' said Montague, 'if that's your opinion.' And they shook hands
upon it.
The boisterous manner which Jonas had exhibited during the latter part
of this conversation, and which had gone on rapidly increasing with
almost every word he had spoken, from the time when he looked his
honourable friend in the face until now, did not now subside, but,
remaining at its height, abided by him. Most unusual with him at any
period; most inconsistent with his temper and constitution; especially
unnatural it would appear in one so darkly circumstanced; it abided by
him. It was not like the effect of wine, or any ardent drink, for he was
perfectly coherent. It even made him proof against the usual influence
of such means of excitement; for, although he drank deeply several times
that day, with no reserve or caution, he remained exactly the same man,
and his spirits neither rose nor fell in the least observable degree.
Deciding, after some discussion, to travel at night, in order that the
day's business might not be broken in upon, they took counsel together
in reference to the means. Mr Montague being of opinion that four horses
were advisable, at all events for the first stage, as throwing a great
deal of dust into people's eyes, in more senses than one, a travelling
chariot and four lay under orders for nine o'clock. Jonas did not go
home; observing, that his being obliged to leave town on business in
so great a hurry, would be a good excuse for having turned back so
unexpectedly in the morning. So he wrote a note for his portmanteau, and
sent it by a messenger, who duly brought his luggage back, with a short
note from that other piece of luggage, his wife, expressive of her wish
to be allowed to come and see him for a moment. To this request he sent
for answer, 'she had better;' and one such threatening affirmative being
sufficient, in defiance of the English grammar, to express a negative,
she kept away.
Mr Montague being much engaged in the course of the day, Jonas bestowed
his spirits chiefly on the doctor, with whom he lunched in the medical
officer's own room. On his way thither, encountering Mr Nadgett in the
outer room, he bantered that stealthy gentleman on always appearing
anxious to avoid him, and inquired if he were afraid of him. Mr Nadgett
slyly answered, 'No, but he believed it must be his way as he had been
charged with much the same kind of thing before.'
Mr Montague was listening to, or, to speak with greater elegance, he
overheard, this dialogue. As soon as Jonas was gone he beckoned Nadgett
to him with the feather of his pen, and whispered in his ear.
'Who gave him my letter this morning?'
'My lodger, sir,' said Nadgett, behind the palm of his hand.
'How came that about?'
'I found him on the wharf, sir. Being so much hurried, and you not
arrived, it was necessary to do something. It fortunately occurred to
me, that if I gave it him myself I could be of no further use. I should
have been blown upon immediately.'
'Mr Nadgett, you are a jewel,' said Montague, patting him on the back.
'What's your lodger's name?'
'Pinch, sir. Thomas Pinch.'
Montague reflected for a little while, and then asked:
'From the country, do you know?'
'From Wiltshire, sir, he told me.'
They parted without another word. To see Mr Nadgett's bow when Montague
and he next met, and to see Mr Montague acknowledge it, anybody might
have undertaken to swear that they had never spoken to each other
confidentially in all their lives.
In the meanwhile, Mr Jonas and the doctor made themselves very
comfortable upstairs, over a bottle of the old Madeira and some
sandwiches; for the doctor having been already invited to dine below at
six o'clock, preferred a light repast for lunch. It was advisable, he
said, in two points of view: First, as being healthy in itself. Secondly
as being the better preparation for dinner.
'And you are bound for all our sakes to take particular care of your
digestion, Mr Chuzzlewit, my dear sir,' said the doctor smacking his
lips after a glass of wine; 'for depend upon it, it is worth preserving.
It must be in admirable condition, sir; perfect chronometer-work.
Otherwise your spirits could not be so remarkable. Your bosom's lord
sits lightly on its throne, Mr Chuzzlewit, as what's-his-name says in
the play. I wish he said it in a play which did anything like common
justice to our profession, by the bye. There is an apothecary in
that drama, sir, which is a low thing; vulgar, sir; out of nature
altogether.'
Mr Jobling pulled out his shirt-frill of fine linen, as though he would
have said, 'This is what I call nature in a medical man, sir;' and
looked at Jonas for an observation.
Jonas not being in a condition to pursue the subject, took up a case of
lancets that was lying on the table, and opened it.
'Ah!' said the doctor, leaning back in his chair, 'I always take 'em out
of my pocket before I eat. My pockets are rather tight. Ha, ha, ha!'
Jonas had opened one of the shining little instruments; and was
scrutinizing it with a look as sharp and eager as its own bright edge.
'Good steel, doctor. Good steel! Eh!'
'Ye-es,' replied the doctor, with the faltering modesty of ownership.
'One might open a vein pretty dexterously with that, Mr Chuzzlewit.'
'It has opened a good many in its time, I suppose?' said Jonas looking
at it with a growing interest.
'Not a few, my dear sir, not a few. It has been engaged in a--in a
pretty good practice, I believe I may say,' replied the doctor, coughing
as if the matter-of-fact were so very dry and literal that he couldn't
help it. 'In a pretty good practice,' repeated the doctor, putting
another glass of wine to his lips.
'Now, could you cut a man's throat with such a thing as this?' demanded
Jonas.
'Oh certainly, certainly, if you took him in the right place,' returned
the doctor. 'It all depends upon that.'
'Where you have your hand now, hey?' cried Jonas, bending forward to
look at it.
'Yes,' said the doctor; 'that's the jugular.'
Jonas, in his vivacity, made a sudden sawing in the air, so close behind
the doctor's jugular that he turned quite red. Then Jonas (in the same
strange spirit of vivacity) burst into a loud discordant laugh.
'No, no,' said the doctor, shaking his head; 'edge tools, edge tools;
never play with 'em. A very remarkable instance of the skillful use of
edge-tools, by the way, occurs to me at this moment. It was a case of
murder. I am afraid it was a case of murder, committed by a member of
our profession; it was so artistically done.'
'Aye!' said Jonas. 'How was that?'
'Why, sir,' returned Jobling, 'the thing lies in a nutshell. A certain
gentleman was found, one morning, in an obscure street, lying in
an angle of a doorway--I should rather say, leaning, in an upright
position, in the angle of a doorway, and supported consequently by the
doorway. Upon his waistcoat there was one solitary drop of blood. He was
dead and cold; and had been murdered, sir.'
'Only one drop of blood!' said Jonas.
'Sir, that man,' replied the doctor, 'had been stabbed to the heart.
Had been stabbed to the heart with such dexterity, sir, that he had
died instantly, and had bled internally. It was supposed that a
medical friend of his (to whom suspicion attached) had engaged him in
conversation on some pretence; had taken him, very likely, by the button
in a conversational manner; had examined his ground at leisure with
his other hand; had marked the exact spot; drawn out the instrument,
whatever it was, when he was quite prepared; and--'
'And done the trick,' suggested Jonas.
'Exactly so,' replied the doctor. 'It was quite an operation in its way,
and very neat. The medical friend never turned up; and, as I tell you,
he had the credit of it. Whether he did it or not I can't say.
But, having had the honour to be called in with two or three of my
professional brethren on the occasion, and having assisted to make a
careful examination of the wound, I have no hesitation in saying that
it would have reflected credit on any medical man; and that in an
unprofessional person it could not but be considered, either as an
extraordinary work of art, or the result of a still more extraordinary,
happy, and favourable conjunction of circumstances.'
His hearer was so much interested in this case, that the doctor went
on to elucidate it with the assistance of his own finger and thumb and
waistcoat; and at Jonas's request, he took the further trouble of going
into a corner of the room, and alternately representing the murdered
man and the murderer; which he did with great effect. The bottle being
emptied and the story done, Jonas was in precisely the same boisterous
and unusual state as when they had sat down. If, as Jobling theorized,
his good digestion were the cause, he must have been a very ostrich.
At dinner it was just the same; and after dinner too; though wine was
drunk in abundance, and various rich meats eaten. At nine o'clock it was
still the same. There being a lamp in the carriage, he swore they would
take a pack of cards, and a bottle of wine; and with these things under
his cloak, went down to the door.
'Out of the way, Tom Thumb, and get to bed!'
This was the salutation he bestowed on Mr Bailey, who, booted and
wrapped up, stood at the carriage door to help him in.
'To bed, sir! I'm a-going, too,' said Bailey.
He alighted quickly, and walked back into the hall, where Montague was
lighting a cigar; conducting Mr Bailey with him, by the collar.
'You are not a-going to take this monkey of a boy, are you?'
'Yes,' said Montague.
He gave the boy a shake, and threw him roughly aside. There was more of
his familiar self in the action, than in anything he had done that day;
but he broke out laughing immediately afterwards, and making a thrust
at the doctor with his hand, in imitation of his representation of the
medical friend, went out to the carriage again, and took his seat. His
companion followed immediately. Mr Bailey climbed into the rumble. 'It
will be a stormy night!' exclaimed the doctor, as they started.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CONTINUATION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
The doctor's prognostication in reference to the weather was speedily
verified. Although the weather was not a patient of his, and no third
party had required him to give an opinion on the case, the quick
fulfilment of his prophecy may be taken as an instance of his
professional tact; for, unless the threatening aspect of the night
had been perfectly plain and unmistakable, Mr Jobling would never have
compromised his reputation by delivering any sentiments on the subject.
He used this principle in Medicine with too much success to be unmindful
of it in his commonest transactions.
It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows
listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when
they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely
travellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning.
Lightning flashed and quivered on the black horizon even now; and hollow
murmurings were in the wind, as though it had been blowing where the
thunder rolled, and still was charged with its exhausted echoes. But the
storm, though gathering swiftly, had not yet come up; and the prevailing
stillness was the more solemn, from the dull intelligence that seemed to
hover in the air, of noise and conflict afar off.
It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud which
shone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had been
heated in a furnace, and were growing cold. These had been advancing
steadily and slowly, but they were now motionless, or nearly so. As the
carriage clattered round the corners of the streets, it passed at every
one a knot of persons who had come there--many from their houses close
at hand, without hats--to look up at that quarter of the sky. And now a
very few large drops of rain began to fall, and thunder rumbled in the
distance.
Jonas sat in a corner of the carriage with his bottle resting on his
knee, and gripped as tightly in his hand as if he would have ground its
neck to powder if he could. Instinctively attracted by the night, he
had laid aside the pack of cards upon the cushion; and with the same
involuntary impulse, so intelligible to both of them as not to occasion
a remark on either side, his companion had extinguished the lamp. The
front glasses were down; and they sat looking silently out upon the
gloomy scene before them.
They were clear of London, or as clear of it as travellers can be whose
way lies on the Western Road, within a stage of that enormous city.
Occasionally they encountered a foot-passenger, hurrying to the nearest
place of shelter; or some unwieldy cart proceeding onward at a heavy
trot, with the same end in view. Little clusters of such vehicles were
gathered round the stable-yard or baiting-place of every wayside tavern;
while their drivers watched the weather from the doors and open windows,
or made merry within. Everywhere the people were disposed to bear each
other company rather than sit alone; so that groups of watchful faces
seemed to be looking out upon the night AND THEM, from almost every
house they passed.
It may appear strange that this should have disturbed Jonas, or rendered
him uneasy; but it did. After muttering to himself, and often changing
his position, he drew up the blind on his side of the carriage, and
turned his shoulder sulkily towards it. But he neither looked at his
companion, nor broke the silence which prevailed between them, and which
had fallen so suddenly upon himself, by addressing a word to him.
The thunder rolled, the lightning flashed; the rain poured down like
Heaven's wrath. Surrounded at one moment by intolerable light, and
at the next by pitchy darkness, they still pressed forward on their
journey. Even when they arrived at the end of the stage, and might have
tarried, they did not; but ordered horses out immediately. Nor had this
any reference to some five minutes' lull, which at that time seemed to
promise a cessation of the storm. They held their course as if they were
impelled and driven by its fury. Although they had not exchanged a dozen
words, and might have tarried very well, they seemed to feel, by joint
consent, that onward they must go.
Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled, as through the myriad
halls of some vast temple in the sky; fiercer and brighter became the
lightning, more and more heavily the rain poured down. The horses (they
were travelling now with a single pair) plunged and started from the
rills of quivering fire that seemed to wind along the ground before
them; but there these two men sat, and forward they went as if they were
led on by an invisible attraction.
The eye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in its
every gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noon
in fifty times that period. Bells in steeples, with the rope and wheel
that moved them; ragged nests of birds in cornices and nooks; faces full
of consternation in the tilted waggons that came tearing past; their
frightened teams ringing out a warning which the thunder drowned;
harrows and ploughs left out in fields; miles upon miles of
hedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious as
the scarecrow in the bean-field close at hand; in a trembling, vivid,
flickering instant, everything was clear and plain; then came a flush
of red into the yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness so
intense that there was nothing else but light; and then the deepest and
profoundest darkness.
The lightning being very crooked and very dazzling may have presented
or assisted a curious optical illusion, which suddenly rose before the
startled eyes of Montague in the carriage, and as rapidly disappeared.
He thought he saw Jonas with his hand lifted, and the bottle clenched in
it like a hammer, making as if he would aim a blow at his head. At the
same time he observed (or so believed) an expression in his face--a
combination of the unnatural excitement he had shown all day, with a
wild hatred and fear--which might have rendered a wolf a less terrible
companion.
He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and called to the driver, who
brought his horses to a stop with all speed.
It could hardly have been as he supposed, for although he had not taken
his eyes off his companion, and had not seen him move, he sat reclining
in his corner as before.
'What's the matter?' said Jonas. 'Is that your general way of waking out
of your sleep?'
'I could swear,' returned the other, 'that I have not closed my eyes!'
'When you have sworn it,' said Jonas, composedly, 'we had better go on
again, if you have only stopped for that.'
He uncorked the bottle with the help of his teeth; and putting it to his
lips, took a long draught.
'I wish we had never started on this journey. This is not,' said
Montague, recoiling instinctively, and speaking in a voice that betrayed
his agitation; 'this is not a night to travel in.'
'Ecod! you're right there,' returned Jonas, 'and we shouldn't be out
in it but for you. If you hadn't kept me waiting all day, we might have
been at Salisbury by this time; snug abed and fast asleep. What are we
stopping for?'
His companion put his head out of window for a moment, and drawing it in
again, observed (as if that were his cause of anxiety), that the boy was
drenched to the skin.
'Serve him right,' said Jonas. 'I'm glad of it. What the devil are we
stopping for? Are you going to spread him out to dry?'
'I have half a mind to take him inside,' observed the other with some
hesitation.
'Oh! thankee!' said Jonas. 'We don't want any damp boys here; especially
a young imp like him. Let him be where he is. He ain't afraid of a
little thunder and lightning, I dare say; whoever else is. Go on,
driver. We had better have HIM inside perhaps,' he muttered with a
laugh; 'and the horses!'
'Don't go too fast,' cried Montague to the postillion; 'and take care
how you go. You were nearly in the ditch when I called to you.'
This was not true; and Jonas bluntly said so, as they moved forward
again. Montague took little or no heed of what he said, but repeated
that it was not a night for travelling, and showed himself, both then
and afterwards, unusually anxious.
From this time Jonas recovered his former spirits, if such a term may be
employed to express the state in which he had left the city. He had his
bottle often at his mouth; roared out snatches of songs, without the
least regard to time or tune or voice, or anything but loud discordance;
and urged his silent friend to be merry with him.
'You're the best company in the world, my good fellow,' said Montague
with an effort, 'and in general irresistible; but to-night--do you hear
it?'
'Ecod! I hear and see it too,' cried Jonas, shading his eyes, for the
moment, from the lightning which was flashing, not in any one direction,
but all around them. 'What of that? It don't change you, nor me, nor our
affairs. Chorus, chorus,
It may lighten and storm,
Till it hunt the red worm
From the grass where the gibbet is driven;
But it can't hurt the dead,
And it won't save the head
That is doom'd to be rifled and riven.
That must be a precious old song,' he added with an oath, as he stopped
short in a kind of wonder at himself. 'I haven't heard it since I was
a boy, and how it comes into my head now, unless the lightning put it
there, I don't know. "Can't hurt the dead"! No, no. "And won't save the
head"! No, no. No! Ha, ha, ha!'
His mirth was of such a savage and extraordinary character, and was,
in an inexplicable way, at once so suited to the night, and yet such
a coarse intrusion on its terrors, that his fellow-traveller, always
a coward, shrunk from him in positive fear. Instead of Jonas being his
tool and instrument, their places seemed to be reversed. But there was
reason for this too, Montague thought; since the sense of his debasement
might naturally inspire such a man with the wish to assert a noisy
independence, and in that licence to forget his real condition. Being
quick enough, in reference to such subjects of contemplation, he was not
long in taking this argument into account and giving it its full weight.
But still, he felt a vague sense of alarm, and was depressed and uneasy.
He was certain he had not been asleep; but his eyes might have deceived
him; for, looking at Jonas now in any interval of darkness, he could
represent his figure to himself in any attitude his state of mind
suggested. On the other hand, he knew full well that Jonas had no
reason to love him; and even taking the piece of pantomime which had
so impressed his mind to be a real gesture, and not the working of
his fancy, the most that could be said of it was, that it was quite in
keeping with the rest of his diabolical fun, and had the same impotent
expression of truth in it. 'If he could kill me with a wish,' thought
the swindler, 'I should not live long.'
He resolved that when he should have had his use of Jonas, he would
restrain him with an iron curb; in the meantime, that he could not do
better than leave him to take his own way, and preserve his own peculiar
description of good-humour, after his own uncommon manner. It was no
great sacrifice to bear with him; 'for when all is got that can be got,'
thought Montague, 'I shall decamp across the water, and have the laugh
on my side--and the gains.'
Such were his reflections from hour to hour; his state of mind being one
in which the same thoughts constantly present themselves over and
over again in wearisome repetition; while Jonas, who appeared to have
dismissed reflection altogether, entertained himself as before.
They agreed that they would go to Salisbury, and would cross to Mr
Pecksniff's in the morning; and at the prospect of deluding that worthy
gentleman, the spirits of his amiable son-in-law became more boisterous
than ever.
As the night wore on, the thunder died away, but still rolled
gloomily and mournfully in the distance. The lightning too, though now
comparatively harmless, was yet bright and frequent. The rain was quite
as violent as it had ever been.
It was their ill-fortune, at about the time of dawn and in the last
stage of their journey, to have a restive pair of horses. These animals
had been greatly terrified in their stable by the tempest; and coming
out into the dreary interval between night and morning, when the glare
of the lightning was yet unsubdued by day, and the various objects in
their view were presented in indistinct and exaggerated shapes which
they would not have worn by night, they gradually became less and less
capable of control; until, taking a sudden fright at something by the
roadside, they dashed off wildly down a steep hill, flung the driver
from his saddle, drew the carriage to the brink of a ditch, stumbled
headlong down, and threw it crashing over.
The travellers had opened the carriage door, and had either jumped or
fallen out. Jonas was the first to stagger to his feet. He felt sick and
weak, and very giddy, and reeling to a five-barred gate, stood holding
by it; looking drowsily about as the whole landscape swam before his
eyes. But, by degrees, he grew more conscious, and presently observed
that Montague was lying senseless in the road, within a few feet of the
horses.
In an instant, as if his own faint body were suddenly animated by a
demon, he ran to the horses' heads; and pulling at their bridles with
all his force, set them struggling and plunging with such mad violence
as brought their hoofs at every effort nearer to the skull of the
prostrate man; and must have led in half a minute to his brains being
dashed out on the highway.
As he did this, he fought and contended with them like a man possessed,
making them wilder by his cries.
'Whoop!' cried Jonas. 'Whoop! again! another! A little more, a little
more! Up, ye devils! Hillo!'
As he heard the driver, who had risen and was hurrying up, crying to him
to desist, his violence increased.
'Hiilo! Hillo!' cried Jonas.
'For God's sake!' cried the driver. 'The gentleman--in the road--he'll
be killed!'
The same shouts and the same struggles were his only answer. But the man
darting in at the peril of his own life, saved Montague's, by dragging
him through the mire and water out of the reach of present harm. That
done, he ran to Jonas; and with the aid of his knife they very shortly
disengaged the horses from the broken chariot, and got them, cut and
bleeding, on their legs again. The postillion and Jonas had now leisure
to look at each other, which they had not had yet.
'Presence of mind, presence of mind!' cried Jonas, throwing up his hands
wildly. 'What would you have done without me?'
'The other gentleman would have done badly without ME,' returned the
man, shaking his head. 'You should have moved him first. I gave him up
for dead.'
'Presence of mind, you croaker, presence of mind' cried Jonas with a
harsh loud laugh. 'Was he struck, do you think?'
They both turned to look at him. Jonas muttered something to himself,
when he saw him sitting up beneath the hedge, looking vacantly around.
'What's the matter?' asked Montague. 'Is anybody hurt?'
'Ecod!' said Jonas, 'it don't seem so. There are no bones broken, after
all.'
They raised him, and he tried to walk. He was a good deal shaken, and
trembled very much. But with the exception of a few cuts and bruises
this was all the damage he had sustained.
'Cuts and bruises, eh?' said Jonas. 'We've all got them. Only cuts and
bruises, eh?'
'I wouldn't have given sixpence for the gentleman's head in half-a-dozen
seconds more, for all he's only cut and bruised,' observed the post-boy.
'If ever you're in an accident of this sort again, sir; which I hope
you won't be; never you pull at the bridle of a horse that's down, when
there's a man's head in the way. That can't be done twice without there
being a dead man in the case; it would have ended in that, this time, as
sure as ever you were born, if I hadn't come up just when I did.'
Jonas replied by advising him with a curse to hold his tongue, and to go
somewhere, whither he was not very likely to go of his own accord. But
Montague, who had listened eagerly to every word, himself diverted the
subject, by exclaiming: 'Where's the boy?'
'Ecod! I forgot that monkey,' said Jonas. 'What's become of him?' A very
brief search settled that question. The unfortunate Mr Bailey had been
thrown sheer over the hedge or the five-barred gate; and was lying in
the neighbouring field, to all appearance dead.
'When I said to-night, that I wished I had never started on this
journey,' cried his master, 'I knew it was an ill-fated one. Look at
this boy!'
'Is that all?' growled Jonas. 'If you call THAT a sign of it--'
'Why, what should I call a sign of it?' asked Montague, hurriedly. 'What
do you mean?'
'I mean,' said Jonas, stooping down over the body, 'that I never heard
you were his father, or had any particular reason to care much about
him. Halloa. Hold up there!'
But the boy was past holding up, or being held up, or giving any other
sign of life than a faint and fitful beating of the heart. After some
discussion the driver mounted the horse which had been least injured,
and took the lad in his arms as well as he could; while Montague and
Jonas, leading the other horse, and carrying a trunk between them,
walked by his side towards Salisbury.
'You'd get there in a few minutes, and be able to send assistance to
meet us, if you went forward, post-boy,' said Jonas. 'Trot on!'
'No, no,' cried Montague; 'we'll keep together.'
'Why, what a chicken you are! You are not afraid of being robbed; are
you?' said Jonas.
'I am not afraid of anything,' replied the other, whose looks and manner
were in flat contradiction to his words. 'But we'll keep together.'
'You were mighty anxious about the boy, a minute ago,' said Jonas. 'I
suppose you know that he may die in the meantime?'
'Aye, aye. I know. But we'll keep together.'
As it was clear that he was not to be moved from this determination,
Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and they
proceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; and
the way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden by
which they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition.
After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; and
having knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning),
sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and roused
a surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the service he
could render, he rendered promptly and skillfully. But he gave it as
his opinion that the boy was labouring under a severe concussion of the
brain, and that Mr Bailey's mortal course was run.
If Montague's strong interest in the announcement could have been
considered as unselfish in any degree, it might have been a redeeming
trait in a character that had no such lineaments to spare. But it was
not difficult to see that, for some unexpressed reason best appreciated
by himself, he attached a strange value to the company and presence of
this mere child. When, after receiving some assistance from the surgeon
himself, he retired to the bedroom prepared for him, and it was broad
day, his mind was still dwelling on this theme.
'I would rather have lost,' he said, 'a thousand pounds than lost the
boy just now. But I'll return home alone. I am resolved upon that.
Chuzzlewit shall go forward first, and I will follow in my own time.
I'll have no more of this,' he added, wiping his damp forehead.
'Twenty-four hours of this would turn my hair grey!'
After examining his chamber, and looking under the bed, and in the
cupboards, and even behind the curtains, with unusual caution (although
it was, as has been said, broad day), he double-locked the door by which
he had entered, and retired to rest. There was another door in the
room, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place it
communicated, he knew not.
His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. He
dreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it; a secret which he
knew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsible
for it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision by
a distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherently
entwined with this dream was another, which represented it as the
hiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the business
of his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent it
from forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and a
strange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that he
had been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an old
schoolmate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails to
make the door secure; but though they worked never so hard, it was all
in vain, for the nails broke, or changed to soft twigs, or what was
worse, to worms, between their fingers; the wood of the door splintered
and crumbled, so that even nails would not remain in it; and the iron
plates curled up like hot paper. All this time the creature on the other
side--whether it was in the shape of man, or beast, he neither knew nor
sought to know--was gaining on them. But his greatest terror was when
the man with the bloody smear upon his head demanded of him if he knew
this creatures name, and said that he would whisper it. At this the
dreamer fell upon his knees, his whole blood thrilling with inexplicable
fear, and held his ears. But looking at the speaker's lips, he saw that
they formed the utterance of the letter 'J'; and crying out aloud that
the secret was discovered, and they were all lost, he awoke.
Awoke to find Jonas standing at his bedside watching him. And that very
door wide open.
As their eyes met, Jonas retreated a few paces, and Montague sprang out
of bed.
'Heyday!' said Jonas. 'You're all alive this morning.'
'Alive!' the other stammered, as he pulled the bell-rope violently.
'What are you doing here?'
'It's your room to be sure,' said Jonas; 'but I'm almost inclined to ask
you what YOU are doing here? My room is on the other side of that
door. No one told me last night not to open it. I thought it led into a
passage, and was coming out to order breakfast. There's--there's no bell
in my room.'
Montague had in the meantime admitted the man with his hot water and
boots, who hearing this, said, yes, there was; and passed into the
adjoining room to point it out, at the head of the bed.
'I couldn't find it, then,' said Jonas; 'it's all the same. Shall I
order breakfast?'
Montague answered in the affirmative. When Jonas had retired, whistling,
through his own room, he opened the door of communication, to take out
the key and fasten it on the inner side. But it was taken out already.
He dragged a table against the door, and sat down to collect himself, as
if his dreams still had some influence upon his mind.
'An evil journey,' he repeated several times. 'An evil journey. But I'll
travel home alone. I'll have no more of this.'
His presentiment, or superstition, that it was an evil journey, did
not at all deter him from doing the evil for which the journey was
undertaken. With this in view, he dressed himself more carefully than
usual to make a favourable impression on Mr Pecksniff; and, reassured by
his own appearance, the beauty of the morning, and the flashing of
the wet boughs outside his window in the merry sunshine, was soon
sufficiently inspirited to swear a few round oaths, and hum the fag-end
of a song.
But he still muttered to himself at intervals, for all that: 'I'll
travel home alone!'
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
HAS AN INFLUENCE ON THE FORTUNES OF SEVERAL PEOPLE. MR PECKSNIFF IS
EXHIBITED IN THE PLENITUDE OF POWER; AND WIELDS THE SAME WITH FORTITUDE
AND MAGNANIMITY
On the night of the storm, Mrs Lupin, hostess of the Blue Dragon, sat by
herself in her little bar. Her solitary condition, or the bad weather,
or both united, made Mrs Lupin thoughtful, not to say sorrowful. As she
sat with her chin upon her hand, looking out through a low back lattice,
rendered dim in the brightest day-time by clustering vine-leaves, she
shook her head very often, and said, 'Dear me! Oh, dear, dear me!'
It was a melancholy time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar.
The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle
undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its
clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes
of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll
along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine
and jessamine, and trampled on them in its fury; and when the lightning
gleamed it showed the tearful leaves shivering and cowering together at
the window, and tapping at it urgently, as if beseeching to be sheltered
from the dismal night.
As a mark of her respect for the lightning, Mrs Lupin had removed her
candle to the chimney-piece. Her basket of needle-work stood unheeded
at her elbow; her supper, spread on a round table not far off, was
untasted; and the knives had been removed for fear of attraction. She
had sat for a long time with her chin upon her hand, saying to herself
at intervals, 'Dear me! Ah, dear, dear me!'
She was on the eve of saying so, once more, when the latch of the
house-door (closed to keep the rain out), rattled on its well-worn
catch, and a traveller came in, who, shutting it after him, and walking
straight up to the half-door of the bar, said, rather gruffly:
'A pint of the best old beer here.'
He had some reason to be gruff, for if he had passed the day in a
waterfall, he could scarcely have been wetter than he was. He was
wrapped up to the eyes in a rough blue sailor's coat, and had an
oil-skin hat on, from the capacious brim of which the rain fell
trickling down upon his breast, and back, and shoulders. Judging from a
certain liveliness of chin--he had so pulled down his hat, and pulled up
his collar, to defend himself from the weather, that she could only
see his chin, and even across that he drew the wet sleeve of his shaggy
coat, as she looked at him--Mrs Lupin set him down for a good-natured
fellow, too.
'A bad night!' observed the hostess cheerfully.
The traveller shook himself like a Newfoundland dog, and said it was,
rather.
'There's a fire in the kitchen,' said Mrs Lupin, 'and very good company
there. Hadn't you better go and dry yourself?'
'No, thankee,' said the man, glancing towards the kitchen as he spoke;
he seemed to know the way.
'It's enough to give you your death of cold,' observed the hostess.
'I don't take my death easy,' returned the traveller; 'or I should most
likely have took it afore to-night. Your health, ma'am!'
Mrs Lupin thanked him; but in the act of lifting the tankard to his
mouth, he changed his mind, and put it down again. Throwing his body
back, and looking about him stiffly, as a man does who is wrapped up,
and has his hat low down over his eyes, he said:
'What do you call this house? Not the Dragon, do you?'
Mrs Lupin complacently made answer, 'Yes, the Dragon.'
'Why, then, you've got a sort of a relation of mine here, ma'am,' said
the traveller; 'a young man of the name of Tapley. What! Mark, my boy!'
apostrophizing the premises, 'have I come upon you at last, old buck!'
This was touching Mrs Lupin on a tender point. She turned to trim
the candle on the chimney-piece, and said, with her back towards the
traveller:
'Nobody should be made more welcome at the Dragon, master, than any one
who brought me news of Mark. But it's many and many a long day and month
since he left here and England. And whether he's alive or dead, poor
fellow, Heaven above us only knows!'
She shook her head, and her voice trembled; her hand must have done so
too, for the light required a deal of trimming.
'Where did he go, ma'am?' asked the traveller, in a gentler voice.
'He went,' said Mrs Lupin, with increased distress, 'to America. He was
always tender-hearted and kind, and perhaps at this moment may be lying
in prison under sentence of death, for taking pity on some miserable
black, and helping the poor runaway creetur to escape. How could he ever
go to America! Why didn't he go to some of those countries where the
savages eat each other fairly, and give an equal chance to every one!'
Quite subdued by this time, Mrs Lupin sobbed, and was retiring to a
chair to give her grief free vent, when the traveller caught her in his
arms, and she uttered a glad cry of recognition.
'Yes, I will!' cried Mark, 'another--one more--twenty more! You
didn't know me in that hat and coat? I thought you would have known me
anywheres! Ten more!'
'So I should have known you, if I could have seen you; but I couldn't,
and you spoke so gruff. I didn't think you could speak gruff to me,
Mark, at first coming back.'
'Fifteen more!' said Mr Tapley. 'How handsome and how young you look!
Six more! The last half-dozen warn't a fair one, and must be done over
again. Lord bless you, what a treat it is to see you! One more! Well, I
never was so jolly. Just a few more, on account of there not being any
credit in it!'
When Mr Tapley stopped in these calculations in simple addition, he did
it, not because he was at all tired of the exercise, but because he was
out of breath. The pause reminded him of other duties.
'Mr Martin Chuzzlewit's outside,' he said. 'I left him under the
cartshed, while I came on to see if there was anybody here. We want to
keep quiet to-night, till we know the news from you, and what it's best
for us to do.'
'There's not a soul in the house, except the kitchen company,' returned
the hostess. 'If they were to know you had come back, Mark, they'd have
a bonfire in the street, late as it is.'
'But they mustn't know it to-night, my precious soul,' said Mark; 'so
have the house shut, and the kitchen fire made up; and when it's all
ready, put a light in the winder, and we'll come in. One more! I long
to hear about old friends. You'll tell me all about 'em, won't you; Mr
Pinch, and the butcher's dog down the street, and the terrier over the
way, and the wheelwright's, and every one of 'em. When I first caught
sight of the church to-night, I thought the steeple would have choked
me, I did. One more! Won't you? Not a very little one to finish off
with?'
'You have had plenty, I am sure,' said the hostess. 'Go along with your
foreign manners!'
'That ain't foreign, bless you!' cried Mark. 'Native as oysters, that
is! One more, because it's native! As a mark of respect for the land we
live in! This don't count as between you and me, you understand,' said
Mr Tapley. 'I ain't a-kissing you now, you'll observe. I have been among
the patriots; I'm a-kissin' my country.'
It would have been very unreasonable to complain of the exhibition of
his patriotism with which he followed up this explanation, that it was
at all lukewarm or indifferent. When he had given full expression to his
nationality, he hurried off to Martin; while Mrs Lupin, in a state of
great agitation and excitement, prepared for their reception.
The company soon came tumbling out; insisting to each other that the
Dragon clock was half an hour too fast, and that the thunder must have
affected it. Impatient, wet, and weary though they were, Martin and Mark
were overjoyed to see these old faces, and watched them with delighted
interest as they departed from the house, and passed close by them.
'There's the old tailor, Mark!' whispered Martin.
'There he goes, sir! A little bandier than he was, I think, sir, ain't
he? His figure's so far altered, as it seems to me, that you might wheel
a rather larger barrow between his legs as he walks, than you could have
done conveniently when we know'd him. There's Sam a-coming out, sir.'
'Ah, to be sure!' cried Martin; 'Sam, the hostler. I wonder whether that
horse of Pecksniff's is alive still?'
'Not a doubt on it, sir,' returned Mark. 'That's a description of
animal, sir, as will go on in a bony way peculiar to himself for a long
time, and get into the newspapers at last under the title of "Sing'lar
Tenacity of Life in a Quadruped." As if he had ever been alive in all
his life, worth mentioning! There's the clerk, sir--wery drunk, as
usual.'
'I see him!' said Martin, laughing. 'But, my life, how wet you are,
Mark!'
'I am! What do you consider yourself, sir?'
'Oh, not half as bad,' said his fellow-traveller, with an air of great
vexation. 'I told you not to keep on the windy side, Mark, but to let us
change and change about. The rain has been beating on you ever since it
began.'
'You don't know how it pleases me, sir,' said Mark, after a short
silence, 'if I may make so bold as say so, to hear you a-going on in
that there uncommon considerate way of yours; which I don't mean to
attend to, never, but which, ever since that time when I was floored in
Eden, you have showed.'
'Ah, Mark!' sighed Martin, 'the less we say of that the better. Do I see
the light yonder?'
'That's the light!' cried Mark. 'Lord bless her, what briskness she
possesses! Now for it, sir. Neat wines, good beds, and first-rate
entertainment for man or beast.'
The kitchen fire burnt clear and red, the table was spread out, the
kettle boiled; the slippers were there, the boot-jack too, sheets of
ham were there, cooking on the gridiron; half-a-dozen eggs were there,
poaching in the frying-pan; a plethoric cherry-brandy bottle was there,
winking at a foaming jug of beer upon the table; rare provisions were
there, dangling from the rafters as if you had only to open your mouth,
and something exquisitely ripe and good would be glad of the excuse for
tumbling into it. Mrs Lupin, who for their sakes had dislodged the
very cook, high priestess of the temple, with her own genial hands was
dressing their repast.
It was impossible to help it--a ghost must have hugged her. The Atlantic
Ocean and the Red Sea being, in that respect, all one, Martin hugged
her instantly. Mr Tapley (as if the idea were quite novel, and had never
occurred to him before), followed, with much gravity, on the same side.
'Little did I ever think,' said Mrs Lupin, adjusting her cap and
laughing heartily; yes, and blushing too; 'often as I have said that Mr
Pecksniff's young gentlemen were the life and soul of the Dragon, and
that without them it would be too dull to live in--little did I ever
think I am sure, that any one of them would ever make so free as you, Mr
Martin! And still less that I shouldn't be angry with him, but should be
glad with all my heart to be the first to welcome him home from America,
with Mark Tapley for his--'
'For his friend, Mrs Lupin,' interposed Martin.
'For his friend,' said the hostess, evidently gratified by this
distinction, but at the same time admonishing Mr Tapley with a fork
to remain at a respectful distance. 'Little did I ever think that! But
still less, that I should ever have the changes to relate that I shall
have to tell you of, when you have done your supper!'
'Good Heaven!' cried Martin, changing colour, 'what changes?'
'SHE,' said the hostess, 'is quite well, and now at Mr Pecksniff's.
Don't be at all alarmed about her. She is everything you could wish.
It's of no use mincing matters, or making secrets, is it?' added Mrs
Lupin. 'I know all about it, you see!'
'My good creature,' returned Martin, 'you are exactly the person who
ought to know all about it. I am delighted to think you DO know about
that! But what changes do you hint at? Has any death occurred?'
'No, no!' said the hostess. 'Not as bad as that. But I declare now that
I will not be drawn into saying another word till you have had your
supper. If you ask me fifty questions in the meantime, I won't answer
one.'
She was so positive, that there was nothing for it but to get the supper
over as quickly as possible; and as they had been walking a great many
miles, and had fasted since the middle of the day, they did no great
violence to their own inclinations in falling on it tooth and nail. It
took rather longer to get through than might have been expected; for,
half-a-dozen times, when they thought they had finished, Mrs Lupin
exposed the fallacy of that impression triumphantly. But at last, in
the course of time and nature, they gave in. Then, sitting with
their slippered feet stretched out upon the kitchen hearth (which was
wonderfully comforting, for the night had grown by this time raw and
chilly), and looking with involuntary admiration at their dimpled,
buxom, blooming hostess, as the firelight sparkled in her eyes and
glimmered in her raven hair, they composed themselves to listen to her
news.
Many were the exclamations of surprise which interrupted her, when she
told them of the separation between Mr Pecksniff and his daughters, and
between the same good gentleman and Mr Pinch. But these were nothing to
the indignant demonstrations of Martin, when she related, as the common
talk of the neighbourhood, what entire possession he had obtained
over the mind and person of old Mr Chuzzlewit, and what high honour he
designed for Mary. On receipt of this intelligence, Martin's slippers
flew off in a twinkling, and he began pulling on his wet boots with that
indefinite intention of going somewhere instantly, and doing something
to somebody, which is the first safety-valve of a hot temper.
'He!' said Martin, 'smooth-tongued villain that he is! He! Give me that
other boot, Mark?'
'Where was you a-thinking of going to, sir?' inquired Mr Tapley drying
the sole at the fire, and looking coolly at it as he spoke, as if it
were a slice of toast.
'Where!' repeated Martin. 'You don't suppose I am going to remain here,
do you?'
The imperturbable Mark confessed that he did.
You do!' retorted Martin angrily. 'I am much obliged to you. What do you
take me for?'
'I take you for what you are, sir,' said Mark; 'and, consequently, am
quite sure that whatever you do will be right and sensible. The boot,
sir.'
Martin darted an impatient look at him, without taking it, and walked
rapidly up and down the kitchen several times, with one boot and a
stocking on. But, mindful of his Eden resolution, he had already gained
many victories over himself when Mark was in the case, and he resolved
to conquer now. So he came back to the book-jack, laid his hand on
Mark's shoulder to steady himself, pulled the boot off, picked up his
slippers, put them on, and sat down again. He could not help thrusting
his hands to the very bottom of his pockets, and muttering at intervals,
'Pecksniff too! That fellow! Upon my soul! In-deed! What next?' and so
forth; nor could he help occasionally shaking his fist at the chimney,
with a very threatening countenance; but this did not last long; and he
heard Mrs Lupin out, if not with composure, at all events in silence.
'As to Mr Pecksniff himself,' observed the hostess in conclusion,
spreading out the skirts of her gown with both hands, and nodding
her head a great many times as she did so, 'I don't know what to
say. Somebody must have poisoned his mind, or influenced him in some
extraordinary way. I cannot believe that such a noble-spoken gentleman
would go and do wrong of his own accord!'
A noble-spoken gentleman! How many people are there in the world, who,
for no better reason, uphold their Pecksniffs to the last and abandon
virtuous men, when Pecksniffs breathe upon them!
'As to Mr Pinch,' pursued the landlady, 'if ever there was a dear, good,
pleasant, worthy soul alive, Pinch, and no other, is his name. But
how do we know that old Mr Chuzzlewit himself was not the cause of
difference arising between him and Mr Pecksniff? No one but themselves
can tell; for Mr Pinch has a proud spirit, though he has such a quiet
way; and when he left us, and was so sorry to go, he scorned to make his
story good, even to me.'
'Poor old Tom!' said Martin, in a tone that sounded like remorse.
'It's a comfort to know,' resumed the landlady, 'that he has his sister
living with him, and is doing well. Only yesterday he sent me back, by
post, a little'--here the colour came into her cheeks--'a little trifle
I was bold enough to lend him when he went away; saying, with many
thanks, that he had good employment, and didn't want it. It was the same
note; he hadn't broken it. I never thought I could have been so little
pleased to see a bank-note come back to me as I was to see that.'
'Kindly said, and heartily!' said Martin. 'Is it not, Mark?'
'She can't say anything as does not possess them qualities,' returned
Mr Tapley; 'which as much belongs to the Dragon as its licence. And now
that we have got quite cool and fresh, to the subject again, sir;
what will you do? If you're not proud, and can make up your mind to go
through with what you spoke of, coming along, that's the course for
you to take. If you started wrong with your grandfather (which, you'll
excuse my taking the liberty of saying, appears to have been the case),
up with you, sir, and tell him so, and make an appeal to his affections.
Don't stand out. He's a great deal older than you, and if he was hasty,
you was hasty too. Give way, sir, give way.'
The eloquence of Mr Tapley was not without its effect on Martin but he
still hesitated, and expressed his reason thus:
'That's all very true, and perfectly correct, Mark; and if it were a
mere question of humbling myself before HIM, I would not consider it
twice. But don't you see, that being wholly under this hypocrite's
government, and having (if what we hear be true) no mind or will of his
own, I throw myself, in fact, not at his feet, but at the feet of
Mr Pecksniff? And when I am rejected and spurned away,' said Martin,
turning crimson at the thought, 'it is not by him; my own blood stirred
against me; but by Pecksniff--Pecksniff, Mark!'
'Well, but we know beforehand,' returned the politic Mr Tapley, 'that
Pecksniff is a wagabond, a scoundrel, and a willain.'
'A most pernicious villain!' said Martin.
'A most pernicious willain. We know that beforehand, sir; and,
consequently, it's no shame to be defeated by Pecksniff. Blow
Pecksniff!' cried Mr Tapley, in the fervour of his eloquence. 'Who's he!
It's not in the natur of Pecksniff to shame US, unless he agreed with
us, or done us a service; and, in case he offered any audacity of that
description, we could express our sentiments in the English language,
I hope. Pecksniff!' repeated Mr Tapley, with ineffable disdain. 'What's
Pecksniff, who's Pecksniff, where's Pecksniff, that he's to be so much
considered? We're not a-calculating for ourselves;' he laid uncommon
emphasis on the last syllable of that word, and looked full in Martin's
face; 'we're making a effort for a young lady likewise as has undergone
her share; and whatever little hope we have, this here Pecksniff is not
to stand in its way, I expect. I never heard of any act of Parliament,
as was made by Pecksniff. Pecksniff! Why, I wouldn't see the man myself;
I wouldn't hear him; I wouldn't choose to know he was in company. I'd
scrape my shoes on the scraper of the door, and call that Pecksniff, if
you liked; but I wouldn't condescend no further.'
The amazement of Mrs Lupin, and indeed of Mr Tapley himself for that
matter, at this impassioned flow of language, was immense. But Martin,
after looking thoughtfully at the fire for a short time, said:
'You are right, Mark. Right or wrong, it shall be done. I'll do it.'
'One word more, sir,' returned Mark. 'Only think of him so far as not to
give him a handle against you. Don't you do anything secret that he
can report before you get there. Don't you even see Miss Mary in the
morning, but let this here dear friend of ours'--Mr Tapley bestowed a
smile upon the hostess--'prepare her for what's a-going to happen, and
carry any little message as may be agreeable. She knows how. Don't you?'
Mrs Lupin laughed and tossed her head. 'Then you go in, bold and free as
a gentleman should. "I haven't done nothing under-handed," says you. "I
haven't been skulking about the premises, here I am, for-give me, I ask
your pardon, God Bless You!"'
Martin smiled, but felt that it was good advice notwithstanding, and
resolved to act upon it. When they had ascertained from Mrs Lupin that
Pecksniff had already returned from the great ceremonial at which they
had beheld him in his glory; and when they had fully arranged the order
of their proceedings; they went to bed, intent upon the morrow.
In pursuance of their project as agreed upon at this discussion, Mr
Tapley issued forth next morning, after breakfast, charged with a letter
from Martin to his grandfather, requesting leave to wait upon him for a
few minutes. And postponing as he went along the congratulations of his
numerous friends until a more convenient season, he soon arrived at Mr
Pecksniff's house. At that gentleman's door; with a face so immovable
that it would have been next to an impossibility for the most acute
physiognomist to determine what he was thinking about, or whether he was
thinking at all; he straightway knocked.
A person of Mr Tapley's observation could not long remain insensible
to the fact that Mr Pecksniff was making the end of his nose very
blunt against the glass of the parlour window, in an angular attempt to
discover who had knocked at the door. Nor was Mr Tapley slow to baffle
this movement on the part of the enemy, by perching himself on the
top step, and presenting the crown of his hat in that direction. But
possibly Mr Pecksniff had already seen him, for Mark soon heard his
shoes creaking, as he advanced to open the door with his own hands.
Mr Pecksniff was as cheerful as ever, and sang a little song in the
passage.
'How d'ye do, sir?' said Mark.
'Oh!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'Tapley, I believe? The Prodigal returned! We
don't want any beer, my friend.'
'Thankee, sir,' said Mark. 'I couldn't accommodate you if you did. A
letter, sir. Wait for an answer.'
'For me?' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'And an answer, eh?'
'Not for you, I think, sir,' said Mark, pointing out the direction.
'Chuzzlewit, I believe the name is, sir.'
'Oh!' returned Mr Pecksniff. 'Thank you. Yes. Who's it from, my good
young man?'
'The gentleman it comes from wrote his name inside, sir,' returned Mr
Tapley with extreme politeness. 'I see him a-signing of it at the end,
while I was a-waitin'.'
'And he said he wanted an answer, did he?' asked Mr Pecksniff in his
most persuasive manner.
Mark replied in the affirmative.
'He shall have an answer. Certainly,' said Mr Pecksniff, tearing the
letter into small pieces, as mildly as if that were the most flattering
attention a correspondent could receive. 'Have the goodness to give him
that, with my compliments, if you please. Good morning!' Whereupon he
handed Mark the scraps; retired, and shut the door.
Mark thought it prudent to subdue his personal emotions, and return to
Martin at the Dragon. They were not unprepared for such a reception,
and suffered an hour or so to elapse before making another attempt.
When this interval had gone by, they returned to Mr Pecksniff's house in
company. Martin knocked this time, while Mr Tapley prepared himself to
keep the door open with his foot and shoulder, when anybody came, and by
that means secure an enforced parley. But this precaution was needless,
for the servant-girl appeared almost immediately. Brushing quickly past
her as he had resolved in such a case to do, Martin (closely followed
by his faithful ally) opened the door of that parlour in which he knew
a visitor was most likely to be found; passed at once into the room; and
stood, without a word of notice or announcement, in the presence of his
grandfather.
Mr Pecksniff also was in the room; and Mary. In the swift instant of
their mutual recognition, Martin saw the old man droop his grey head,
and hide his face in his hands.
It smote him to the heart. In his most selfish and most careless day,
this lingering remnant of the old man's ancient love, this buttress of a
ruined tower he had built up in the time gone by, with so much pride and
hope, would have caused a pang in Martin's heart. But now, changed for
the better in his worst respect; looking through an altered medium on
his former friend, the guardian of his childhood, so broken and bowed
down; resentment, sullenness, self-confidence, and pride, were all swept
away, before the starting tears upon the withered cheeks. He could not
bear to see them. He could not bear to think they fell at sight of
him. He could not bear to view reflected in them, the reproachful and
irrevocable Past.
He hurriedly advanced to seize the old man's hand in his, when Mr
Pecksniff interposed himself between them.
'No, young man!' said Mr Pecksniff, striking himself upon the breast,
and stretching out his other arm towards his guest as if it were a wing
to shelter him. 'No, sir. None of that. Strike here, sir, here! Launch
your arrows at me, sir, if you'll have the goodness; not at Him!'
'Grandfather!' cried Martin. 'Hear me! I implore you, let me speak!'
'Would you, sir? Would you?' said Mr Pecksniff, dodging about, so as to
keep himself always between them. 'Is it not enough, sir, that you come
into my house like a thief in the night, or I should rather say, for we
can never be too particular on the subject of Truth, like a thief in
the day-time; bringing your dissolute companions with you, to plant
themselves with their backs against the insides of parlour doors, and
prevent the entrance or issuing forth of any of my household'--Mark had
taken up this position, and held it quite unmoved--'but would you also
strike at venerable Virtue? Would you? Know that it is not defenceless.
I will be its shield, young man. Assail me. Come on, sir. Fire away!'
'Pecksniff,' said the old man, in a feeble voice. 'Calm yourself. Be
quiet.'
'I can't be calm,' cried Mr Pecksniff, 'and I won't be quiet. My
benefactor and my friend! Shall even my house be no refuge for your
hoary pillow!'
'Stand aside!' said the old man, stretching out his hand; 'and let me
see what it is I used to love so dearly.'
'It is right that you should see it, my friend,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'It
is well that you should see it, my noble sir. It is desirable that you
should contemplate it in its true proportions. Behold it! There it is,
sir. There it is!'
Martin could hardly be a mortal man, and not express in his face
something of the anger and disdain with which Mr Pecksniff inspired him.
But beyond this he evinced no knowledge whatever of that gentleman's
presence or existence. True, he had once, and that at first, glanced at
him involuntarily, and with supreme contempt; but for any other heed he
took of him, there might have been nothing in his place save empty air.
As Mr Pecksniff withdrew from between them, agreeably to the wish just
now expressed (which he did during the delivery of the observations
last recorded), old Martin, who had taken Mary Graham's hand in his, and
whispered kindly to her, as telling her she had no cause to be alarmed,
gently pushed her from him, behind his chair; and looked steadily at his
grandson.
'And that,' he said, 'is he. Ah! that is he! Say what you wish to say.
But come no nearer,'
'His sense of justice is so fine,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'that he will
hear even him, although he knows beforehand that nothing can come of it.
Ingenuous mind!' Mr Pecksniff did not address himself immediately to
any person in saying this, but assuming the position of the Chorus in a
Greek Tragedy, delivered his opinion as a commentary on the proceedings.
'Grandfather!' said Martin, with great earnestness. 'From a painful
journey, from a hard life, from a sick-bed, from privation and distress,
from gloom and disappointment, from almost hopelessness and despair, I
have come back to you.'
'Rovers of this sort,' observed Mr Pecksniff, as Chorus, 'very commonly
come back when they find they don't meet with the success they expected
in their marauding ravages.'
'But for this faithful man,' said Martin, turning towards Mark, 'whom
I first knew in this place, and who went away with me voluntarily, as
a servant, but has been, throughout, my zealous and devoted friend; but
for him, I must have died abroad. Far from home, far from any help or
consolation; far from the probability even of my wretched fate being
ever known to any one who cared to hear it--oh, that you would let me
say, of being known to you!'
The old man looked at Mr Pecksniff. Mr Pecksniff looked at him. 'Did
you speak, my worthy sir?' said Mr Pecksniff, with a smile. The old man
answered in the negative. 'I know what you thought,' said Mr Pecksniff,
with another smile. 'Let him go on my friend. The development of
self-interest in the human mind is always a curious study. Let him go
on, sir.'
'Go on!' observed the old man; in a mechanical obedience, it appeared,
to Mr Pecksniff's suggestion.
'I have been so wretched and so poor,' said Martin, 'that I am indebted
to the charitable help of a stranger, in a land of strangers, for the
means of returning here. All this tells against me in your mind, I know.
I have given you cause to think I have been driven here wholly by want,
and have not been led on, in any degree, by affection or regret. When
I parted from you, Grandfather, I deserved that suspicion, but I do not
now. I do not now.'
The Chorus put its hand in its waistcoat, and smiled. 'Let him go on,
my worthy sir,' it said. 'I know what you are thinking of, but don't
express it prematurely.'
Old Martin raised his eyes to Mr Pecksniff's face, and appearing to
derive renewed instruction from his looks and words, said, once again:
'Go on!'
'I have little more to say,' returned Martin. 'And as I say it now, with
little or no hope, Grandfather; whatever dawn of hope I had on entering
the room; believe it to be true. At least, believe it to be true.'
'Beautiful Truth!' exclaimed the Chorus, looking upward. 'How is your
name profaned by vicious persons! You don't live in a well, my holy
principle, but on the lips of false mankind. It is hard to bear with
mankind, dear sir'--addressing the elder Mr Chuzzlewit; 'but let us do
so meekly. It is our duty so to do. Let us be among the Few who do their
duty. If,' pursued the Chorus, soaring up into a lofty flight, 'as the
poet informs us, England expects Every man to do his duty, England is
the most sanguine country on the face of the earth, and will find itself
continually disappointed.'
'Upon that subject,' said Martin, looking calmly at the old man as
he spoke, but glancing once at Mary, whose face was now buried in her
hands, upon the back of his easy-chair; 'upon that subject which first
occasioned a division between us, my mind and heart are incapable of
change. Whatever influence they have undergone, since that unhappy time,
has not been one to weaken but to strengthen me. I cannot profess sorrow
for that, nor irresolution in that, nor shame in that. Nor would you
wish me, I know. But that I might have trusted to your love, if I had
thrown myself manfully upon it; that I might have won you over with
ease, if I had been more yielding and more considerate; that I should
have best remembered myself in forgetting myself, and recollecting you;
reflection, solitude, and misery, have taught me. I came resolved to say
this, and to ask your forgiveness; not so much in hope for the future,
as in regret for the past; for all that I would ask of you is, that you
would aid me to live. Help me to get honest work to do, and I would do
it. My condition places me at the disadvantage of seeming to have only
my selfish ends to serve, but try if that be so or not. Try if I be
self-willed, obdurate, and haughty, as I was; or have been disciplined
in a rough school. Let the voice of nature and association plead between
us, Grandfather; and do not, for one fault, however thankless, quite
reject me!'
As he ceased, the grey head of the old man drooped again; and he
concealed his face behind his outspread fingers.
'My dear sir,' cried Mr Pecksniff, bending over him, 'you must not give
way to this. It is very natural, and very amiable, but you must not
allow the shameless conduct of one whom you long ago cast off, to move
you so far. Rouse yourself. Think,' said Pecksniff, 'think of Me, my
friend.'
'I will,' returned old Martin, looking up into his face. 'You recall me
to myself. I will.'
'Why, what,' said Mr Pecksniff, sitting down beside him in a chair which
he drew up for the purpose, and tapping him playfully on the arm, 'what
is the matter with my strong-minded compatriot, if I may venture to take
the liberty of calling him by that endearing expression? Shall I have
to scold my coadjutor, or to reason with an intellect like this? I think
not.'
'No, no. There is no occasion,' said the old man. 'A momentary feeling.
Nothing more.'
'Indignation,' observed Mr Pecksniff, 'WILL bring the scalding tear
into the honest eye, I know'--he wiped his own elaborately. 'But we
have highest duties to perform than that. Rouse yourself, Mr Chuzzlewit.
Shall I give expression to your thoughts, my friend?'
'Yes,' said old Martin, leaning back in his chair, and looking at him,
half in vacancy and half in admiration, as if he were fascinated by
the man. 'Speak for me, Pecksniff, Thank you. You are true to me. Thank
you!'
'Do not unman me, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, shaking his hand vigorously,
'or I shall be unequal to the task. It is not agreeable to my feelings,
my good sir, to address the person who is now before us, for when I
ejected him from this house, after hearing of his unnatural conduct from
your lips, I renounced communication with him for ever. But you desire
it; and that is sufficient. Young man! The door is immediately behind
the companion of your infamy. Blush if you can; begone without a blush,
if you can't.'
Martin looked as steadily at his grandfather as if there had been a
dead silence all this time. The old man looked no less steadily at Mr
Pecksniff.
'When I ordered you to leave this house upon the last occasion of your
being dismissed from it with disgrace,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'when,
stung and stimulated beyond endurance by your shameless conduct to this
extraordinarily noble-minded individual, I exclaimed "Go forth!" I told
you that I wept for your depravity. Do not suppose that the tear which
stands in my eye at this moment, is shed for you. It is shed for him,
sir. It is shed for him.'
Here Mr Pecksniff, accidentally dropping the tear in question on a
bald part of Mr Chuzzlewit's head, wiped the place with his
pocket-handkerchief, and begged pardon.
'It is shed for him, sir, whom you seek to make the victim of your
arts,' said Mr Pecksniff; 'whom you seek to plunder, to deceive, and to
mislead. It is shed in sympathy with him, and admiration of him; not in
pity for him, for happily he knows what you are. You shall not wrong
him further, sir, in any way,' said Mr Pecksniff, quite transported with
enthusiasm, 'while I have life. You may bestride my senseless corse,
sir. That is very likely. I can imagine a mind like yours deriving great
satisfaction from any measure of that kind. But while I continue to be
called upon to exist, sir, you must strike at him through me. Awe!' said
Mr Pecksniff, shaking his head at Martin with indignant jocularity; 'and
in such a cause you will find me, my young sir, an Ugly Customer!'
Still Martin looked steadily and mildly at his grandfather. 'Will you
give me no answer,' he said, at length, 'not a word?'
'You hear what has been said,' replied the old man, without averting his
eyes from the face of Mr Pecksniff; who nodded encouragingly.
'I have not heard your voice. I have not heard your spirit,' returned
Martin.
'Tell him again,' said the old man, still gazing up in Mr Pecksniff's
face.
'I only hear,' replied Martin, strong in his purpose from the first, and
stronger in it as he felt how Pecksniff winced and shrunk beneath his
contempt; 'I only hear what you say to me, grandfather.'
Perhaps it was well for Mr Pecksniff that his venerable friend found
in his (Mr Pecksniff's) features an exclusive and engrossing object
of contemplation, for if his eyes had gone astray, and he had compared
young Martin's bearing with that of his zealous defender, the latter
disinterested gentleman would scarcely have shown to greater advantage
than on the memorable afternoon when he took Tom Pinch's last receipt
in full of all demands. One really might have thought there was some
quality in Mr Pecksniff--an emanation from the brightness and purity
within him perhaps--which set off and adorned his foes; they looked so
gallant and so manly beside him.
'Not a word?' said Martin, for the second time.
'I remember that I have a word to say, Pecksniff,' observed the old man.
'But a word. You spoke of being indebted to the charitable help of some
stranger for the means of returning to England. Who is he? And what help
in money did he render you?'
Although he asked this question of Martin, he did not look towards him,
but kept his eyes on Mr Pecksniff as before. It appeared to have become
a habit with him, both in a literal and figurative sense, to look to Mr
Pecksniff alone.
Martin took out his pencil, tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and
hastily wrote down the particulars of his debt to Mr Bevan. The old man
stretched out his hand for the paper, and took it; but his eyes did not
wander from Mr Pecksniff's face.
'It would be a poor pride and a false humility,' said Martin, in a
low voice, 'to say, I do not wish that to be paid, or that I have any
present hope of being able to pay it. But I never felt my poverty so
deeply as I feel it now.'
'Read it to me, Pecksniff,' said the old man.
Mr Pecksniff, after approaching the perusal of the paper as if it were a
manuscript confession of a murder, complied.
'I think, Pecksniff,' said old Martin, 'I could wish that to be
discharged. I should not like the lender, who was abroad, who had
no opportunity of making inquiry, and who did (as he thought) a kind
action, to suffer.'
'An honourable sentiment, my dear sir. Your own entirely. But a
dangerous precedent,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'permit me to suggest.'
'It shall not be a precedent,' returned the old man. 'It is the only
recognition of him. But we will talk of it again. You shall advise me.
There is nothing else?'
'Nothing else,' said Mr Pecksniff buoyantly, 'but for you to recover
this intrusion--this cowardly and indefensible outrage on your
feelings--with all possible dispatch, and smile again.'
'You have nothing more to say?' inquired the old man, laying his hand
with unusual earnestness on Mr Pecksniff's sleeve.
Mr Pecksniff would not say what rose to his lips. For reproaches he
observed, were useless.
'You have nothing at all to urge? You are sure of that! If you have, no
matter what it is, speak freely. I will oppose nothing that you ask of
me,' said the old man.
The tears rose in such abundance to Mr Pecksniff's eyes at this proof
of unlimited confidence on the part of his friend, that he was fain to
clasp the bridge of his nose convulsively before he could at all compose
himself. When he had the power of utterance again, he said with great
emotion, that he hoped he should live to deserve this; and added, that
he had no other observation whatever to make.
For a few moments the old man sat looking at him, with that blank and
motionless expression which is not uncommon in the faces of those whose
faculties are on the wane, in age. But he rose up firmly too, and walked
towards the door, from which Mark withdrew to make way for him.
The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it.
Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving him off with his hand,
'You have heard him. Go away. It is all over. Go!'
Mr Pecksniff murmured certain cheering expressions of sympathy and
encouragement as they retired; and Martin, awakening from the stupor
into which the closing portion of this scene had plunged him, to the
opportunity afforded by their departure, caught the innocent cause of
all in his embrace, and pressed her to his heart.
'Dear girl!' said Martin. 'He has not changed you. Why, what an impotent
and harmless knave the fellow is!'
'You have restrained yourself so nobly! You have borne so much!'
'Restrained myself!' cried Martin, cheerfully. 'You were by, and were
unchanged, I knew. What more advantage did I want? The sight of me was
such a bitterness to the dog, that I had my triumph in his being forced
to endure it. But tell me, love--for the few hasty words we can exchange
now are precious--what is this which has been rumoured to me? Is it true
that you are persecuted by this knave's addresses?'
'I was, dear Martin, and to some extent am now; but my chief source
of unhappiness has been anxiety for you. Why did you leave us in such
terrible suspense?'
'Sickness, distance; the dread of hinting at our real condition, the
impossibility of concealing it except in perfect silence; the knowledge
that the truth would have pained you infinitely more than uncertainty
and doubt,' said Martin, hurriedly; as indeed everything else was done
and said, in those few hurried moments, 'were the causes of my writing
only once. But Pecksniff? You needn't fear to tell me the whole tale;
for you saw me with him face to face, hearing him speak, and not taking
him by the throat; what is the history of his pursuit of you? Is it
known to my grandfather?'
'Yes.'
'And he assists him in it?'
'No,' she answered eagerly.
'Thank Heaven!' cried Martin, 'that it leaves his mind unclouded in that
one respect!'
'I do not think,' said Mary, 'it was known to him at first. When
this man had sufficiently prepared his mind, he revealed it to him by
degrees. I think so, but I only know it from my own impression: now from
anything they told me. Then he spoke to me alone.'
'My grandfather did?' said Martin.
'Yes--spoke to me alone, and told me--'
'What the hound had said,' cried Martin. 'Don't repeat it.'
'And said I knew well what qualities he possessed; that he was
moderately rich; in good repute; and high in his favour and confidence.
But seeing me very much distressed, he said that he would not control
or force my inclinations, but would content himself with telling me the
fact. He would not pain me by dwelling on it, or reverting to it; nor
has he ever done so since, but has truly kept his word.'
'The man himself?--' asked Martin.
'He has had few opportunities of pursuing his suit. I have never walked
out alone, or remained alone an instant in his presence. Dear Martin, I
must tell you,' she continued, 'that the kindness of your grandfather
to me remains unchanged. I am his companion still. An indescribable
tenderness and compassion seem to have mingled themselves with his old
regard; and if I were his only child, I could not have a gentler father.
What former fancy or old habit survives in this, when his heart has
turned so cold to you, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but it has been,
and it is, a happiness to me, that I remained true to him; that if he
should wake from his delusion, even at the point of death, I am here,
love, to recall you to his thoughts.'
Martin looked with admiration on her glowing face, and pressed his lips
to hers.
'I have sometimes heard, and read,' she said, 'that those whose powers
had been enfeebled long ago, and whose lives had faded, as it were, into
a dream, have been known to rouse themselves before death, and inquire
for familiar faces once very dear to them; but forgotten, unrecognized,
hated even, in the meantime. Think, if with his old impressions of this
man, he should suddenly resume his former self, and find in him his only
friend!'
'I would not urge you to abandon him, dearest,' said Martin, 'though I
could count the years we are to wear out asunder. But the influence this
fellow exercises over him has steadily increased, I fear.'
She could not help admitting that. Steadily, imperceptibly, and surely,
until it was paramount and supreme. She herself had none; and yet
he treated her with more affection than at any previous time. Martin
thought the inconsistency a part of his weakness and decay.
'Does the influence extend to fear?' said Martin. 'Is he timid of
asserting his own opinion in the presence of this infatuation? I fancied
so just now.'
'I have thought so, often. Often when we are sitting alone, almost as
we used to do, and I have been reading a favourite book to him or he has
been talking quite cheerfully, I have observed that the entrance of
Mr Pecksniff has changed his whole demeanour. He has broken off
immediately, and become what you have seen to-day. When we first came
here he had his impetuous outbreaks, in which it was not easy for Mr
Pecksniff with his utmost plausibility to appease him. But these have
long since dwindled away. He defers to him in everything, and has no
opinion upon any question, but that which is forced upon him by this
treacherous man.'
Such was the account, rapidly furnished in whispers, and interrupted,
brief as it was, by many false alarms of Mr Pecksniff's return;
which Martin received of his grandfather's decline, and of that good
gentleman's ascendancy. He heard of Tom Pinch too, and Jonas too, with
not a little about himself into the bargain; for though lovers are
remarkable for leaving a great deal unsaid on all occasions, and very
properly desiring to come back and say it, they are remarkable also for
a wonderful power of condensation, and can, in one way or other, give
utterance to more language--eloquent language--in any given short space
of time, than all the six hundred and fifty-eight members in the Commons
House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland;
who are strong lovers no doubt, but of their country only, which makes
all the difference; for in a passion of that kind (which is not always
returned), it is the custom to use as many words as possible, and
express nothing whatever.
A caution from Mr Tapley; a hasty interchange of farewells, and of
something else which the proverb says must not be told of afterwards;
a white hand held out to Mr Tapley himself, which he kissed with the
devotion of a knight-errant; more farewells, more something else's; a
parting word from Martin that he would write from London and would do
great things there yet (Heaven knows what, but he quite believed it);
and Mark and he stood on the outside of the Pecksniffian halls.
'A short interview after such an absence!' said Martin, sorrowfully.
'But we are well out of the house. We might have placed ourselves in a
false position by remaining there, even so long, Mark.'
'I don't know about ourselves, sir,' he returned; 'but somebody else
would have got into a false position, if he had happened to come back
again, while we was there. I had the door all ready, sir. If Pecksniff
had showed his head, or had only so much as listened behind it, I would
have caught him like a walnut. He's the sort of man,' added Mr Tapley,
musing, 'as would squeeze soft, I know.'
A person who was evidently going to Mr Pecksniff's house, passed them at
this moment. He raised his eyes at the mention of the architect's name;
and when he had gone on a few yards, stopped and gazed at them. Mr
Tapley, also, looked over his shoulder, and so did Martin; for the
stranger, as he passed, had looked very sharply at them.
'Who may that be, I wonder!' said Martin. 'The face seems familiar to
me, but I don't know the man.'
'He seems to have a amiable desire that his face should be tolerable
familiar to us,' said Mr Tapley, 'for he's a-staring pretty hard. He'd
better not waste his beauty, for he ain't got much to spare.'
Coming in sight of the Dragon, they saw a travelling carriage at the
door.
'And a Salisbury carriage, eh?' said Mr Tapley. 'That's what he came in
depend upon it. What's in the wind now? A new pupil, I shouldn't wonder.
P'raps it's a order for another grammar-school, of the same pattern as
the last.'
Before they could enter at the door, Mrs Lupin came running out; and
beckoning them to the carriage showed them a portmanteau with the name
of CHUZZLEWIT upon it.
'Miss Pecksniff's husband that was,' said the good woman to Martin. 'I
didn't know what terms you might be on, and was quite in a worry till
you came back.'
'He and I have never interchanged a word yet,' observed Martin; 'and as
I have no wish to be better or worse acquainted with him, I will not put
myself in his way. We passed him on the road, I have no doubt. I am glad
he timed his coming as he did. Upon my word! Miss Pecksniff's husband
travels gayly!'
'A very fine-looking gentleman with him--in the best room now,'
whispered Mrs Lupin, glancing up at the window as they went into the
house. 'He has ordered everything that can be got for dinner; and has
the glossiest moustaches and whiskers ever you saw.'
'Has he?' cried Martin, 'why then we'll endeavour to avoid him too, in
the hope that our self-denial may be strong enough for the sacrifice.
It is only for a few hours,' said Martin, dropping wearily into a chair
behind the little screen in the bar. 'Our visit has met with no success,
my dear Mrs Lupin, and I must go to London.'
'Dear, dear!' cried the hostess.
'Yes, one foul wind no more makes a winter, than one swallow makes a
summer. I'll try it again. Tom Pinch has succeeded. With his advice to
guide me, I may do the same. I took Tom under my protection once, God
save the mark!' said Martin, with a melancholy smile; 'and promised I
would make his fortune. Perhaps Tom will take me under HIS protection
now, and teach me how to earn my bread.'
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
FURTHER CONTINUATION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
It was a special quality, among the many admirable qualities possessed
by Mr Pecksniff, that the more he was found out, the more hypocrisy he
practised. Let him be discomfited in one quarter, and he refreshed and
recompensed himself by carrying the war into another. If his workings
and windings were detected by A, so much the greater reason was there
for practicing without loss of time on B, if it were only to keep his
hand in. He had never been such a saintly and improving spectacle to all
about him, as after his detection by Thomas Pinch. He had scarcely ever
been at once so tender in his humanity, and so dignified and exalted in
his virtue, as when young Martin's scorn was fresh and hot upon him.
Having this large stock of superfluous sentiment and morality on hand
which must positively be cleared off at any sacrifice, Mr Pecksniff no
sooner heard his son-in-law announced, than he regarded him as a kind
of wholesale or general order, to be immediately executed. Descending,
therefore, swiftly to the parlour, and clasping the young man in
his arms, he exclaimed, with looks and gestures that denoted the
perturbation of his spirit:
'Jonas. My child--she is well! There is nothing the matter?'
'What, you're at it again, are you?' replied his son-in-law. 'Even with
me? Get away with you, will you?'
'Tell me she is well then,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Tell me she is well my
boy!'
'She's well enough,' retorted Jonas, disengaging himself. 'There's
nothing the matter with HER.'
'There is nothing the matter with her!' cried Mr Pecksniff, sitting down
in the nearest chair, and rubbing up his hair. 'Fie upon my weakness!
I cannot help it, Jonas. Thank you. I am better now. How is my other
child; my eldest; my Cherrywerrychigo?' said Mr Pecksniff, inventing a
playful little name for her, in the restored lightness of his heart.
'She's much about the same as usual,' returned Jonas. 'She sticks
pretty close to the vinegar-bottle. You know she's got a sweetheart, I
suppose?'
'I have heard of it,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'from headquarters; from my
child herself I will not deny that it moved me to contemplate the loss
of my remaining daughter, Jonas--I am afraid we parents are selfish, I
am afraid we are--but it has ever been the study of my life to qualify
them for the domestic hearth; and it is a sphere which Cherry will
adorn.'
'She need adorn some sphere or other,' observed the son-in-law, for she
ain't very ornamental in general.'
'My girls are now provided for,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'They are now
happily provided for, and I have not laboured in vain!'
This is exactly what Mr Pecksniff would have said, if one of his
daughters had drawn a prize of thirty thousand pounds in the lottery, or
if the other had picked up a valuable purse in the street, which nobody
appeared to claim. In either of these cases he would have invoked a
patriarchal blessing on the fortunate head, with great solemnity, and
would have taken immense credit to himself, as having meant it from the
infant's cradle.
'Suppose we talk about something else, now,' observed Jonas, drily.
'just for a change. Are you quite agreeable?'
'Quite,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Ah, you wag, you naughty wag! You laugh at
poor old fond papa. Well! He deserves it. And he don't mind it either,
for his feelings are their own reward. You have come to stay with me,
Jonas?'
'No. I've got a friend with me,' said Jonas.
'Bring your friend!' cried Mr Pecksniff, in a gush of hospitality.
'Bring any number of your friends!'
'This ain't the sort of man to be brought,' said Jonas, contemptuously.
'I think I see myself "bringing" him to your house, for a treat!
Thank'ee all the same; but he's a little too near the top of the tree
for that, Pecksniff.'
The good man pricked up his ears; his interest was awakened. A position
near the top of the tree was greatness, virtue, goodness, sense, genius;
or, it should rather be said, a dispensation from all, and in itself
something immeasurably better than all; with Mr Pecksniff. A man who was
able to look down upon Mr Pecksniff could not be looked up at, by that
gentleman, with too great an amount of deference, or from a position of
too much humility. So it always is with great spirits.
'I'll tell you what you may do, if you like,' said Jonas; 'you may come
and dine with us at the Dragon. We were forced to come down to Salisbury
last night, on some business, and I got him to bring me over here this
morning, in his carriage; at least, not his own carriage, for we had
a breakdown in the night, but one we hired instead; it's all the same.
Mind what you're about, you know. He's not used to all sorts; he only
mixes with the best!'
'Some young nobleman who has been borrowing money of you at good
interest, eh?' said Mr Pecksniff, shaking his forefinger facetiously. 'I
shall be delighted to know the gay sprig.'
'Borrowing!' echoed Jonas. 'Borrowing! When you're a twentieth part as
rich as he is, you may shut up shop! We should be pretty well off if we
could buy his furniture, and plate, and pictures, by clubbing together.
A likely man to borrow: Mr Montague! Why since I was lucky enough (come!
and I'll say, sharp enough, too) to get a share in the Assurance office
that he's President of, I've made--never mind what I've made,' said
Jonas, seeming to recover all at once his usual caution. 'You know me
pretty well, and I don't blab about such things. But, Ecod, I've made a
trifle.'
'Really, my dear Jonas,' cried Mr Pecksniff, with much warmth, 'a
gentleman like this should receive some attention. Would he like to
see the church? or if he has a taste for the fine arts--which I have no
doubt he has, from the description you give of his circumstances--I can
send him down a few portfolios. Salisbury Cathedral, my dear Jonas,'
said Mr Pecksniff; the mention of the portfolios and his anxiety to
display himself to advantage, suggesting his usual phraseology in
that regard, 'is an edifice replete with venerable associations,
and strikingly suggestive of the loftiest emotions. It is here we
contemplate the work of bygone ages. It is here we listen to the
swelling organ, as we stroll through the reverberating aisles. We have
drawings of this celebrated structure from the North, from the South,
from the East, from the West, from the South-East, from the Nor'West--'
During this digression, and indeed during the whole dialogue, Jonas had
been rocking on his chair, with his hands in his pockets and his head
thrown cunningly on one side. He looked at Mr Pecksniff now with such
shrewd meaning twinkling in his eyes, that Mr Pecksniff stopped, and
asked him what he was going to say.
'Ecod!' he answered. 'Pecksniff if I knew how you meant to leave your
money, I could put you in the way of doubling it in no time. It wouldn't
be bad to keep a chance like this snug in the family. But you're such a
deep one!'
'Jonas!' cried Mr Pecksniff, much affected, 'I am not a diplomatical
character; my heart is in my hand. By far the greater part of the
inconsiderable savings I have accumulated in the course of--I hope--a
not dishonourable or useless career, is already given, devised, and
bequeathed (correct me, my dear Jonas, if I am technically wrong), with
expressions of confidence, which I will not repeat; and in securities
which it is unnecessary to mention to a person whom I cannot, whom
I will not, whom I need not, name.' Here he gave the hand of his
son-in-law a fervent squeeze, as if he would have added, 'God bless you;
be very careful of it when you get it!'
Mr Jonas only shook his head and laughed, and, seeming to think better
of what he had had in his mind, said, 'No. He would keep his own
counsel.' But as he observed that he would take a walk, Mr Pecksniff
insisted on accompanying him, remarking that he could leave a card for
Mr Montague, as they went along, by way of gentleman-usher to himself at
dinner-time. Which he did.
In the course of their walk, Mr Jonas affected to maintain that close
reserve which had operated as a timely check upon him during the
foregoing dialogue. And as he made no attempt to conciliate Mr
Pecksniff, but, on the contrary, was more boorish and rude to him than
usual, that gentleman, so far from suspecting his real design, laid
himself out to be attacked with advantage. For it is in the nature of a
knave to think the tools with which he works indispensable to knavery;
and knowing what he would do himself in such a case, Mr Pecksniff
argued, 'if this young man wanted anything of me for his own ends, he
would be polite and deferential.'
The more Jonas repelled him in his hints and inquiries, the more
solicitous, therefore, Mr Pecksniff became to be initiated into the
golden mysteries at which he had obscurely glanced. Why should there be
cold and worldly secrets, he observed, between relations? What was life
without confidence? If the chosen husband of his daughter, the man to
whom he had delivered her with so much pride and hope, such bounding
and such beaming joy; if he were not a green spot in the barren waste of
life, where was that oasis to be bound?
Little did Mr Pecksniff think on what a very green spot he planted one
foot at that moment! Little did he foresee when he said, 'All is but
dust!' how very shortly he would come down with his own!
Inch by inch, in his grudging and ill-conditioned way; sustained to the
life, for the hope of making Mr Pecksniff suffer in that tender place,
the pocket, where Jonas smarted so terribly himself, gave him an
additional and malicious interest in the wiles he was set on to
practise; inch by inch, and bit by bit, Jonas rather allowed the
dazzling prospects of the Anglo-Bengalee establishment to escape him,
than paraded them before his greedy listener. And in the same niggardly
spirit, he left Mr Pecksniff to infer, if he chose (which he DID choose,
of course), that a consciousness of not having any great natural gifts
of speech and manner himself, rendered him desirous to have the credit
of introducing to Mr Montague some one who was well endowed in those
respects, and so atone for his own deficiencies. Otherwise, he muttered
discontentedly, he would have seen his beloved father-in-law 'far enough
off,' before he would have taken him into his confidence.
Primed in this artful manner, Mr Pecksniff presented himself at
dinner-time in such a state of suavity, benevolence, cheerfulness,
politeness, and cordiality, as even he had perhaps never attained
before. The frankness of the country gentleman, the refinement of
the artist, the good-humoured allowance of the man of the world;
philanthropy, forbearance, piety, toleration, all blended together in a
flexible adaptability to anything and everything; were expressed in Mr
Pecksniff, as he shook hands with the great speculator and capitalist.
'Welcome, respected sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'to our humble village! We
are a simple people; primitive clods, Mr Montague; but we can appreciate
the honour of your visit, as my dear son-in-law can testify. It is very
strange,' said Mr Pecksniff, pressing his hand almost reverentially,
'but I seem to know you. That towering forehead, my dear Jonas,' said Mr
Pecksniff aside, 'and those clustering masses of rich hair--I must have
seen you, my dear sir, in the sparkling throng.'
Nothing was more probable, they all agreed.
'I could have wished,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'to have had the honour of
introducing you to an elderly inmate of our house: to the uncle of our
friend. Mr Chuzzlewit, sir, would have been proud indeed to have taken
you by the hand.'
'Is the gentleman here now?' asked Montague, turning deeply red. 'He
is,' said Mr Pecksniff.
'You said nothing about that, Chuzzlewit.'
'I didn't suppose you'd care to hear of it,' returned Jonas. 'You
wouldn't care to know him, I can promise you.'
'Jonas! my dear Jonas!' remonstrated Mr Pecksniff. 'Really!'
'Oh! it's all very well for you to speak up for him,' said Jonas. 'You
have nailed him. You'll get a fortune by him.'
'Oho! Is the wind in that quarter?' cried Montague. 'Ha, ha, ha!' and
here they all laughed--especially Mr Pecksniff.
'No, no!' said that gentleman, clapping his son-in-law playfully upon
the shoulder. 'You must not believe all that my young relative says,
Mr Montague. You may believe him in official business, and trust him in
official business, but you must not attach importance to his flights of
fancy.'
'Upon my life, Mr Pecksniff,' cried Montague, 'I attach the greatest
importance to that last observation of his. I trust and hope it's true.
Money cannot be turned and turned again quickly enough in the ordinary
course, Mr Pecksniff. There is nothing like building our fortune on the
weaknesses of mankind.'
'Oh fie! oh fie, for shame!' cried Mr Pecksniff. But they all laughed
again--especially Mr Pecksniff.
'I give you my honour that WE do it,' said Montague.
'Oh fie, fie!' cried Mr Pecksniff. 'You are very pleasant. That I am
sure you don't! That I am sure you don't! How CAN you, you know?'
Again they all laughed in concert; and again Mr Pecksniff laughed
especially.
This was very agreeable indeed. It was confidential, easy,
straight-forward; and still left Mr Pecksniff in the position of being
in a gentle way the Mentor of the party. The greatest achievements in
the article of cookery that the Dragon had ever performed, were set
before them; the oldest and best wines in the Dragon's cellar saw the
light on that occasion; a thousand bubbles, indicative of the wealth and
station of Mr Montague in the depths of his pursuits, were constantly
rising to the surface of the conversation; and they were as frank and
merry as three honest men could be. Mr Pecksniff thought it a pity (he
said so) that Mr Montague should think lightly of mankind and their
weaknesses. He was anxious upon this subject; his mind ran upon it; in
one way or another he was constantly coming back to it; he must make
a convert of him, he said. And as often as Mr Montague repeated his
sentiment about building fortunes on the weaknesses of mankind, and
added frankly, 'WE do it!' just as often Mr Pecksniff repeated 'Oh fie!
oh fie, for shame! I am sure you don't. How CAN you, you know?' laying a
greater stress each time on those last words.
The frequent repetition of this playful inquiry on the part of Mr
Pecksniff, led at last to playful answers on the part of Mr Montague;
but after some little sharp-shooting on both sides, Mr Pecksniff became
grave, almost to tears; observing that if Mr Montague would give
him leave, he would drink the health of his young kinsman, Mr Jonas;
congratulating him upon the valuable and distinguished friendship he
had formed, but envying him, he would confess, his usefulness to his
fellow-creatures. For, if he understood the objects of that Institution
with which he was newly and advantageously connected--knowing them
but imperfectly--they were calculated to do Good; and for his (Mr
Pecksniff's) part, if he could in any way promote them, he thought
he would be able to lay his head upon his pillow every night, with an
absolute certainty of going to sleep at once.
The transition from this accidental remark (for it was quite accidental
and had fallen from Mr Pecksniff in the openness of his soul), to the
discussion of the subject as a matter of business, was easy. Books,
papers, statements, tables, calculations of various kinds, were soon
spread out before them; and as they were all framed with one object,
it is not surprising that they should all have tended to one end. But
still, whenever Montague enlarged upon the profits of the office, and
said that as long as there were gulls upon the wing it must succeed, Mr
Pecksniff mildly said 'Oh fie!'--and might indeed have remonstrated
with him, but that he knew he was joking. Mr Pecksniff did know he was
joking; because he said so.
There never had been before, and there never would be again, such
an opportunity for the investment of a considerable sum (the rate of
advantage increased in proportion to the amount invested), as at that
moment. The only time that had at all approached it, was the time when
Jonas had come into the concern; which made him ill-natured now, and
inclined him to pick out a doubt in this place, and a flaw in that, and
grumbling to advise Mr Pecksniff to think better of it. The sum which
would complete the proprietorship in this snug concern, was nearly equal
to Mr Pecksniff's whole hoard; not counting Mr Chuzzlewit, that is to
say, whom he looked upon as money in the Bank, the possession of which
inclined him the more to make a dash with his own private sprats for
the capture of such a whale as Mr Montague described. The returns
began almost immediately, and were immense. The end of it was, that
Mr Pecksniff agreed to become the last partner and proprietor in the
Anglo-Bengalee, and made an appointment to dine with Mr Montague, at
Salisbury, on the next day but one, then and there to complete the
negotiation.
It took so long to bring the subject to this head, that it was nearly
midnight when they parted. When Mr Pecksniff walked downstairs to the
door, he found Mrs Lupin standing there, looking out.
'Ah, my good friend!' he said; 'not a-bed yet! Contemplating the stars,
Mrs Lupin?'
'It's a beautiful starlight night, sir.'
'A beautiful starlight night,' said Mr Pecksniff, looking up. 'Behold
the planets, how they shine! Behold the--those two persons who were here
this morning have left your house, I hope, Mrs Lupin?'
'Yes, sir. They are gone.'
'I am glad to hear it,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Behold the wonders of the
firmament, Mrs Lupin! how glorious is the scene! When I look up at those
shining orbs, I think that each of them is winking to the other to
take notice of the vanity of men's pursuits. My fellow-men!' cried Mr
Pecksniff, shaking his head in pity; 'you are much mistaken; my wormy
relatives, you are much deceived! The stars are perfectly contented (I
suppose so) in their several spheres. Why are not you? Oh! do not strive
and struggle to enrich yourselves, or to get the better of each other,
my deluded friends, but look up there, with me!'
Mrs Lupin shook her head, and heaved a sigh. It was very affecting.
'Look up there, with me!' repeated Mr Pecksniff, stretching out
his hand; 'With me, a humble individual who is also an insect like
yourselves. Can silver, gold, or precious stones, sparkle like those
constellations! I think not. Then do not thirst for silver, gold, or
precious stones; but look up there, with me!'
With those words, the good man patted Mrs Lupin's hand between his own,
as if he would have added 'think of this, my good woman!' and walked
away in a sort of ecstasy or rapture, with his hat under his arm.
Jonas sat in the attitude in which Mr Pecksniff had left him, gazing
moodily at his friend; who, surrounded by a heap of documents, was
writing something on an oblong slip of paper.
'You mean to wait at Salisbury over the day after to-morrow, do you,
then?' said Jonas.
'You heard our appointment,' returned Montague, without raising his
eyes. 'In any case I should have waited to see after the boy.'
They appeared to have changed places again; Montague being in high
spirits; Jonas gloomy and lowering.
'You don't want me, I suppose?' said Jonas.
'I want you to put your name here,' he returned, glancing at him with a
smile, 'as soon as I have filled up the stamp. I may as well have your
note of hand for that extra capital. That's all I want. If you wish
to go home, I can manage Mr Pecksniff now, alone. There is a perfect
understanding between us.'
Jonas sat scowling at him as he wrote, in silence. When he had
finished his writing, and had dried it on the blotting paper in his
travelling-desk; he looked up, and tossed the pen towards him.
'What, not a day's grace, not a day's trust, eh?' said Jonas bitterly.
'Not after the pains I have taken with to-night's work?'
'To night's work was a part of our bargain,' replied Montague; 'and so
was this.'
'You drive a hard bargain,' said Jonas, advancing to the table. 'You
know best. Give it here!'
Montague gave him the paper. After pausing as if he could not make up
his mind to put his name to it, Jonas dipped his pen hastily in the
nearest inkstand, and began to write. But he had scarcely marked the
paper when he started back, in a panic.
'Why, what the devil's this?' he said. 'It's bloody!'
He had dipped the pen, as another moment showed, into red ink. But he
attached a strange degree of importance to the mistake. He asked how it
had come there, who had brought it, why it had been brought; and looked
at Montague, at first, as if he thought he had put a trick upon him.
Even when he used a different pen, and the right ink, he made some
scratches on another paper first, as half believing they would turn red
also.
'Black enough, this time,' he said, handing the note to Montague.
'Good-bye.'
'Going now! how do you mean to get away from here?'
'I shall cross early in the morning to the high road, before you are out
of bed; and catch the day-coach, going up. Good-bye!'
'You are in a hurry!'
'I have something to do,' said Jonas. 'Good-bye!'
His friend looked after him as he went out, in surprise, which gradually
gave place to an air of satisfaction and relief.
'It happens all the better. It brings about what I wanted, without any
difficulty. I shall travel home alone.'
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
IN WHICH TOM PINCH AND HIS SISTER TAKE A LITTLE PLEASURE; BUT QUITE IN A
DOMESTIC WAY, AND WITH NO CEREMONY ABOUT IT
Tom Pinch and his sister having to part, for the dispatch of the
morning's business, immediately after the dispersion of the other actors
in the scene upon the wharf with which the reader has been already made
acquainted, had no opportunity of discussing the subject at that time.
But Tom, in his solitary office, and Ruth, in the triangular parlour,
thought about nothing else all day; and, when their hour of meeting in
the afternoon approached, they were very full of it, to be sure.
There was a little plot between them, that Tom should always come out
of the Temple by one way; and that was past the fountain. Coming through
Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the steps leading into Garden
Court, and to look once all round him; and if Ruth had come to meet him,
there he would see her; not sauntering, you understand (on account of
the clerks), but coming briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her
face that ever played in opposition to the fountain, and beat it all to
nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom had been looking for her in the wrong
direction, and had quite given her up, while she had been tripping
towards him from the first; jingling that little reticule of hers (with
all the keys in it) to attract his wandering observation.
Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain
Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest
and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for
gardeners, and those who are learned in the loves of plants. But, that
it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a delicate
little figure flitting through it; that it passed like a smile from the
grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and left them duller, darker,
sterner than before; there is no sort of doubt. The Temple fountain
might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful
maidenhood, that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and
dusty channels of the Law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple
chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to listen to imaginary
skylarks, as so fresh a little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused
to droop, otherwise than in their puny growth, might have bent down in
a kindred gracefulness to shed their benedictions on her graceful head;
old love letters, shut up in iron boxes in the neighbouring offices, and
made of no account among the heaps of family papers into which they had
strayed, and of which, in their degeneracy, they formed a part, might
have stirred and fluttered with a moment's recollection of their ancient
tenderness, as she went lightly by. Anything might have happened that
did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth.
Something happened, too, upon the afternoon of which the history treats.
Not for her love. Oh no! quite by accident, and without the least
reference to her at all.
Either she was a little too soon, or Tom was a little too late--she was
so precise in general, that she timed it to half a minute--but no Tom
was there. Well! But was anybody else there, that she blushed so deeply,
after looking round, and tripped off down the steps with such unusual
expedition?
Why, the fact is, that Mr Westlock was passing at that moment. The
Temple is a public thoroughfare; they may write up on the gates that it
is not, but so long as the gates are left open it is, and will be; and
Mr Westlock had as good a right to be there as anybody else. But why did
she run away, then? Not being ill dressed, for she was much too neat for
that, why did she run away? The brown hair that had fallen down beneath
her bonnet, and had one impertinent imp of a false flower clinging to
it, boastful of its licence before all men, THAT could not have been the
cause, for it looked charming. Oh! foolish, panting, frightened little
heart, why did she run away!
Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily the dimples sparkled on
its sunny face. John Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whispering
water broke and fell; as roguishly the dimples twinkled, as he stole
upon her footsteps.
Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart, why did she feign to be
unconscious of his coming! Why wish herself so far away, yet be so
flutteringly happy there!
'I felt sure it was you,' said John, when he overtook her in the
sanctuary of Garden Court. 'I knew I couldn't be mistaken.'
She was SO surprised.
'You are waiting for your brother,' said John. 'Let me bear you
company.'
So light was the touch of the coy little hand, that he glanced down to
assure himself he had it on his arm. But his glance, stopping for
an instant at the bright eyes, forgot its first design, and went no
farther.
They walked up and down three or four times, speaking about Tom and his
mysterious employment. Now that was a very natural and innocent subject,
surely. Then why, whenever Ruth lifted up her eyes, did she let them
fall again immediately, and seek the uncongenial pavement of the court?
They were not such eyes as shun the light; they were not such eyes
as require to be hoarded to enhance their value. They were much too
precious and too genuine to stand in need of arts like those. Somebody
must have been looking at them!
They found out Tom, though, quickly enough. This pair of eyes descried
him in the distance, the moment he appeared. He was staring about him,
as usual, in all directions but the right one; and was as obstinate
in not looking towards them, as if he had intended it. As it was plain
that, being left to himself, he would walk away home, John Westlock
darted off to stop him.
This made the approach of poor little Ruth, by herself, one of the
most embarrassing of circumstances. There was Tom, manifesting extreme
surprise (he had no presence of mind, that Tom, on small occasions);
there was John, making as light of it as he could, but explaining at the
same time with most unnecessary elaboration; and here was she, coming
towards them, with both of them looking at her, conscious of blushing to
a terrible extent, but trying to throw up her eyebrows carelessly, and
pout her rosy lips, as if she were the coolest and most unconcerned of
little women.
Merrily the fountain plashed and plashed, until the dimples, merging
into one another, swelled into a general smile, that covered the whole
surface of the basin.
'What an extraordinary meeting!' said Tom. 'I should never have dreamed
of seeing you two together here.'
'Quite accidental,' John was heard to murmur.
'Exactly,' cried Tom; 'that's what I mean, you know. If it wasn't
accidental, there would be nothing remarkable in it.'
'To be sure,' said John.
'Such an out-of-the-way place for you to have met in,' pursued Tom,
quite delighted. 'Such an unlikely spot!'
John rather disputed that. On the contrary, he considered it a very
likely spot, indeed. He was constantly passing to and fro there, he
said. He shouldn't wonder if it were to happen again. His only wonder
was, that it had never happened before.
By this time Ruth had got round on the farther side of her brother, and
had taken his arm. She was squeezing it now, as much as to say 'Are you
going to stop here all day, you dear, old, blundering Tom?'
Tom answered the squeeze as if it had been a speech. 'John,' he said,
'if you'll give my sister your arm, we'll take her between us, and walk
on. I have a curious circumstance to relate to you. Our meeting could
not have happened better.'
Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling dimples
twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a laugh
against the basin's rim, and vanished.
'Tom,' said his friend, as they turned into the noisy street, 'I have a
proposition to make. It is, that you and your sister--if she will so far
honour a poor bachelor's dwelling--give me a great pleasure, and come
and dine with me.'
'What, to-day?' cried Tom.
'Yes, to-day. It's close by, you know. Pray, Miss Pinch, insist upon it.
It will be very disinterested, for I have nothing to give you.'
'Oh! you must not believe that, Ruth,' said Tom. 'He is the most
tremendous fellow, in his housekeeping, that I ever heard of, for a
single man. He ought to be Lord Mayor. Well! what do you say? Shall we
go?'
'If you please, Tom,' rejoined his dutiful little sister.
'But I mean,' said Tom, regarding her with smiling admiration; 'is there
anything you ought to wear, and haven't got? I am sure I don't know,
John; she may not be able to take her bonnet off, for anything I can
tell.'
There was a great deal of laughing at this, and there were divers
compliments from John Westlock--not compliments HE said at least (and
really he was right), but good, plain, honest truths, which no one could
deny. Ruth laughed, and all that, but she made no objection; so it was
an engagement.
'If I had known it a little sooner,' said John, 'I would have tried
another pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that famous one. I
wouldn't on any account have had it made with suet.'
'Why not?' asked Tom.
'Because that cookery-book advises suet,' said John Westlock; 'and ours
was made with flour and eggs.'
'Oh good gracious!' cried Tom. 'Ours was made with flour and eggs,
was it? Ha, ha, ha! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs! Why
anybody knows better than that. I know better than that! Ha, ha, ha!'
It is unnecessary to say that Tom had been present at the making of the
pudding, and had been a devoted believer in it all through. But he was
so delighted to have this joke against his busy little sister and was
tickled to that degree at having found her out, that he stopped
in Temple Bar to laugh; and it was no more to Tom, that he was
anathematized and knocked about by the surly passengers, than it would
have been to a post; for he continued to exclaim with unabated good
humour, 'flour and eggs! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs!'
until John Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from him, and left
him to have his laugh out by himself; which he had, and then came
dodging across the crowded street to them, with such sweet temper and
tenderness (it was quite a tender joke of Tom's) beaming in his face,
God bless it, that it might have purified the air, though Temple Bar had
been, as in the golden days gone by, embellished with a row of rotting
human heads.
There are snug chambers in those Inns where the bachelors live, and, for
the desolate fellows they pretend to be, it is quite surprising how well
they get on. John was very pathetic on the subject of his dreary life,
and the deplorable makeshifts and apologetic contrivances it involved,
but he really seemed to make himself pretty comfortable. His rooms were
the perfection of neatness and convenience at any rate; and if he were
anything but comfortable, the fault was certainly not theirs.
He had no sooner ushered Tom and his sister into his best room (where
there was a beautiful little vase of fresh flowers on the table, all
ready for Ruth. Just as if he had expected her, Tom said), than, seizing
his hat, he bustled out again, in his most energetically bustling, way;
and presently came hurrying back, as they saw through the half-opened
door, attended by a fiery-faced matron attired in a crunched bonnet,
with particularly long strings to it hanging down her back; in
conjunction with whom he instantly began to lay the cloth for dinner,
polishing up the wine-glasses with his own hands, brightening the silver
top of the pepper-caster on his coat-sleeve, drawing corks and filling
decanters, with a skill and expedition that were quite dazzling. And
as if, in the course of this rubbing and polishing, he had rubbed an
enchanted lamp or a magic ring, obedient to which there were twenty
thousand supernatural slaves at least, suddenly there appeared a being
in a white waistcoat, carrying under his arm a napkin, and attended by
another being with an oblong box upon his head, from which a banquet,
piping hot, was taken out and set upon the table.
Salmon, lamb, peas, innocent young potatoes, a cool salad, sliced
cucumber, a tender duckling, and a tart--all there. They all came at the
right time. Where they came from, didn't appear; but the oblong box was
constantly going and coming, and making its arrival known to the man in
the white waistcoat by bumping modestly against the outside of the door;
for, after its first appearance, it entered the room no more. He
was never surprised, this man; he never seemed to wonder at the
extraordinary things he found in the box, but took them out with a face
expressive of a steady purpose and impenetrable character, and put
them on the table. He was a kind man; gentle in his manners, and much
interested in what they ate and drank. He was a learned man, and knew
the flavour of John Westlock's private sauces, which he softly and
feelingly described, as he handed the little bottles round. He was a
grave man, and a noiseless; for dinner being done, and wine and fruit
arranged upon the board, he vanished, box and all, like something that
had never been.
'Didn't I say he was a tremendous fellow in his housekeeping?' cried
Tom. 'Bless my soul! It's wonderful.'
'Ah, Miss Pinch,' said John. 'This is the bright side of the life we
lead in such a place. It would be a dismal life, indeed, if it didn't
brighten up to-day'
'Don't believe a word he says,' cried Tom. 'He lives here like a
monarch, and wouldn't change his mode of life for any consideration. He
only pretends to grumble.'
No, John really did not appear to pretend; for he was uncommonly earnest
in his desire to have it understood that he was as dull, solitary, and
uncomfortable on ordinary occasions as an unfortunate young man could,
in reason, be. It was a wretched life, he said, a miserable life. He
thought of getting rid of the chambers as soon as possible; and meant,
in fact, to put a bill up very shortly.
'Well' said Tom Pinch, 'I don't know where you can go, John, to be more
comfortable. That's all I can say. What do YOU say, Ruth?'
Ruth trifled with the cherries on her plate, and said that she thought
Mr Westlock ought to be quite happy, and that she had no doubt he was.
Ah, foolish, panting, frightened little heart, how timidly she said it!
'But you are forgetting what you had to tell, Tom; what occurred this
morning,' she added in the same breath.
'So I am,' said Tom. 'We have been so talkative on other topics that I
declare I have not had time to think of it. I'll tell it you at once,
John, in case I should forget it altogether.'
On Tom's relating what had passed upon the wharf, his friend was very
much surprised, and took such a great interest in the narrative as
Tom could not quite understand. He believed he knew the old lady whose
acquaintance they had made, he said; and that he might venture to say,
from their description of her, that her name was Gamp. But of what
nature the communication could have been which Tom had borne so
unexpectedly; why its delivery had been entrusted to him; how it
happened that the parties were involved together; and what secret lay
at the bottom of the whole affair; perplexed him very much. Tom had been
sure of his taking some interest in the matter; but was not prepared for
the strong interest he showed. It held John Westlock to the subject even
after Ruth had left the room; and evidently made him anxious to pursue
it further than as a mere subject of conversation.
'I shall remonstrate with my landlord, of course,' said Tom; 'though he
is a very singular secret sort of man, and not likely to afford me much
satisfaction; even if he knew what was in the letter.'
'Which you may swear he did,' John interposed.
'You think so?'
'I am certain of it.'
'Well!' said Tom, 'I shall remonstrate with him when I see him (he
goes in and out in a strange way, but I will try to catch him tomorrow
morning), on his having asked me to execute such an unpleasant
commission. And I have been thinking, John, that if I went down to
Mrs What's-her-name's in the City, where I was before, you know--Mrs
Todgers's--to-morrow morning, I might find poor Mercy Pecksniff there,
perhaps, and be able to explain to her how I came to have any hand in
the business.'
'You are perfectly right, Tom,' returned his friend, after a short
interval of reflection. 'You cannot do better. It is quite clear to me
that whatever the business is, there is little good in it; and it is so
desirable for you to disentangle yourself from any appearance of willful
connection with it, that I would counsel you to see her husband, if you
can, and wash your hands of it by a plain statement of the facts. I have
a misgiving that there is something dark at work here, Tom. I will tell
you why, at another time; when I have made an inquiry or two myself.'
All this sounded very mysterious to Tom Pinch. But as he knew he could
rely upon his friend, he resolved to follow this advice.
Ah, but it would have been a good thing to have had a coat of
invisibility, wherein to have watched little Ruth, when she was left
to herself in John Westlock's chambers, and John and her brother were
talking thus, over their wine! The gentle way in which she tried to get
up a little conversation with the fiery-faced matron in the crunched
bonnet, who was waiting to attend her; after making a desperate rally
in regard of her dress, and attiring herself in a washed-out yellow gown
with sprigs of the same upon it, so that it looked like a tesselated
work of pats of butter. That would have been pleasant. The grim and
griffin-like inflexibility with which the fiery-faced matron repelled
these engaging advances, as proceeding from a hostile and dangerous
power, who could have no business there, unless it were to deprive her
of a customer, or suggest what became of the self-consuming tea and
sugar, and other general trifles. That would have been agreeable. The
bashful, winning, glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when
fiery-face was gone, peeped into the books and nick-nacks that
were lying about, and had a particular interest in some delicate
paper-matches on the chimney-piece; wondering who could have made them.
That would have been worth seeing. The faltering hand with which she
tied those flowers together; with which, almost blushing at her own
fair self as imaged in the glass, she arranged them in her breast, and
looking at them with her head aside, now half resolved to take them out
again, now half resolved to leave them where they were. That would have
been delightful!
John seemed to think it all delightful; for coming in with Tom to
tea, he took his seat beside her like a man enchanted. And when the
tea-service had been removed, and Tom, sitting down at the piano, became
absorbed in some of his old organ tunes, he was still beside her at the
open window, looking out upon the twilight.
There is little enough to see in Furnival's Inn. It is a shady, quiet
place, echoing to the footsteps of the stragglers who have business
there; and rather monotonous and gloomy on summer evenings. What gave it
such a charm to them, that they remained at the window as unconscious of
the flight of time as Tom himself, the dreamer, while the melodies which
had so often soothed his spirit were hovering again about him! What
power infused into the fading light, the gathering darkness; the stars
that here and there appeared; the evening air, the City's hum and stir,
the very chiming of the old church clocks; such exquisite enthrallment,
that the divinest regions of the earth spread out before their eyes
could not have held them captive in a stronger chain?
The shadows deepened, deepened, and the room became quite dark. Still
Tom's fingers wandered over the keys of the piano, and still the window
had its pair of tenants. At length, her hand upon his shoulder, and her
breath upon his forehead, roused Tom from his reverie.
'Dear me!' he cried, desisting with a start. 'I am afraid I have been
very inconsiderate and unpolite.'
Tom little thought how much consideration and politeness he had shown!
'Sing something to us, my dear,' said Tom, 'let us hear your voice.
Come!'
John Westlock added his entreaties with such earnestness that a flinty
heart alone could have resisted them. Hers was not a flinty heart. Oh,
dear no! Quite another thing.
So down she sat, and in a pleasant voice began to sing the ballads Tom
loved well. Old rhyming stories, with here and there a pause for a few
simple chords, such as a harper might have sounded in the ancient time
while looking upward for the current of some half-remembered legend;
words of old poets, wedded to such measures that the strain of music
might have been the poet's breath, giving utterance and expression to
his thoughts; and now a melody so joyous and light-hearted, that the
singer seemed incapable of sadness, until in her inconstancy (oh wicked
little singer!) she relapsed, and broke the listeners' hearts again;
these were the simple means she used to please them. And that these
simple means prevailed, and she DID please them, let the still darkened
chamber, and its long-deferred illumination witness.
The candles came at last, and it was time for moving homeward. Cutting
paper carefully, and rolling it about the stalks of those same flowers,
occasioned some delay; but even this was done in time, and Ruth was
ready.
'Good night!' said Tom. 'A memorable and delightful visit, John! Good
night!'
John thought he would walk with them.
'No, no. Don't!' said Tom. 'What nonsense! We can get home very well
alone. I couldn't think of taking you out.'
But John said he would rather.
'Are you sure you would rather?' said Tom. 'I am afraid you only say so
out of politeness.'
John being quite sure, gave his arm to Ruth, and led her out.
Fiery-face, who was again in attendance, acknowledged her departure with
so cold a curtsey that it was hardly visible; and cut Tom, dead.
Their host was bent on walking the whole distance, and would not listen
to Tom's dissuasions. Happy time, happy walk, happy parting, happy
dreams! But there are some sweet day-dreams, so there are that put the
visions of the night to shame.
Busily the Temple fountain murmured in the moonlight, while Ruth lay
sleeping, with her flowers beside her; and John Westlock sketched a
portrait--whose?--from memory.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
IN WHICH MISS PECKSNIFF MAKES LOVE, MR JONAS MAKES WRATH, MRS GAMP MAKES
TEA, AND MR CHUFFEY MAKES BUSINESS
On the next day's official duties coming to a close, Tom hurried home
without losing any time by the way; and after dinner and a short rest
sallied out again, accompanied by Ruth, to pay his projected visit
to Todgers's. Tom took Ruth with him, not only because it was a great
pleasure to him to have her for his companion whenever he could, but
because he wished her to cherish and comfort poor Merry; which she, for
her own part (having heard the wretched history of that young wife from
Tom), was all eagerness to do.
'She was so glad to see me,' said Tom, 'that I am sure she will be
glad to see you. Your sympathy is certain to be much more delicate and
acceptable than mine.'
'I am very far from being certain of that, Tom,' she replied; 'and
indeed you do yourself an injustice. Indeed you do. But I hope she may
like me, Tom.'
'Oh, she is sure to do that!' cried Tom, confidently.
'What a number of friends I should have, if everybody was of your way of
thinking. Shouldn't I, Tom, dear?' said his little sister pinching him
upon the cheek.
Tom laughed, and said that with reference to this particular case he had
no doubt at all of finding a disciple in Merry. 'For you women,' said
Tom, 'you women, my dear, are so kind, and in your kindness have such
nice perception; you know so well how to be affectionate and full of
solicitude without appearing to be; your gentleness of feeling is like
your touch so light and easy, that the one enables you to deal with
wounds of the mind as tenderly as the other enables you to deal with
wounds of the body. You are such--'
'My goodness, Tom!' his sister interposed. 'You ought to fall in love
immediately.'
Tom put this observation off good humouredly, but somewhat gravely too;
and they were soon very chatty again on some other subject.
As they were passing through a street in the City, not very far from Mrs
Todgers's place of residence, Ruth checked Tom before the window of
a large Upholstery and Furniture Warehouse, to call his attention to
something very magnificent and ingenious, displayed there to the best
advantage, for the admiration and temptation of the public. Tom had
hazarded some most erroneous and extravagantly wrong guess in relation
to the price of this article, and had joined his sister in laughing
heartily at his mistake, when he pressed her arm in his, and pointed to
two persons at a little distance, who were looking in at the same window
with a deep interest in the chests of drawers and tables.
'Hush!' Tom whispered. 'Miss Pecksniff, and the young gentleman to whom
she is going to be married.'
'Why does he look as if he was going to be buried, Tom?' inquired his
little sister.
'Why, he is naturally a dismal young gentleman, I believe,' said Tom
'but he is very civil and inoffensive.'
'I suppose they are furnishing their house,' whispered Ruth.
'Yes, I suppose they are,' replied Tom. 'We had better avoid speaking to
them.'
They could not very well avoid looking at them, however, especially
as some obstruction on the pavement, at a little distance, happened to
detain them where they were for a few moments. Miss Pecksniff had quite
the air of having taken the unhappy Moddle captive, and brought him
up to the contemplation of the furniture like a lamb to the altar.
He offered no resistance, but was perfectly resigned and quiet. The
melancholy depicted in the turn of his languishing head, and in his
dejected attitude, was extreme; and though there was a full-sized
four-post bedstead in the window, such a tear stood trembling in his eye
as seemed to blot it out.
'Augustus, my love,' said Miss Pecksniff, 'ask the price of the eight
rosewood chairs, and the loo table.'
'Perhaps they are ordered already,' said Augustus. 'Perhaps they are
Another's.'
'They can make more like them, if they are,' rejoined Miss Pecksniff.
'No, no, they can't,' said Moddle. 'It's impossible!'
He appeared, for the moment, to be quite overwhelmed and stupefied by
the prospect of his approaching happiness; but recovering, entered the
shop. He returned immediately, saying in a tone of despair
'Twenty-four pound ten!'
Miss Pecksniff, turning to receive this announcement, became conscious
of the observation of Tom Pinch and his sister.
'Oh, really!' cried Miss Pecksniff, glancing about her, as if for some
convenient means of sinking into the earth. 'Upon my word, I--there
never was such a--to think that one should be so very--Mr Augustus
Moddle, Miss Pinch!'
Miss Pecksniff was quite gracious to Miss Pinch in this triumphant
introduction; exceedingly gracious. She was more than gracious; she was
kind and cordial. Whether the recollection of the old service Tom had
rendered her in knocking Mr Jonas on the head had wrought this change in
her opinions; or whether her separation from her parent had reconciled
her to all human-kind, or to all that interesting portion of human-kind
which was not friendly to him; or whether the delight of having some new
female acquaintance to whom to communicate her interesting prospects was
paramount to every other consideration; cordial and kind Miss Pecksniff
was. And twice Miss Pecksniff kissed Miss Pinch upon the cheek.
'Augustus--Mr Pinch, you know. My dear girl!' said Miss Pecksniff,
aside. 'I never was so ashamed in my life.'
Ruth begged her not to think of it.
'I mind your brother less than anybody else,' simpered Miss Pecksniff.
'But the indelicacy of meeting any gentleman under such circumstances!
Augustus, my child, did you--'
Here Miss Pecksniff whispered in his ear. The suffering Moddle repeated:
'Twenty-four pound ten!'
'Oh, you silly man! I don't mean them,' said Miss Pecksniff. 'I am
speaking of the--'
Here she whispered him again.
'If it's the same patterned chintz as that in the window; thirty-two,
twelve, six,' said Moddle, with a sigh. 'And very dear.'
Miss Pecksniff stopped him from giving any further explanation by laying
her hand upon his lips, and betraying a soft embarrassment. She then
asked Tom Pinch which way he was going.
'I was going to see if I could find your sister,' answered Tom, 'to whom
I wished to say a few words. We were going to Mrs Todgers's, where I had
the pleasure of seeing her before.'
'It's of no use your going on, then,' said Cherry, 'for we have not
long left there; and I know she is not at home. But I'll take you to my
sister's house, if you please. Augustus--Mr Moddle, I mean--and myself,
are on our way to tea there, now. You needn't think of HIM,' she added,
nodding her head as she observed some hesitation on Tom's part. 'He is
not at home.'
'Are you sure?' asked Tom.
'Oh, I am quite sure of that. I don't want any MORE revenge,' said Miss
Pecksniff, expressively. 'But, really, I must beg you two gentlemen to
walk on, and allow me to follow with Miss Pinch. My dear, I never was so
taken by surprise!'
In furtherance of this bashful arrangement, Moddle gave his arm to Tom;
and Miss Pecksniff linked her own in Ruth's.
'Of course, my love,' said Miss Pecksniff, 'it would be useless for me
to disguise, after what you have seen, that I am about to be united to
the gentleman who is walking with your brother. It would be in vain
to conceal it. What do you think of him? Pray, let me have your candid
opinion.'
Ruth intimated that, as far as she could judge, he was a very eligible
swain.
'I am curious to know,' said Miss Pecksniff, with loquacious frankness,
'whether you have observed, or fancied, in this very short space of
time, that he is of a rather melancholy turn?'
'So very short a time,' Ruth pleaded.
'No, no; but don't let that interfere with your answer,' returned Miss
Pecksniff. 'I am curious to hear what you say.'
Ruth acknowledged that he had impressed her at first sight as looking
'rather low.'
'No, really?' said Miss Pecksniff. 'Well! that is quite remarkable!
Everybody says the same. Mrs Todgers says the same; and Augustus informs
me that it is quite a joke among the gentlemen in the house. Indeed, but
for the positive commands I have laid upon him, I believe it would have
been the occasion of loaded fire-arms being resorted to more than once.
What do you think is the cause of his appearance of depression?'
Ruth thought of several things; such as his digestion, his tailor, his
mother, and the like. But hesitating to give utterance to any one of
them, she refrained from expressing an opinion.
'My dear,' said Miss Pecksniff; 'I shouldn't wish it to be known, but I
don't mind mentioning it to you, having known your brother for so many
years--I refused Augustus three times. He is of a most amiable and
sensitive nature, always ready to shed tears if you look at him, which
is extremely charming; and he has never recovered the effect of that
cruelty. For it WAS cruel,' said Miss Pecksniff, with a self-conviction
candour that might have adorned the diadem of her own papa. 'There is
no doubt of it. I look back upon my conduct now with blushes. I always
liked him. I felt that he was not to me what the crowd of young men who
had made proposals had been, but something very different. Then what
right had I to refuse him three times?'
'It was a severe trial of his fidelity, no doubt,' said Ruth.
'My dear,' returned Miss Pecksniff. 'It was wrong. But such is the
caprice and thoughtlessness of our sex! Let me be a warning to you.
Don't try the feelings of any one who makes you an offer, as I have
tried the feelings of Augustus; but if you ever feel towards a person
as I really felt towards him, at the very time when I was driving him
to distraction, let that feeling find expression, if that person throws
himself at your feet, as Augustus Moddle did at mine. Think,' said Miss
Pecksniff, 'what my feelings would have been, if I had goaded him to
suicide, and it had got into the papers!'
Ruth observed that she would have been full of remorse, no doubt.
'Remorse!' cried Miss Pecksniff, in a sort of snug and comfortable
penitence. 'What my remorse is at this moment, even after making
reparation by accepting him, it would be impossible to tell you! Looking
back upon my giddy self, my dear, now that I am sobered down and
made thoughtful, by treading on the very brink of matrimony; and
contemplating myself as I was when I was like what you are now; I
shudder. I shudder. What is the consequence of my past conduct? Until
Augustus leads me to the altar he is not sure of me. I have blighted and
withered the affections of his heart to that extent that he is not sure
of me. I see that preying on his mind and feeding on his vitals. What
are the reproaches of my conscience, when I see this in the man I love!'
Ruth endeavoured to express some sense of her unbounded and flattering
confidence; and presumed that she was going to be married soon.
'Very soon indeed,' returned Miss Pecksniff. 'As soon as our house is
ready. We are furnishing now as fast as we can.'
In the same vein of confidence Miss Pecksniff ran through a general
inventory of the articles that were already bought with the articles
that remained to be purchased; what garments she intended to be married
in, and where the ceremony was to be performed; and gave Miss Pinch, in
short (as she told her), early and exclusive information on all points
of interest connected with the event.
While this was going forward in the rear, Tom and Mr Moddle walked on,
arm in arm, in the front, in a state of profound silence, which Tom at
last broke; after thinking for a long time what he could say that should
refer to an indifferent topic, in respect of which he might rely, with
some degree of certainty, on Mr Moddle's bosom being unruffled.
'I wonder,' said Tom, 'that in these crowded streets the foot-passengers
are not oftener run over.'
Mr Moddle, with a dark look, replied:
'The drivers won't do it.'
'Do you mean?' Tom began--
'That there are some men,' interrupted Moddle, with a hollow laugh, 'who
can't get run over. They live a charmed life. Coal waggons recoil from
them, and even cabs refuse to run them down. Ah!' said Augustus, marking
Tom's astonishment. 'There are such men. One of 'em is a friend of
mine.'
'Upon my word and honour,' thought Tom, 'this young gentleman is in
a state of mind which is very serious indeed!' Abandoning all idea of
conversation, he did not venture to say another word, but he was careful
to keep a tight hold upon Augustus's arm, lest he should fly into the
road, and making another and a more successful attempt, should get up a
private little Juggernaut before the eyes of his betrothed. Tom was
so afraid of his committing this rash act, that he had scarcely ever
experienced such mental relief as when they arrived in safety at Mrs
Jonas Chuzzlewit's house.
'Walk up, pray, Mr Pinch,' said Miss Pecksniff. For Tom halted,
irresolutely, at the door.
'I am doubtful whether I should be welcome,' replied Tom, 'or, I ought
rather to say, I have no doubt about it. I will send up a message, I
think.'
'But what nonsense that is!' returned Miss Pecksniff, speaking apart
to Tom. 'He is not at home, I am certain. I know he is not; and Merry
hasn't the least idea that you ever--'
'No,' interrupted Tom. 'Nor would I have her know it, on any account. I
am not so proud of that scuffle, I assure you.'
'Ah, but then you are so modest, you see,' returned Miss Pecksniff, with
a smile. 'But pray walk up. If you don't wish her to know it, and do
wish to speak to her, pray walk up. Pray walk up, Miss Pinch. Don't
stand here.'
Tom still hesitated for he felt that he was in an awkward position. But
Cherry passing him at this juncture, and leading his sister upstairs,
and the house-door being at the same time shut behind them, he followed
without quite knowing whether it was well or ill-judged so to do.
'Merry, my darling!' said the fair Miss Pecksniff, opening the door of
the usual sitting-room. 'Here are Mr Pinch and his sister come to see
you! I thought we should find you here, Mrs Todgers! How do you do, Mrs
Gamp? And how do you do, Mr Chuffey, though it's of no use asking you
the question, I am well aware.'
Honouring each of these parties, as she severally addressed them, with
an acid smile, Miss Charity presented 'Mr Moddle.'
'I believe you have seen HIM before,' she pleasantly observed.
'Augustus, my sweet child, bring me a chair.'
The sweet child did as he was told; and was then about to retire into a
corner to mourn in secret, when Miss Charity, calling him in an audible
whisper a 'little pet,' gave him leave to come and sit beside her. It
is to be hoped, for the general cheerfulness of mankind, that such a
doleful little pet was never seen as Mr Moddle looked when he complied.
So despondent was his temper, that he showed no outward thrill of
ecstasy when Miss Pecksniff placed her lily hand in his, and concealed
this mark of her favour from the vulgar gaze by covering it with a
corner of her shawl. Indeed, he was infinitely more rueful then than
he had been before; and, sitting uncomfortably upright in his chair,
surveyed the company with watery eyes, which seemed to say, without
the aid of language, 'Oh, good gracious! look here! Won't some kind
Christian help me!'
But the ecstasies of Mrs Gamp were sufficient to have furnished forth
a score of young lovers; and they were chiefly awakened by the sight of
Tom Pinch and his sister. Mrs Gamp was a lady of that happy temperament
which can be ecstatic without any other stimulating cause than a general
desire to establish a large and profitable connection. She added daily
so many strings to her bow, that she made a perfect harp of it; and upon
that instrument she now began to perform an extemporaneous concerto.
'Why, goodness me!' she said, 'Mrs Chuzzlewit! To think as I should see
beneath this blessed 'ouse, which well I know it, Miss Pecksniff, my
sweet young lady, to be a 'ouse as there is not a many like, worse luck,
and wishin' it were not so, which then this tearful walley would be
changed into a flowerin' guardian, Mr Chuffey; to think as I should see
beneath this indiwidgle roof, identically comin', Mr Pinch (I take the
liberty, though almost unbeknown), and do assure you of it, sir, the
smilinest and sweetest face as ever, Mrs Chuzzlewit, I see exceptin'
yourn, my dear good lady, and YOUR good lady's too, sir, Mr Moddle, if
I may make so bold as speak so plain of what is plain enough to them as
needn't look through millstones, Mrs Todgers, to find out wot is wrote
upon the wall behind. Which no offence is meant, ladies and gentlemen;
none bein' took, I hope. To think as I should see that smilinest and
sweetest face which me and another friend of mine, took notice of among
the packages down London Bridge, in this promiscous place, is a surprige
in-deed!'
Having contrived, in this happy manner, to invest every member of her
audience with an individual share and immediate personal interest in
her address, Mrs Gamp dropped several curtseys to Ruth, and smilingly
shaking her head a great many times, pursued the thread of her
discourse:
'Now, ain't we rich in beauty this here joyful arternoon, I'm sure. I
knows a lady, which her name, I'll not deceive you, Mrs Chuzzlewit, is
Harris, her husband's brother bein' six foot three, and marked with
a mad bull in Wellington boots upon his left arm, on account of his
precious mother havin' been worrited by one into a shoemaker's shop,
when in a sitiwation which blessed is the man as has his quiver full of
sech, as many times I've said to Gamp when words has roge betwixt us on
account of the expense--and often have I said to Mrs Harris, "Oh, Mrs
Harris, ma'am! your countenance is quite a angel's!" Which, but
for Pimples, it would be. "No, Sairey Gamp," says she, "you best of
hard-working and industrious creeturs as ever was underpaid at any
price, which underpaid you are, quite diff'rent. Harris had it done
afore marriage at ten and six," she says, "and wore it faithful next his
heart till the colour run, when the money was declined to be give back,
and no arrangement could be come to. But he never said it was a angel's,
Sairey, wotever he might have thought." If Mrs Harris's husband was
here now,' said Mrs Gamp, looking round, and chuckling as she dropped
a general curtsey, 'he'd speak out plain, he would, and his dear wife
would be the last to blame him! For if ever a woman lived as know'd not
wot it was to form a wish to pizon them as had good looks, and had no
reagion give her by the best of husbands, Mrs Harris is that ev'nly
dispogician!'
With these words the worthy woman, who appeared to have dropped in
to take tea as a delicate little attention, rather than to have any
engagement on the premises in an official capacity, crossed to Mr
Chuffey, who was seated in the same corner as of old, and shook him by
the shoulder.
'Rouge yourself, and look up! Come!' said Mrs Gamp. 'Here's company, Mr
Chuffey.'
'I am sorry for it,' cried the old man, looking humbly round the room.
'I know I'm in the way. I ask pardon, but I've nowhere else to go to.
Where is she?'
Merry went to him.
'Ah!' said the old man, patting her on the check. 'Here she is. Here she
is! She's never hard on poor old Chuffey. Poor old Chuff!'
As she took her seat upon a low chair by the old man's side, and put
herself within the reach of his hand, she looked up once at Tom. It
was a sad look that she cast upon him, though there was a faint smile
trembling on her face. It was a speaking look, and Tom knew what it
said. 'You see how misery has changed me. I can feel for a dependant
NOW, and set some value on his attachment.'
'Aye, aye!' cried Chuffey in a soothing tone. 'Aye, aye, aye! Never mind
him. It's hard to hear, but never mind him. He'll die one day. There
are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year--three hundred and
sixty-six in leap year--and he may die on any one of 'em.'
'You're a wearing old soul, and that's the sacred truth,' said Mrs Gamp,
contemplating him from a little distance with anything but favour, as he
continued to mutter to himself. 'It's a pity that you don't know wot you
say, for you'd tire your own patience out if you did, and fret yourself
into a happy releage for all as knows you.'
'His son,' murmured the old man, lifting up his hand. 'His son!'
'Well, I'm sure!' said Mrs Gamp, 'you're a-settlin' of it, Mr Chuffey.
To your satigefaction, sir, I hope. But I wouldn't lay a new pincushion
on it myself, sir, though you ARE so well informed. Drat the old
creetur, he's a-layin' down the law tolerable confident, too! A deal he
knows of sons! or darters either! Suppose you was to favour us with some
remarks on twins, sir, WOULD you be so good!'
The bitter and indignant sarcasm which Mrs Gamp conveyed into these
taunts was altogether lost on the unconscious Chuffey, who appeared to
be as little cognizant of their delivery as of his having given Mrs
Gamp offence. But that high-minded woman being sensitively alive to any
invasion of her professional province, and imagining that Mr Chuffey had
given utterance to some prediction on the subject of sons, which ought
to have emanated in the first instance from herself as the only lawful
authority, or which should at least have been on no account proclaimed
without her sanction and concurrence, was not so easily appeased. She
continued to sidle at Mr Chuffey with looks of sharp hostility, and to
defy him with many other ironical remarks, uttered in that low key
which commonly denotes suppressed indignation; until the entrance of
the teaboard, and a request from Mrs Jonas that she would make tea at a
side-table for the party that had unexpectedly assembled, restored her
to herself. She smiled again, and entered on her ministration with her
own particular urbanity.
'And quite a family it is to make tea for,' said Mrs Gamp; 'and wot a
happiness to do it! My good young 'ooman'--to the servant-girl--'p'raps
somebody would like to try a new-laid egg or two, not biled too hard.
Likeways, a few rounds o' buttered toast, first cuttin' off the crust,
in consequence of tender teeth, and not too many of 'em; which Gamp
himself, Mrs Chuzzlewit, at one blow, being in liquor, struck out four,
two single, and two double, as was took by Mrs Harris for a keepsake,
and is carried in her pocket at this present hour, along with two
cramp-bones, a bit o' ginger, and a grater like a blessed infant's shoe,
in tin, with a little heel to put the nutmeg in; as many times I've seen
and said, and used for candle when required, within the month.'
As the privileges of the side-table--besides including the small
prerogatives of sitting next the toast, and taking two cups of tea to
other people's one, and always taking them at a crisis, that is to
say, before putting fresh water into the tea-pot, and after it had been
standing for some time--also comprehended a full view of the company,
and an opportunity of addressing them as from a rostrum, Mrs Gamp
discharged the functions entrusted to her with extreme good-humour and
affability. Sometimes resting her saucer on the palm of her outspread
hand, and supporting her elbow on the table, she stopped between her
sips of tea to favour the circle with a smile, a wink, a roll of the
head, or some other mark of notice; and at those periods her countenance
was lighted up with a degree of intelligence and vivacity, which it was
almost impossible to separate from the benignant influence of distilled
waters.
But for Mrs Gamp, it would have been a curiously silent party. Miss
Pecksniff only spoke to her Augustus, and to him in whispers. Augustus
spoke to nobody, but sighed for every one, and occasionally gave himself
such a sounding slap upon the forehead as would make Mrs Todgers, who
was rather nervous, start in her chair with an involuntary exclamation.
Mrs Todgers was occupied in knitting, and seldom spoke. Poor Merry held
the hand of cheerful little Ruth between her own, and listening with
evident pleasure to all she said, but rarely speaking herself, sometimes
smiled, and sometimes kissed her on the cheek, and sometimes turned
aside to hide the tears that trembled in her eyes. Tom felt this change
in her so much, and was so glad to see how tenderly Ruth dealt with her,
and how she knew and answered to it, that he had not the heart to make
any movement towards their departure, although he had long since given
utterance to all he came to say.
The old clerk, subsiding into his usual state, remained profoundly
silent, while the rest of the little assembly were thus occupied, intent
upon the dreams, whatever they might be, which hardly seemed to stir
the surface of his sluggish thoughts. The bent of these dull fancies
combining probably with the silent feasting that was going on about him,
and some struggling recollection of the last approach to revelry he had
witnessed, suggested a strange question to his mind. He looked round
upon a sudden, and said:
'Who's lying dead upstairs?'
'No one,' said Merry, turning to him. 'What is the matter? We are all
here.'
'All here!' cried the old man. 'All here! Where is he then--my old
master, Mr Chuzzlewit, who had the only son? Where is he?'
'Hush! Hush!' said Merry, speaking kindly to him. 'That happened long
ago. Don't you recollect?'
'Recollect!' rejoined the old man, with a cry of grief. 'As if I could
forget! As if I ever could forget!'
He put his hand up to his face for a moment; and then repeated turning
round exactly as before:
'Who's lying dead upstairs?'
'No one!' said Merry.
At first he gazed angrily upon her, as upon a stranger who endeavoured
to deceive him; but peering into her face, and seeing that it was indeed
she, he shook his head in sorrowful compassion.
'You think not. But they don't tell you. No, no, poor thing! They don't
tell you. Who are these, and why are they merry-making here, if there is
no one dead? Foul play! Go see who it is!'
She made a sign to them not to speak to him, which indeed they had
little inclination to do; and remained silent herself. So did he for
a short time; but then he repeated the same question with an eagerness
that had a peculiar terror in it.
'There's some one dead,' he said, 'or dying; and I want to knows who it
is. Go see, go see! Where's Jonas?'
'In the country,' she replied.
The old man gazed at her as if he doubted what she said, or had not
heard her; and, rising from his chair, walked across the room and
upstairs, whispering as he went, 'Foul play!' They heard his footsteps
overhead, going up into that corner of the room in which the bed stood
(it was there old Anthony had died); and then they heard him coming down
again immediately. His fancy was not so strong or wild that it pictured
to him anything in the deserted bedchamber which was not there; for he
returned much calmer, and appeared to have satisfied himself.
'They don't tell you,' he said to Merry in his quavering voice, as
he sat down again, and patted her upon the head. 'They don't tell me
either; but I'll watch, I'll watch. They shall not hurt you; don't be
frightened. When you have sat up watching, I have sat up watching too.
Aye, aye, I have!' he piped out, clenching his weak, shrivelled hand.
'Many a night I have been ready!'
He said this with such trembling gaps and pauses in his want of breath,
and said it in his jealous secrecy so closely in her ear, that little
or nothing of it was understood by the visitors. But they had heard
and seen enough of the old man to be disquieted, and to have left
their seats and gathered about him; thereby affording Mrs Gamp,
whose professional coolness was not so easily disturbed, an eligible
opportunity for concentrating the whole resources of her powerful mind
and appetite upon the toast and butter, tea and eggs. She had brought
them to bear upon those viands with such vigour that her face was in the
highest state of inflammation, when she now (there being nothing left to
eat or drink) saw fit to interpose.
'Why, highty tighty, sir!' cried Mrs Gamp, 'is these your manners? You
want a pitcher of cold water throw'd over you to bring you round; that's
my belief, and if you was under Betsey Prig you'd have it, too, I do
assure you, Mr Chuffey. Spanish Flies is the only thing to draw this
nonsense out of you; and if anybody wanted to do you a kindness, they'd
clap a blister of 'em on your head, and put a mustard poultige on your
back. 'Who's dead, indeed! It wouldn't be no grievous loss if some one
was, I think!'
'He's quiet now, Mrs Gamp,' said Merry. 'Don't disturb him.'
'Oh, bother the old wictim, Mrs Chuzzlewit,' replied that zealous lady,
'I ain't no patience with him. You give him his own way too much by
half. A worritin' wexagious creetur!'
No doubt with the view of carrying out the precepts she enforced, and
'bothering the old wictim' in practice as well as in theory, Mrs Gamp
took him by the collar of his coat, and gave him some dozen or two of
hearty shakes backward and forward in his chair; that exercise being
considered by the disciples of the Prig school of nursing (who are very
numerous among professional ladies) as exceedingly conducive to repose,
and highly beneficial to the performance of the nervous functions.
Its effect in this instance was to render the patient so giddy and
addle-headed, that he could say nothing more; which Mrs Gamp regarded as
the triumph of her art.
'There!' she said, loosening the old man's cravat, in consequence of his
being rather black in the face, after this scientific treatment. 'Now,
I hope, you're easy in your mind. If you should turn at all faint we
can soon rewive you, sir, I promige you. Bite a person's thumbs, or
turn their fingers the wrong way,' said Mrs Gamp, smiling with the
consciousness of at once imparting pleasure and instruction to her
auditors, 'and they comes to, wonderful, Lord bless you!'
As this excellent woman had been formerly entrusted with the care of Mr
Chuffey on a previous occasion, neither Mrs Jonas nor anybody else had
the resolution to interfere directly with her mode of treatment;
though all present (Tom Pinch and his sister especially) appeared to be
disposed to differ from her views. For such is the rash boldness of the
uninitiated, that they will frequently set up some monstrous abstract
principle, such as humanity, or tenderness, or the like idle folly, in
obstinate defiance of all precedent and usage; and will even venture to
maintain the same against the persons who have made the precedents
and established the usage, and who must therefore be the best and most
impartial judges of the subject.
'Ah, Mr Pinch!' said Miss Pecksniff. 'It all comes of this unfortunate
marriage. If my sister had not been so precipitate, and had not united
herself to a Wretch, there would have been no Mr Chuffey in the house.'
'Hush!' cried Tom. 'She'll hear you.'
'I should be very sorry if she did hear me, Mr Pinch,' said Cherry,
raising her voice a little; 'for it is not in my nature to add to the
uneasiness of any person; far less of my own sister. I know what a
sister's duties are, Mr Pinch, and I hope I always showed it in my
practice. Augustus, my dear child, find my pocket-handkerchief, and give
it to me.'
Augustus obeyed, and took Mrs Todgers aside to pour his griefs into her
friendly bosom.
'I am sure, Mr Pinch,' said Charity, looking after her betrothed and
glancing at her sister, 'that I ought to be very grateful for the
blessings I enjoy, and those which are yet in store for me. When I
contrast Augustus'--here she was modest and embarrased--'who, I don't
mind saying to you, is all softness, mildness, and devotion, with the
detestable man who is my sister's husband; and when I think, Mr Pinch,
that in the dispensations of this world, our cases might have been
reversed; I have much to be thankful for, indeed, and much to make me
humble and contented.'
Contented she might have been, but humble she assuredly was not. Her
face and manner experienced something so widely different from humility,
that Tom could not help understanding and despising the base motives
that were working in her breast. He turned away, and said to Ruth, that
it was time for them to go.
'I will write to your husband,' said Tom to Merry, 'and explain to him,
as I would have done if I had met him here, that if he has sustained any
inconvenience through my means, it is not my fault; a postman not being
more innocent of the news he brings, than I was when I handed him that
letter.'
'I thank you!' said Merry. 'It may do some good.'
She parted tenderly from Ruth, who with her brother was in the act of
leaving the room, when a key was heard in the lock of the door below,
and immediately afterwards a quick footstep in the passage. Tom stopped,
and looked at Merry.
It was Jonas, she said timidly.
'I had better not meet him on the stairs, perhaps,' said Tom, drawing
his sister's arm through his, and coming back a step or two. 'I'll wait
for him here, a moment.'
He had scarcely said it when the door opened, and Jonas entered. His
wife came forward to receive him; but he put her aside with his hand,
and said in a surly tone:
'I didn't know you'd got a party.'
As he looked, at the same time, either by accident or design, towards
Miss Pecksniff; and as Miss Pecksniff was only too delighted to quarrel
with him, she instantly resented it.
'Oh dear!' she said, rising. 'Pray don't let us intrude upon your
domestic happiness! That would be a pity. We have taken tea here, sir,
in your absence; but if you will have the goodness to send us a note of
the expense, receipted, we shall be happy to pay it. Augustus, my love,
we will go, if you please. Mrs Todgers, unless you wish to remain here,
we shall be happy to take you with us. It would be a pity, indeed, to
spoil the bliss which this gentleman always brings with him, especially
into his own home.'
'Charity! Charity!' remonstrated her sister, in such a heartfelt tone
that she might have been imploring her to show the cardinal virtue whose
name she bore.
'Merry, my dear, I am much obliged to you for your advice,' returned
Miss Pecksniff, with a stately scorn--by the way, she had not been
offered any--'but I am not his slave--'
'No, nor wouldn't have been if you could,' interrupted Jonas. 'We know
all about it.'
'WHAT did you say, sir?' cried Miss Pecksniff, sharply.
'Didn't you hear?' retorted Jonas, lounging down upon a chair. 'I am not
a-going to say it again. If you like to stay, you may stay. If you like
to go, you may go. But if you stay, please to be civil.'
'Beast!' cried Miss Pecksniff, sweeping past him. 'Augustus! He is
beneath your notice!' Augustus had been making some faint and sickly
demonstration of shaking his fist. 'Come away, child,' screamed Miss
Pecksniff, 'I command you!'
The scream was elicited from her by Augustus manifesting an intention to
return and grapple with him. But Miss Pecksniff giving the fiery youth
a pull, and Mrs Todgers giving him a push they all three tumbled out
of the room together, to the music of Miss Pecksniff's shrill
remonstrances.
All this time Jonas had seen nothing of Tom and his sister; for they
were almost behind the door when he opened it, and he had sat down with
his back towards them, and had purposely kept his eyes upon the opposite
side of the street during his altercation with Miss Pecksniff, in order
that his seeming carelessness might increase the exasperation of that
wronged young damsel. His wife now faltered out that Tom had been
waiting to see him; and Tom advanced.
The instant he presented himself, Jonas got up from his chair, and
swearing a great oath, caught it in his grasp, as if he would have
felled Tom to the ground with it. As he most unquestionably would have
done, but that his very passion and surprise made him irresolute, and
gave Tom, in his calmness, an opportunity of being heard.
'You have no cause to be violent, sir,' said Tom. 'Though what I wish to
say relates to your own affairs, I know nothing of them, and desire to
know nothing of them.'
Jonas was too enraged to speak. He held the door open; and stamping his
foot upon the ground, motioned Tom away.
'As you cannot suppose,' said Tom, 'that I am here with any view of
conciliating you or pleasing myself, I am quite indifferent to your
reception of me, or your dismissal of me. Hear what I have to say, if
you are not a madman! I gave you a letter the other day, when you were
about to go abroad.'
'You Thief, you did!' retorted Jonas. 'I'll pay you for the carriage of
it one day, and settle an old score besides. I will!'
'Tut, tut,' said Tom, 'you needn't waste words or threats. I wish you
to understand--plainly because I would rather keep clear of you and
everything that concerns you: not because I have the least apprehension
of your doing me any injury: which would be weak indeed--that I am no
party to the contents of that letter. That I know nothing of it. That I
was not even aware that it was to be delivered to you; and that I had it
from--'
'By the Lord!' cried Jonas, fiercely catching up the chair, 'I'll knock
your brains out, if you speak another word.'
Tom, nevertheless, persisting in his intention, and opening his lips to
speak again, Jonas set upon him like a savage; and in the quickness and
ferocity of his attack would have surely done him some grievous injury,
defenceless as he was, and embarrassed by having his frightened sister
clinging to his arm, if Merry had not run between them, crying to
Tom for the love of Heaven to leave the house. The agony of this poor
creature, the terror of his sister, the impossibility of making himself
audible, and the equal impossibility of bearing up against Mrs Gamp, who
threw herself upon him like a feather-bed, and forced him backwards down
the stairs by the mere oppression of her dead weight, prevailed. Tom
shook the dust of that house off his feet, without having mentioned
Nadgett's name.
If the name could have passed his lips; if Jonas, in the insolence of
his vile nature, had never roused him to do that old act of manliness,
for which (and not for his last offence) he hated him with such
malignity; if Jonas could have learned, as then he could and would have
learned, through Tom's means, what unsuspected spy there was upon him;
he would have been saved from the commission of a Guilty Deed, then
drawing on towards its black accomplishment. But the fatality was of
his own working; the pit was of his own digging; the gloom that gathered
round him was the shadow of his own life.
His wife had closed the door, and thrown herself before it, on the
ground, upon her knees. She held up her hands to him now, and besought
him not to be harsh with her, for she had interposed in fear of
bloodshed.
'So, so!' said Jonas, looking down upon her, as he fetched his breath.
'These are your friends, are they, when I am away? You plot and tamper
with this sort of people, do you?'
'No, indeed! I have no knowledge of these secrets, and no clue to
their meaning. I have never seen him since I left home but once--but
twice--before to-day.'
'Oh!' sneered Jonas, catching at this correction. 'But once, but twice,
eh? Which do you mean? Twice and once, perhaps. Three times! How many
more, you lying jade?'
As he made an angry motion with his hand, she shrunk down hastily. A
suggestive action! Full of a cruel truth!
'How many more times?' he repeated.
'No more. The other morning, and to-day, and once besides.'
He was about to retort upon her, when the clock struck. He started
stopped, and listened; appearing to revert to some engagement, or to
some other subject, a secret within his own breast, recalled to him by
this record of the progress of the hours.
'Don't lie there! Get up!'
Having helped her to rise, or rather hauled her up by the arm, he went
on to say:
'Listen to me, young lady; and don't whine when you have no occasion, or
I may make some for you. If I find him in my house again, or find that
you have seen him in anybody else's house, you'll repent it. If you are
not deaf and dumb to everything that concerns me, unless you have my
leave to hear and speak, you'll repent it. If you don't obey exactly
what I order, you'll repent it. Now, attend. What's the time?'
'It struck eight a minute ago.'
He looked towards her intently; and said, with a laboured distinctness,
as if he had got the words off by heart:
'I have been travelling day and night, and am tired. I have lost some
money, and that don't improve me. Put my supper in the little off-room
below, and have the truckle-bed made. I shall sleep there to-night, and
maybe to-morrow night; and if I can sleep all day to-morrow, so much
the better, for I've got trouble to sleep off, if I can. Keep the house
quiet, and don't call me. Mind! Don't call me. Don't let anybody call
me. Let me lie there.'
She said it should be done. Was that all?
'All what? You must be prying and questioning!' he angrily retorted.
'What more do you want to know?'
'I want to know nothing, Jonas, but what you tell me. All hope of
confidence between us has long deserted me!'
'Ecod, I should hope so!' he muttered.
'But if you will tell me what you wish, I will be obedient and will
try to please you. I make no merit of that, for I have no friend in
my father or my sister, but am quite alone. I am very humble and
submissive. You told me you would break my spirit, and you have done so.
Do not break my heart too!'
She ventured, as she said these words, to lay her hand upon his
shoulder. He suffered it to rest there, in his exultation; and the whole
mean, abject, sordid, pitiful soul of the man, looked at her, for the
moment, through his wicked eyes.
For the moment only; for, with the same hurried return to something
within himself, he bade her, in a surly tone, show her obedience by
executing his commands without delay. When she had withdrawn he paced
up and down the room several times; but always with his right hand
clenched, as if it held something; which it did not, being empty. When
he was tired of this, he threw himself into a chair, and thoughtfully
turned up the sleeve of his right arm, as if he were rather musing
about its strength than examining it; but, even then, he kept the hand
clenched.
He was brooding in this chair, with his eyes cast down upon the ground,
when Mrs Gamp came in to tell him that the little room was ready. Not
being quite sure of her reception after interfering in the quarrel, Mrs
Gamp, as a means of interesting and propitiating her patron, affected a
deep solicitude in Mr Chuffey.
'How is he now, sir?' she said.
'Who?' cried Jonas, raising his head, and staring at her.
'To be sure!' returned the matron with a smile and a curtsey. 'What am I
thinking of! You wasn't here, sir, when he was took so strange. I never
see a poor dear creetur took so strange in all my life, except a patient
much about the same age, as I once nussed, which his calling was the
custom-'us, and his name was Mrs Harris's own father, as pleasant a
singer, Mr Chuzzlewit, as ever you heerd, with a voice like a Jew's-harp
in the bass notes, that it took six men to hold at sech times, foaming
frightful.'
'Chuffey, eh?' said Jonas carelessly, seeing that she went up to the
old, clerk, and looked at him. 'Ha!'
'The creetur's head's so hot,' said Mrs Gamp, 'that you might heat a
flat-iron at it. And no wonder I am sure, considerin' the things he
said!'
'Said!' cried Jonas. 'What did he say?'
Mrs Gamp laid her hand upon her heart, to put some check upon its
palpitations, and turning up her eyes replied in a faint voice:
'The awfulest things, Mr Chuzzlewit, as ever I heerd! Which Mrs Harris's
father never spoke a word when took so, some does and some don't, except
sayin' when he come round, "Where is Sairey Gamp?" But raly, sir, when
Mr Chuffey comes to ask who's lyin' dead upstairs, and--'
'Who's lying dead upstairs!' repeated Jonas, standing aghast.
Mrs Gamp nodded, made as if she were swallowing, and went on.
'Who's lying dead upstairs; sech was his Bible language; and where was
Mr Chuzzlewit as had the only son; and when he goes upstairs a-looking
in the beds and wandering about the rooms, and comes down again
a-whisperin' softly to his-self about foul play and that; it gives me
sech a turn, I don't deny it, Mr Chuzzlewit, that I never could have kep
myself up but for a little drain o' spirits, which I seldom touches, but
could always wish to know where to find, if so dispoged, never knowin'
wot may happen next, the world bein' so uncertain.'
'Why, the old fool's mad!' cried Jonas, much disturbed.
'That's my opinion, sir,' said Mrs Gamp, 'and I will not deceive you. I
believe as Mr Chuffey, sir, rekwires attention (if I may make so bold),
and should not have his liberty to wex and worrit your sweet lady as he
does.'
'Why, who minds what he says?' retorted Jonas.
'Still he is worritin' sir,' said Mrs Gamp. 'No one don't mind him, but
he IS a ill conwenience.'
'Ecod you're right,' said Jonas, looking doubtfully at the subject of
this conversation. 'I have half a mind to shut him up.'
Mrs Gamp rubbed her hands, and smiled, and shook her head, and sniffed
expressively, as scenting a job.
'Could you--could you take care of such an idiot, now, in some spare
room upstairs?' asked Jonas.
'Me and a friend of mine, one off, one on, could do it, Mr Chuzzlewit,'
replied the nurse; 'our charges not bein' high, but wishin' they was
lower, and allowance made considerin' not strangers. Me and Betsey Prig,
sir, would undertake Mr Chuffey reasonable,' said Mrs Gamp, looking at
him with her head on one side, as if he had been a piece of goods, for
which she was driving a bargain; 'and give every satigefaction. Betsey
Prig has nussed a many lunacies, and well she knows their ways,
which puttin' 'em right close afore the fire, when fractious, is the
certainest and most compoging.'
While Mrs Gamp discoursed to this effect, Jonas was walking up and down
the room again, glancing covertly at the old clerk, as he did so. He now
made a stop, and said:
'I must look after him, I suppose, or I may have him doing some
mischief. What say you?'
'Nothin' more likely!' Mrs Gamp replied. 'As well I have experienged, I
do assure you, sir.'
'Well! Look after him for the present, and--let me see--three days from
this time let the other woman come here, and we'll see if we can make
a bargain of it. About nine or ten o'clock at night, say. Keep your eye
upon him in the meanwhile, and don't talk about it. He's as mad as a
March hare!'
'Madder!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'A deal madder!'
'See to him, then; take care that he does no harm; and recollect what I
have told you.'
Leaving Mrs Gamp in the act of repeating all she had been told, and
of producing in support of her memory and trustworthiness, many
commendations selected from among the most remarkable opinions of the
celebrated Mrs Harris, he descended to the little room prepared for him,
and pulling off his coat and his boots, put them outside the door before
he locked it. In locking it, he was careful so to adjust the key as to
baffle any curious person who might try to peep in through the key-hole;
and when he had taken these precautions, he sat down to his supper.
'Mr Chuff,' he muttered, 'it'll be pretty easy to be even with YOU. It's
of no use doing things by halves, and as long as I stop here, I'll take
good care of you. When I'm off you may say what you please. But it's
a d--d strange thing,' he added, pushing away his untouched plate, and
striding moodily to and fro, 'that his drivellings should have taken
this turn just now.'
After pacing the little room from end to end several times, he sat down
in another chair.
'I say just now, but for anything I know, he may have been carrying on
the same game all along. Old dog! He shall be gagged!'
He paced the room again in the same restless and unsteady way; and then
sat down upon the bedstead, leaning his chin upon his hand, and looking
at the table. When he had looked at it for a long time, he remembered
his supper; and resuming the chair he had first occupied, began to eat
with great rapacity; not like a hungry man, but as if he were determined
to do it. He drank too, roundly; sometimes stopping in the middle of a
draught to walk, and change his seat and walk again, and dart back to
the table and fall to, in a ravenous hurry, as before.
It was now growing dark. As the gloom of evening, deepening into
night, came on, another dark shade emerging from within him seemed to
overspread his face, and slowly change it. Slowly, slowly; darker and
darker; more and more haggard; creeping over him by little and little,
until it was black night within him and without.
The room in which he had shut himself up, was on the ground floor, at
the back of the house. It was lighted by a dirty skylight, and had a
door in the wall, opening into a narrow covered passage or blind-alley,
very little frequented after five or six o'clock in the evening, and
not in much use as a thoroughfare at any hour. But it had an outlet in a
neighbouring street.
The ground on which this chamber stood had, at one time, not within his
recollection, been a yard; and had been converted to its present purpose
for use as an office. But the occasion for it died with the man who
built it; and saving that it had sometimes served as an apology for a
spare bedroom, and that the old clerk had once held it (but that was
years ago) as his recognized apartment, it had been little troubled by
Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son. It was a blotched, stained, mouldering room,
like a vault; and there were water-pipes running through it, which at
unexpected times in the night, when other things were quiet, clicked and
gurgled suddenly, as if they were choking.
The door into the court had not been open for a long, long time; but the
key had always hung in one place, and there it hung now. He was prepared
for its being rusty; for he had a little bottle of oil in his pocket and
the feather of a pen, with which he lubricated the key and the lock too,
carefully. All this while he had been without his coat, and had nothing
on his feet but his stockings. He now got softly into bed in the same
state, and tossed from side to side to tumble it. In his restless
condition that was easily done.
When he arose, he took from his portmanteau, which he had caused to be
carried into that place when he came home, a pair of clumsy shoes,
and put them on his feet; also a pair of leather leggings, such
as countrymen are used to wear, with straps to fasten them to the
waistband. In these he dressed himself at leisure. Lastly, he took out
a common frock of coarse dark jean, which he drew over his own
under-clothing; and a felt hat--he had purposely left his own upstairs.
He then sat himself down by the door, with the key in his hand, waiting.
He had no light; the time was dreary, long, and awful. The ringers were
practicing in a neighbouring church, and the clashing of the bells was
almost maddening. Curse the clamouring bells, they seemed to know that
he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to
all the town! Would they never be still?
They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that
it seemed the prelude to some dreadful noise. Footsteps in the court!
Two men. He fell back from the door on tiptoe, as if they could have
seen him through its wooden panels.
They passed on, talking (he could make out) about a skeleton which had
been dug up yesterday, in some work of excavation near at hand, and was
supposed to be that of a murdered man. 'So murder is not always found
out, you see,' they said to one another as they turned the corner.
Hush!
He put the key into the lock, and turned it. The door resisted for a
while, but soon came stiffly open; mingling with the sense of fever in
his mouth, a taste of rust, and dust, and earth, and rotting wood. He
looked out; passed out; locked it after him.
All was clear and quiet, as he fled away.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CONCLUSION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
Did no men passing through the dim streets shrink without knowing why,
when he came stealing up behind them? As he glided on, had no child in
its sleep an indistinct perception of a guilty shadow falling on its
bed, that troubled its innocent rest? Did no dog howl, and strive to
break its rattling chain, that it might tear him; no burrowing rat,
scenting the work he had in hand, essay to gnaw a passage after him,
that it might hold a greedy revel at the feast of his providing? When he
looked back, across his shoulder, was it to see if his quick footsteps
still fell dry upon the dusty pavement, or were already moist and
clogged with the red mire that stained the naked feet of Cain!
He shaped his course for the main western road, and soon reached it;
riding a part of the way, then alighting and walking on again. He
travelled for a considerable distance upon the roof of a stage-coach,
which came up while he was afoot; and when it turned out of his road,
bribed the driver of a return post-chaise to take him on with him; and
then made across the country at a run, and saved a mile or two before he
struck again into the road. At last, as his plan was, he came up with a
certain lumbering, slow, night-coach, which stopped wherever it could,
and was stopping then at a public-house, while the guard and coachman
ate and drank within.
He bargained for a seat outside this coach, and took it. And he quitted
it no more until it was within a few miles of its destination, but
occupied the same place all night.
All night! It is a common fancy that nature seems to sleep by night. It
is a false fancy, as who should know better than he?
The fishes slumbered in the cold, bright, glistening streams and rivers,
perhaps; and the birds roosted on the branches of the trees; and in
their stalls and pastures beasts were quiet; and human creatures slept.
But what of that, when the solemn night was watching, when it never
winked, when its darkness watched no less than its light! The stately
trees, the moon and shining stars, the softly stirring wind, the
over-shadowed lane, the broad, bright countryside, they all kept watch.
There was not a blade of growing grass or corn, but watched; and the
quieter it was, the more intent and fixed its watch upon him seemed to
be.
And yet he slept. Riding on among those sentinels of God, he slept,
and did not change the purpose of his journey. If he forgot it in his
troubled dreams, it came up steadily, and woke him. But it never woke
him to remorse, or to abandonment of his design.
He dreamed at one time that he was lying calmly in his bed, thinking of
a moonlight night and the noise of wheels, when the old clerk put
his head in at the door, and beckoned him. At this signal he arose
immediately--being already dressed in the clothes he actually wore at
that time--and accompanied him into a strange city, where the names of
the streets were written on the walls in characters quite new to him;
which gave him no surprise or uneasiness, for he remembered in his dream
to have been there before. Although these streets were very precipitous,
insomuch that to get from one to another it was necessary to descend
great heights by ladders that were too short, and ropes that moved deep
bells, and swung and swayed as they were clung to, the danger gave him
little emotion beyond the first thrill of terror; his anxieties being
concentrated on his dress which was quite unfitted for some festival
that was about to be holden there, and in which he had come to take
a part. Already, great crowds began to fill the streets, and in
one direction myriads of people came rushing down an interminable
perspective, strewing flowers and making way for others on white horses,
when a terrible figure started from the throng, and cried out that it
was the Last Day for all the world. The cry being spread, there was a
wild hurrying on to Judgment; and the press became so great that he and
his companion (who was constantly changing, and was never the same man
two minutes together, though he never saw one man come or another go),
stood aside in a porch, fearfully surveying the multitude; in which
there were many faces that he knew, and many that he did not know, but
dreamed he did; when all at once a struggling head rose up among the
rest--livid and deadly, but the same as he had known it--and denounced
him as having appointed that direful day to happen. They closed
together. As he strove to free the hand in which he held a club, and
strike the blow he had so often thought of, he started to the knowledge
of his waking purpose and the rising of the sun.
The sun was welcome to him. There were life and motion, and a world
astir, to divide the attention of Day. It was the eye of Night--of
wakeful, watchful, silent, and attentive Night, with so much leisure for
the observation of his wicked thoughts--that he dreaded most. There is
no glare in the night. Even Glory shows to small advantage in the night,
upon a crowded battle-field. How then shows Glory's blood-relation,
bastard Murder!
Aye! He made no compromise, and held no secret with himself now. Murder.
He had come to do it.
'Let me get down here' he said
'Short of the town, eh!' observed the coachman.
'I may get down where I please, I suppose?'
'You got up to please yourself, and may get down to please yourself. It
won't break our hearts to lose you, and it wouldn't have broken 'em if
we'd never found you. Be a little quicker. That's all.'
The guard had alighted, and was waiting in the road to take his money.
In the jealousy and distrust of what he contemplated, he thought this
man looked at him with more than common curiosity.
'What are you staring at?' said Jonas.
'Not at a handsome man,' returned the guard. 'If you want your fortune
told, I'll tell you a bit of it. You won't be drowned. That's a
consolation for you.'
Before he could retort or turn away, the coachman put an end to the
dialogue by giving him a cut with his whip, and bidding him get out for a
surly dog. The guard jumped up to his seat at the same moment, and they
drove off, laughing; leaving him to stand in the road and shake his fist
at them. He was not displeased though, on second thoughts, to have
been taken for an ill-conditioned common country fellow; but rather
congratulated himself upon it as a proof that he was well disguised.
Wandering into a copse by the road-side--but not in that place; two or
three miles off--he tore out from a fence a thick, hard, knotted stake;
and, sitting down beneath a hayrick, spent some time in shaping it, in
peeling off the bark, and fashioning its jagged head with his knife.
The day passed on. Noon, afternoon, evening. Sunset.
At that serene and peaceful time two men, riding in a gig, came out
of the city by a road not much frequented. It was the day on which Mr
Pecksniff had agreed to dine with Montague. He had kept his appointment,
and was now going home. His host was riding with him for a short
distance; meaning to return by a pleasant track, which Mr Pecksniff had
engaged to show him, through some fields. Jonas knew their plans. He had
hung about the inn-yard while they were at dinner and had heard their
orders given.
They were loud and merry in their conversation, and might have been
heard at some distance; far above the sound of their carriage wheels
or horses' hoofs. They came on noisily, to where a stile and footpath
indicated their point of separation. Here they stopped.
'It's too soon. Much too soon,' said Mr Pecksniff. 'But this is the
place, my dear sir. Keep the path, and go straight through the little
wood you'll come to. The path is narrower there, but you can't miss it.
When shall I see you again? Soon I hope?'
'I hope so,' replied Montague.
'Good night!'
'Good night. And a pleasant ride!'
So long as Mr Pecksniff was in sight, and turned his head at intervals
to salute him, Montague stood in the road smiling, and waving his hand.
But when his new partner had disappeared, and this show was no longer
necessary, he sat down on the stile with looks so altered, that he might
have grown ten years older in the meantime.
He was flushed with wine, but not gay. His scheme had succeeded, but he
showed no triumph. The effort of sustaining his difficult part before
his late companion had fatigued him, perhaps, or it may be that the
evening whispered to his conscience, or it may be (as it HAS been) that
a shadowy veil was dropping round him, closing out all thoughts but the
presentiment and vague foreknowledge of impending doom.
If there be fluids, as we know there are, which, conscious of a coming
wind, or rain, or frost, will shrink and strive to hide themselves in
their glass arteries; may not that subtle liquor of the blood perceive,
by properties within itself, that hands are raised to waste and spill
it; and in the veins of men run cold and dull as his did, in that hour!
So cold, although the air was warm; so dull, although the sky was
bright; that he rose up shivering from his seat, and hastily resumed
his walk. He checked himself as hastily; undecided whether to pursue the
footpath, which was lonely and retired, or to go back by the road.
He took the footpath.
The glory of the departing sun was on his face. The music of the birds
was in his ears. Sweet wild flowers bloomed about him. Thatched roofs of
poor men's homes were in the distance; and an old grey spire, surmounted
by a Cross, rose up between him and the coming night.
He had never read the lesson which these things conveyed; he had ever
mocked and turned away from it; but, before going down into a hollow
place, he looked round, once, upon the evening prospect, sorrowfully.
Then he went down, down, down, into the dell.
It brought him to the wood; a close, thick, shadowy wood, through which
the path went winding on, dwindling away into a slender sheep-track. He
paused before entering; for the stillness of this spot almost daunted
him.
The last rays of the sun were shining in, aslant, making a path of
golden light along the stems and branches in its range, which, even as
he looked, began to die away, yielding gently to the twilight that came
creeping on. It was so very quiet that the soft and stealthy moss about
the trunks of some old trees, seemed to have grown out of the silence,
and to be its proper offspring. Those other trees which were subdued
by blasts of wind in winter time, had not quite tumbled down, but being
caught by others, lay all bare and scathed across their leafy arms, as
if unwilling to disturb the general repose by the crash of their fall.
Vistas of silence opened everywhere, into the heart and innermost
recesses of the wood; beginning with the likeness of an aisle, a
cloister, or a ruin open to the sky; then tangling off into a deep green
rustling mystery, through which gnarled trunks, and twisted boughs, and
ivy-covered stems, and trembling leaves, and bark-stripped bodies of old
trees stretched out at length, were faintly seen in beautiful confusion.
As the sunlight died away, and evening fell upon the wood, he entered
it. Moving, here and there a bramble or a drooping bough which stretched
across his path, he slowly disappeared. At intervals a narrow opening
showed him passing on, or the sharp cracking of some tender branch
denoted where he went; then, he was seen or heard no more.
Never more beheld by mortal eye or heard by mortal ear; one man
excepted. That man, parting the leaves and branches on the other side,
near where the path emerged again, came leaping out soon afterwards.
What had he left within the wood, that he sprang out of it as if it were
a hell!
The body of a murdered man. In one thick solitary spot, it lay among
the last year's leaves of oak and beech, just as it had fallen headlong
down. Sopping and soaking in among the leaves that formed its pillow;
oozing down into the boggy ground, as if to cover itself from human
sight; forcing its way between and through the curling leaves, as if
those senseless things rejected and forswore it and were coiled up in
abhorrence; went a dark, dark stain that dyed the whole summer night
from earth to heaven.
The doer of this deed came leaping from the wood so fiercely, that he
cast into the air a shower of fragments of young boughs, torn away
in his passage, and fell with violence upon the grass. But he quickly
gained his feet again, and keeping underneath a hedge with his body
bent, went running on towards the road. The road once reached, he fell
into a rapid walk, and set on toward London.
And he was not sorry for what he had done. He was frightened when he
thought of it--when did he not think of it!--but he was not sorry. He
had had a terror and dread of the wood when he was in it; but being
out of it, and having committed the crime, his fears were now diverted,
strangely, to the dark room he had left shut up at home. He had a
greater horror, infinitely greater, of that room than of the wood. Now
that he was on his return to it, it seemed beyond comparison more dismal
and more dreadful than the wood. His hideous secret was shut up in the
room, and all its terrors were there; to his thinking it was not in the
wood at all.
He walked on for ten miles; and then stopped at an ale-house for a
coach, which he knew would pass through, on its way to London, before
long; and which he also knew was not the coach he had travelled down by,
for it came from another place. He sat down outside the door here, on
a bench, beside a man who was smoking his pipe. Having called for some
beer, and drunk, he offered it to this companion, who thanked him, and
took a draught. He could not help thinking that, if the man had known
all, he might scarcely have relished drinking out of the same cup with
him.
'A fine night, master!' said this person. 'And a rare sunset.'
'I didn't see it,' was his hasty answer.
'Didn't see it?' returned the man.
'How the devil could I see it, if I was asleep?'
'Asleep! Aye, aye.' The man appeared surprised by his unexpected
irritability, and saying no more, smoked his pipe in silence. They had
not sat very long, when there was a knocking within.
'What's that?' cried Jonas.
'Can't say, I'm sure,' replied the man.
He made no further inquiry, for the last question had escaped him in
spite of himself. But he was thinking, at the moment, of the closed-up
room; of the possibility of their knocking at the door on some special
occasion; of their being alarmed at receiving no answer; of their
bursting it open; of their finding the room empty; of their fastening
the door into the court, and rendering it impossible for him to get into
the house without showing himself in the garb he wore, which would lead
to rumour, rumour to detection, detection to death. At that instant, as
if by some design and order of circumstances, the knocking had come.
It still continued; like a warning echo of the dread reality he had
conjured up. As he could not sit and hear it, he paid for his beer and
walked on again. And having slunk about, in places unknown to him all
day; and being out at night, in a lonely road, in an unusual dress and
in that wandering and unsettled frame of mind; he stopped more than once
to look about him, hoping he might be in a dream.
Still he was not sorry. No. He had hated the man too much, and had been
bent, too desperately and too long, on setting himself free. If the
thing could have come over again, he would have done it again. His
malignant and revengeful passions were not so easily laid. There was no
more penitence or remorse within him now than there had been while the
deed was brewing.
Dread and fear were upon him, to an extent he had never counted on, and
could not manage in the least degree. He was so horribly afraid of that
infernal room at home. This made him, in a gloomy murderous, mad way,
not only fearful FOR himself, but OF himself; for being, as it were, a
part of the room: a something supposed to be there, yet missing from it:
he invested himself with its mysterious terrors; and when he pictured in
his mind the ugly chamber, false and quiet, false and quiet, through the
dark hours of two nights; and the tumbled bed, and he not in it, though
believed to be; he became in a manner his own ghost and phantom, and was
at once the haunting spirit and the haunted man.
When the coach came up, which it soon did, he got a place outside and
was carried briskly onward towards home. Now, in taking his seat among
the people behind, who were chiefly country people, he conceived a fear
that they knew of the murder, and would tell him that the body had been
found; which, considering the time and place of the commission of the
crime, were events almost impossible to have happened yet, as he very
well knew. But although he did know it, and had therefore no reason
to regard their ignorance as anything but the natural sequence to
the facts, still this very ignorance of theirs encouraged him. So far
encouraged him, that he began to believe the body never would be found,
and began to speculate on that probability. Setting off from this point,
and measuring time by the rapid hurry of his guilty thoughts, and
what had gone before the bloodshed, and the troops of incoherent and
disordered images of which he was the constant prey; he came by
daylight to regard the murder as an old murder, and to think himself
comparatively safe because it had not been discovered yet. Yet! When the
sun which looked into the wood, and gilded with its rising light a dead
man's lace, had seen that man alive, and sought to win him to a thought
of Heaven, on its going down last night!
But here were London streets again. Hush!
It was but five o'clock. He had time enough to reach his own house
unobserved, and before there were many people in the streets, if nothing
had happened so far, tending to his discovery. He slipped down from
the coach without troubling the driver to stop his horses; and hurrying
across the road, and in and out of every by-way that lay near his
course, at length approached his own dwelling. He used additional
caution in his immediate neighbourhood; halting first to look all
down the street before him; then gliding swiftly through that one, and
stopping to survey the next, and so on.
The passage-way was empty when his murderer's face looked into it. He
stole on, to the door on tiptoe, as if he dreaded to disturb his own
imaginary rest.
He listened. Not a sound. As he turned the key with a trembling hand,
and pushed the door softly open with his knee, a monstrous fear beset
his mind.
What if the murdered man were there before him!
He cast a fearful glance all round. But there was nothing there.
He went in, locked the door, drew the key through and through the dust
and damp in the fire-place to sully it again, and hung it up as of old.
He took off his disguise, tied it up in a bundle ready for carrying away
and sinking in the river before night, and locked it up in a cupboard.
These precautions taken, he undressed and went to bed.
The raging thirst, the fire that burnt within him as he lay beneath the
clothes, the augmented horror of the room when they shut it out from his
view; the agony of listening, in which he paid enforced regard to every
sound, and thought the most unlikely one the prelude to that knocking
which should bring the news; the starts with which he left his couch,
and looking in the glass, imagined that his deed was broadly written
in his face, and lying down and burying himself once more beneath the
blankets, heard his own heart beating Murder, Murder, Murder, in the
bed; what words can paint tremendous truths like these!
The morning advanced. There were footsteps in the house. He heard the
blinds drawn up, and shutters opened; and now and then a stealthy tread
outside his own door. He tried to call out, more than once, but his
mouth was dry as if it had been filled with sand. At last he sat up in
his bed, and cried:
'Who's there?'
It was his wife.
He asked her what it was o'clock? Nine.
'Did--did no one knock at my door yesterday?' he faltered. 'Something
disturbed me; but unless you had knocked the door down, you would have
got no notice from me.'
'No one,' she replied. That was well. He had waited, almost breathless,
for her answer. It was a relief to him, if anything could be.
'Mr Nadgett wanted to see you,' she said, 'but I told him you were
tired, and had requested not to be disturbed. He said it was of little
consequence, and went away. As I was opening my window to let in the
cool air, I saw him passing through the street this morning, very early;
but he hasn't been again.'
Passing through the street that morning? Very early! Jonas trembled at
the thought of having had a narrow chance of seeing him himself; even
him, who had no object but to avoid people, and sneak on unobserved, and
keep his own secrets; and who saw nothing.
He called to her to get his breakfast ready, and prepared to go
upstairs; attiring himself in the clothes he had taken off when he came
into that room, which had been, ever since, outside the door. In his
secret dread of meeting the household for the first time, after what he
had done, he lingered at the door on slight pretexts that they might see
him without looking in his face; and left it ajar while he dressed; and
called out to have the windows opened, and the pavement watered, that
they might become accustomed to his voice. Even when he had put off the
time, by one means or other, so that he had seen or spoken to them all,
he could not muster courage for a long while to go in among them,
but stood at his own door listening to the murmur of their distant
conversation.
He could not stop there for ever, and so joined them. His last glance at
the glass had seen a tell-tale face, but that might have been because
of his anxious looking in it. He dared not look at them to see if they
observed him, but he thought them very silent.
And whatsoever guard he kept upon himself, he could not help listening,
and showing that he listened. Whether he attended to their talk, or
tried to think of other things, or talked himself, or held his peace, or
resolutely counted the dull tickings of a hoarse clock at his back, he
always lapsed, as if a spell were on him, into eager listening. For
he knew it must come. And his present punishment, and torture and
distraction, were, to listen for its coming.
Hush!
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
BEARS TIDINGS OF MARTIN AND OF MARK, AS WELL AS OF A THIRD PERSON NOT
QUITE UNKNOWN TO THE READER. EXHIBITS FILIAL PIETY IN AN UGLY ASPECT;
AND CASTS A DOUBTFUL RAY OF LIGHT UPON A VERY DARK PLACE
Tom Pinch and Ruth were sitting at their early breakfast, with the
window open, and a row of the freshest little plants ranged before it
on the inside by Ruth's own hands; and Ruth had fastened a sprig of
geranium in Tom's button-hole, to make him very smart and summer-like
for the day (it was obliged to be fastened in, or that dear old Tom
was certain to lose it); and people were crying flowers up and down the
street; and a blundering bee, who had got himself in between the
two sashes of the window, was bruising his head against the glass,
endeavouring to force himself out into the fine morning, and considering
himself enchanted because he couldn't do it; and the morning was as fine
a morning as ever was seen; and the fragrant air was kissing Ruth and
rustling about Tom, as if it said, 'how are you, my dears; I came all
this way on purpose to salute you;' and it was one of those glad times
when we form, or ought to form, the wish that every one on earth were
able to be happy, and catching glimpses of the summer of the heart, to
feel the beauty of the summer of the year.
It was even a pleasanter breakfast than usual; and it was always a
pleasant one. For little Ruth had now two pupils to attend, each three
times a week; and each two hours at a time; and besides this, she had
painted some screens and card-racks, and, unknown to Tom (was there ever
anything so delightful!), had walked into a certain shop which dealt
in such articles, after often peeping through the window; and had taken
courage to ask the Mistress of that shop whether she would buy them. And
the mistress had not only bought them, but had ordered more, and that
very morning Ruth had made confession of these facts to Tom, and had
handed him the money in a little purse she had worked expressly for the
purpose. They had been in a flutter about this, and perhaps had shed a
happy tear or two for anything the history knows to the contrary; but
it was all over now; and a brighter face than Tom's, or a brighter face
than Ruth's, the bright sun had not looked on since he went to bed last
night.
'My dear girl,' said Tom, coming so abruptly on the subject, that he
interrupted himself in the act of cutting a slice of bread, and left
the knife sticking in the loaf, 'what a queer fellow our landlord is!
I don't believe he has been home once since he got me into that
unsatisfactory scrape. I begin to think he will never come home again.
What a mysterious life that man does lead, to be sure!'
'Very strange. Is it not, Tom?'
'Really,' said Tom, 'I hope it is only strange. I hope there may be
nothing wrong in it. Sometimes I begin to be doubtful of that. I must
have an explanation with him,' said Tom, shaking his head as if this
were a most tremendous threat, 'when I can catch him!'
A short double knock at the door put Tom's menacing looks to flight, and
awakened an expression of surprise instead.
'Heyday!' said Tom. 'An early hour for visitors! It must be John, I
suppose.'
'I--I--don't think it was his knock, Tom,' observed his little sister.
'No?' said Tom. 'It surely can't be my employer suddenly arrived in
town; directed here by Mr Fips; and come for the key of the office. It's
somebody inquiring for me, I declare! Come in, if you please!'
But when the person came in, Tom Pinch, instead of saying, 'Did you
wish to speak with me, sir?' or, 'My name is Pinch, sir; what is your
business, may I ask?' or addressing him in any such distant terms; cried
out, 'Good gracious Heaven!' and seized him by both hands, with the
liveliest manifestations of astonishment and pleasure.
The visitor was not less moved than Tom himself, and they shook hands a
great many times, without another word being spoken on either side. Tom
was the first to find his voice.
'Mark Tapley, too!' said Tom, running towards the door, and shaking
hands with somebody else. 'My dear Mark, come in. How are you, Mark? He
don't look a day older than he used to do at the Dragon. How ARE you,
Mark?'
'Uncommonly jolly, sir, thank'ee,' returned Mr Tapley, all smiles and
bows. 'I hope I see you well, sir.'
'Good gracious me!' cried Tom, patting him tenderly on the back. 'How
delightful it is to hear his old voice again! My dear Martin, sit down.
My sister, Martin. Mr Chuzzlewit, my love. Mark Tapley from the Dragon,
my dear. Good gracious me, what a surprise this is! Sit down. Lord,
bless me!'
Tom was in such a state of excitement that he couldn't keep himself
still for a moment, but was constantly running between Mark and Martin,
shaking hands with them alternately, and presenting them over and over
again to his sister.
'I remember the day we parted, Martin, as well as if it were yesterday,'
said Tom. 'What a day it was! and what a passion you were in! And don't
you remember my overtaking you in the road that morning, Mark, when I
was going to Salisbury in the gig to fetch him, and you were looking out
for a situation? And don't you recollect the dinner we had at Salisbury,
Martin, with John Westlock, eh! Good gracious me! Ruth, my dear,
Mr Chuzzlewit. Mark Tapley, my love, from the Dragon. More cups and
saucers, if you please. Bless my soul, how glad I am to see you both!'
And then Tom (as John Westlock had done on his arrival) ran off to the
loaf to cut some bread and butter for them; and before he had spread a
single slice, remembered something else, and came running back again to
tell it; and then he shook hands with them again; and then he introduced
his sister again; and then he did everything he had done already all
over again; and nothing Tom could do, and nothing Tom could say, was
half sufficient to express his joy at their safe return.
Mr Tapley was the first to resume his composure. In a very short space
of time he was discovered to have somehow installed himself in office as
waiter, or attendant upon the party; a fact which was first suggested to
them by his temporary absence in the kitchen, and speedy return with a
kettle of boiling water, from which he replenished the tea-pot with a
self-possession that was quite his own.
'Sit down, and take your breakfast, Mark,' said Tom. 'Make him sit down
and take his breakfast, Martin.'
'Oh! I gave him up, long ago, as incorrigible,' Martin replied. 'He
takes his own way, Tom. You would excuse him, Miss Pinch, if you knew
his value.'
'She knows it, bless you!' said Tom. 'I have told her all about Mark
Tapley. Have I not, Ruth?'
'Yes, Tom.'
'Not all,' returned Martin, in a low voice. 'The best of Mark Tapley is
only known to one man, Tom; and but for Mark he would hardly be alive to
tell it!'
'Mark!' said Tom Pinch energetically; 'if you don't sit down this
minute, I'll swear at you!'
'Well, sir,' returned Mr Tapley, 'sooner than you should do that, I'll
com-ply. It's a considerable invasion of a man's jollity to be made so
partickler welcome, but a Werb is a word as signifies to be, to do,
or to suffer (which is all the grammar, and enough too, as ever I wos
taught); and if there's a Werb alive, I'm it. For I'm always a-bein',
sometimes a-doin', and continually a-sufferin'.'
'Not jolly yet?' asked Tom, with a smile.
'Why, I was rather so, over the water, sir,' returned Mr Tapley; 'and
not entirely without credit. But Human Natur' is in a conspiracy again'
me; I can't get on. I shall have to leave it in my will, sir, to be
wrote upon my tomb: "He was a man as might have come out strong if he
could have got a chance. But it was denied him."'
Mr Tapley took this occasion of looking about him with a grin, and
subsequently attacking the breakfast, with an appetite not at all
expressive of blighted hopes, or insurmountable despondency.
In the meanwhile, Martin drew his chair a little nearer to Tom and his
sister, and related to them what had passed at Mr Pecksniff's
house; adding in few words a general summary of the distresses and
disappointments he had undergone since he left England.
'For your faithful stewardship in the trust I left with you, Tom,' he
said, 'and for all your goodness and disinterestedness, I can never
thank you enough. When I add Mary's thanks to mine--'
Ah, Tom! The blood retreated from his cheeks, and came rushing back, so
violently, that it was pain to feel it; ease though, ease, compared with
the aching of his wounded heart.
'When I add Mary's thanks to mine,' said Martin, 'I have made the only
poor acknowledgment it is in our power to offer; but if you knew how
much we feel, Tom, you would set some store by it, I am sure.'
And if they had known how much Tom felt--but that no human creature ever
knew--they would have set some store by him. Indeed they would.
Tom changed the topic of discourse. He was sorry he could not pursue it,
as it gave Martin pleasure; but he was unable, at that moment. No drop
of envy or bitterness was in his soul; but he could not master the firm
utterance of her name.
He inquired what Martin's projects were.
'No longer to make your fortune, Tom,' said Martin, 'but to try to live.
I tried that once in London, Tom; and failed. If you will give me the
benefit of your advice and friendly counsel, I may succeed better under
your guidance. I will do anything Tom, anything, to gain a livelihood by
my own exertions. My hopes do not soar above that, now.'
High-hearted, noble Tom! Sorry to find the pride of his old companion
humbled, and to hear him speaking in this altered strain at once, at
once, he drove from his breast the inability to contend with its deep
emotions, and spoke out bravely.
'Your hopes do not soar above that!' cried Tom. 'Yes they do. How can
you talk so! They soar up to the time when you will be happy with her,
Martin. They soar up to the time when you will be able to claim her,
Martin. They soar up to the time when you will not be able to believe
that you were ever cast down in spirit, or poor in pocket, Martin.
Advice, and friendly counsel! Why, of course. But you shall have better
advice and counsel (though you cannot have more friendly) than mine. You
shall consult John Westlock. We'll go there immediately. It is yet so
early that I shall have time to take you to his chambers before I go to
business; they are in my way; and I can leave you there, to talk
over your affairs with him. So come along. Come along. I am a man of
occupation now, you know,' said Tom, with his pleasantest smile; 'and
have no time to lose. Your hopes don't soar higher than that? I dare
say they don't. I know you, pretty well. They'll be soaring out of sight
soon, Martin, and leaving all the rest of us leagues behind.'
'Aye! But I may be a little changed,' said Martin, 'since you knew me
pretty well, Tom.'
'What nonsense!' exclaimed Tom. 'Why should you be changed? You talk
as if you were an old man. I never heard such a fellow! Come to John
Westlock's, come. Come along, Mark Tapley. It's Mark's doing, I have
no doubt; and it serves you right for having such a grumbler for your
companion.'
'There's no credit to be got through being jolly with YOU, Mr Pinch,
anyways,' said Mark, with his face all wrinkled up with grins. 'A parish
doctor might be jolly with you. There's nothing short of goin' to the
U-nited States for a second trip, as would make it at all creditable to
be jolly, arter seein' you again!'
Tom laughed, and taking leave of his sister, hurried Mark and Martin out
into the street, and away to John Westlock's by the nearest road; for
his hour of business was very near at hand, and he prided himself on
always being exact to his time.
John Westlock was at home, but, strange to say, was rather embarrassed
to see them; and when Tom was about to go into the room where he
was breakfasting, said he had a stranger there. It appeared to be a
mysterious stranger, for John shut that door as he said it, and led them
into the next room.
He was very much delighted, though, to see Mark Tapley; and received
Martin with his own frank courtesy. But Martin felt that he did not
inspire John Westlock with any unusual interest; and twice or
thrice observed that he looked at Tom Pinch doubtfully; not to say
compassionately. He thought, and blushed to think, that he knew the
cause of this.
'I apprehend you are engaged,' said Martin, when Tom had announced the
purport of their visit. 'If you will allow me to come again at your own
time, I shall be glad to do so.'
'I AM engaged,' replied John, with some reluctance; 'but the matter on
which I am engaged is one, to say the truth, more immediately demanding
your knowledge than mine.'
'Indeed!' cried Martin.
'It relates to a member of your family, and is of a serious nature. If
you will have the kindness to remain here, it will be a satisfaction to
me to have it privately communicated to you, in order that you may judge
of its importance for yourself.'
'And in the meantime,' said Tom, 'I must really take myself off, without
any further ceremony.'
'Is your business so very particular,' asked Martin, 'that you cannot
remain with us for half an hour? I wish you could. What IS your
business, Tom?'
It was Tom's turn to be embarrassed now; but he plainly said, after a
little hesitation:
'Why, I am not at liberty to say what it is, Martin; though I hope
soon to be in a condition to do so, and am aware of no other reason
to prevent my doing so now, than the request of my employer. It's an
awkward position to be placed in,' said Tom, with an uneasy sense of
seeming to doubt his friend, 'as I feel every day; but I really cannot
help it, can I, John?'
John Westlock replied in the negative; and Martin, expressing himself
perfectly satisfied, begged them not to say another word; though he
could not help wondering very much what curious office Tom held, and why
he was so secret, and embarrassed, and unlike himself, in reference to
it. Nor could he help reverting to it, in his own mind, several times
after Tom went away, which he did as soon as this conversation was
ended, taking Mr Tapley with him, who, as he laughingly said, might
accompany him as far as Fleet Street without injury.
'And what do you mean to do, Mark?' asked Tom, as they walked on
together.
'Mean to do, sir?' returned Mr Tapley.
'Aye. What course of life do you mean to pursue?'
'Well, sir,' said Mr Tapley. 'The fact is, that I have been a-thinking
rather of the matrimonial line, sir.'
'You don't say so, Mark!' cried Tom.
'Yes, sir. I've been a-turnin' of it over.'
'And who is the lady, Mark?'
'The which, sir?' said Mr Tapley.
'The lady. Come! You know what I said,' replied Tom, laughing, 'as well
as I do!'
Mr Tapley suppressed his own inclination to laugh; and with one of his
most whimsically-twisted looks, replied:
'You couldn't guess, I suppose, Mr Pinch?'
'How is it possible?' said Tom. 'I don't know any of your flames, Mark.
Except Mrs Lupin, indeed.'
'Well, sir!' retorted Mr Tapley. 'And supposing it was her!'
Tom stopping in the street to look at him, Mr Tapley for a moment
presented to his view an utterly stolid and expressionless face; a
perfect dead wall of countenance. But opening window after window in
it with astonishing rapidity, and lighting them all up as for a general
illumination, he repeated:
'Supposin', for the sake of argument, as it was her, sir!'
'Why I thought such a connection wouldn't suit you, Mark, on any terms!'
cried Tom.
'Well, sir! I used to think so myself, once,' said Mark. 'But I ain't so
clear about it now. A dear, sweet creetur, sir!'
'A dear, sweet creature? To be sure she is,' cried Tom. 'But she always
was a dear, sweet creature, was she not?'
'WAS she not!' assented Mr Tapley.
'Then why on earth didn't you marry her at first, Mark, instead of
wandering abroad, and losing all this time, and leaving her alone by
herself, liable to be courted by other people?'
'Why, sir,' retorted Mr Tapley, in a spirit of unbounded confidence,
'I'll tell you how it come about. You know me, Mr Pinch, sir; there
ain't a gentleman alive as knows me better. You're acquainted with my
constitution, and you're acquainted with my weakness. My constitution
is, to be jolly; and my weakness is, to wish to find a credit in it.
Wery good, sir. In this state of mind, I gets a notion in my head that
she looks on me with a eye of--with what you may call a favourable sort
of a eye in fact,' said Mr Tapley, with modest hesitation.
'No doubt,' replied Tom. 'We knew that perfectly well when we spoke on
this subject long ago; before you left the Dragon.'
Mr Tapley nodded assent. 'Well, sir! But bein' at that time full of
hopeful wisions, I arrives at the conclusion that no credit is to be got
out of such a way of life as that, where everything agreeable would be
ready to one's hand. Lookin' on the bright side of human life in short,
one of my hopeful wisions is, that there's a deal of misery awaitin' for
me; in the midst of which I may come out tolerable strong, and be jolly
under circumstances as reflects some credit. I goes into the world, sir,
wery boyant, and I tries this. I goes aboard ship first, and wery soon
discovers (by the ease with which I'm jolly, mind you) as there's no
credit to be got THERE. I might have took warning by this, and gave it
up; but I didn't. I gets to the U-nited States; and then I DO begin, I
won't deny it, to feel some little credit in sustaining my spirits. What
follows? Jest as I'm a-beginning to come out, and am a-treadin' on the
werge, my master deceives me.'
'Deceives you!' cried Tom.
'Swindles me,' retorted Mr Tapley with a beaming face. 'Turns his back
on everything as made his service a creditable one, and leaves me high
and dry, without a leg to stand upon. In which state I returns home.
Wery good. Then all my hopeful wisions bein' crushed; and findin' that
there ain't no credit for me nowhere; I abandons myself to despair,
and says, "Let me do that as has the least credit in it of all; marry a
dear, sweet creetur, as is wery fond of me; me bein', at the same time,
wery fond of her; lead a happy life, and struggle no more again' the
blight which settles on my prospects."'
'If your philosophy, Mark,' said Tom, who laughed heartily at this
speech, 'be the oddest I ever heard of, it is not the least wise. Mrs
Lupin has said "yes," of course?'
'Why, no, sir,' replied Mr Tapley; 'she hasn't gone so far as that yet.
Which I attribute principally to my not havin' asked her. But we was
wery agreeable together--comfortable, I may say--the night I come home.
It's all right, sir.'
'Well!' said Tom, stopping at the Temple Gate. 'I wish you joy, Mark,
with all my heart. I shall see you again to-day, I dare say. Good-bye
for the present.'
'Good-bye, sir! Good-bye, Mr Pinch!' he added by way of soliloquy, as
he stood looking after him. 'Although you ARE a damper to a honourable
ambition. You little think it, but you was the first to dash my hopes.
Pecksniff would have built me up for life, but your sweet temper pulled
me down. Good-bye, Mr Pinch!'
While these confidences were interchanged between Tom Pinch and Mark,
Martin and John Westlock were very differently engaged. They were no
sooner left alone together than Martin said, with an effort he could not
disguise:
'Mr Westlock, we have met only once before, but you have known Tom a
long while, and that seems to render you familiar to me. I cannot
talk freely with you on any subject unless I relieve my mind of what
oppresses it just now. I see with pain that you so far mistrust me that
you think me likely to impose on Tom's regardlessness of himself, or on
his kind nature, or some of his good qualities.'
'I had no intention,' replied John, 'of conveying any such impression to
you, and am exceedingly sorry to have done so.'
'But you entertain it?' said Martin.
'You ask me so pointedly and directly,' returned the other, 'that I
cannot deny the having accustomed myself to regard you as one who,
not in wantonness but in mere thoughtlessness of character, did not
sufficiently consider his nature and did not quite treat it as it
deserves to be treated. It is much easier to slight than to appreciate
Tom Pinch.'
This was not said warmly, but was energetically spoken too; for there
was no subject in the world (but one) on which the speaker felt so
strongly.
'I grew into the knowledge of Tom,' he pursued, 'as I grew towards
manhood; and I have learned to love him as something, infinitely better
than myself. I did not think that you understood him when we met before.
I did not think that you greatly cared to understand him. The instances
of this which I observed in you were, like my opportunities for
observation, very trivial--and were very harmless, I dare say. But they
were not agreeable to me, and they forced themselves upon me; for I was
not upon the watch for them, believe me. You will say,' added John, with
a smile, as he subsided into more of his accustomed manner, 'that I am
not by any means agreeable to you. I can only assure you, in reply, that
I would not have originated this topic on any account.'
'I originated it,' said Martin; 'and so far from having any complaint
to make against you, highly esteem the friendship you entertain for
Tom, and the very many proofs you have given him of it. Why should
I endeavour to conceal from you'--he coloured deeply though--'that
I neither understood him nor cared to understand him when I was his
companion; and that I am very truly sorry for it now!'
It was so sincerely said, at once so modestly and manfully, that John
offered him his hand as if he had not done so before; and Martin giving
his in the same open spirit, all constraint between the young men
vanished.
'Now pray,' said John, 'when I tire your patience very much in what I
am going to say, recollect that it has an end to it, and that the end is
the point of the story.'
With this preface, he related all the circumstances connected with his
having presided over the illness and slow recovery of the patient at the
Bull; and tacked on to the skirts of that narrative Tom's own account of
the business on the wharf. Martin was not a little puzzled when he came
to an end, for the two stories seemed to have no connection with each
other, and to leave him, as the phrase is, all abroad.
'If you will excuse me for one moment,' said John, rising, 'I will beg
you almost immediately to come into the next room.'
Upon that, he left Martin to himself, in a state of considerable
astonishment; and soon came back again to fulfil his promise.
Accompanying him into the next room, Martin found there a third person;
no doubt the stranger of whom his host had spoken when Tom Pinch
introduced him.
He was a young man; with deep black hair and eyes. He was gaunt and
pale; and evidently had not long recovered from a severe illness. He
stood as Martin entered, but sat again at John's desire. His eyes were
cast downward; and but for one glance at them both, half in humiliation
and half in entreaty, he kept them so, and sat quite still and silent.
'This person's name is Lewsome,' said John Westlock, 'whom I have
mentioned to you as having been seized with an illness at the inn near
here, and undergone so much. He has had a very hard time of it, ever
since he began to recover; but, as you see, he is now doing well.'
As he did not move or speak, and John Westlock made a pause, Martin, not
knowing what to say, said that he was glad to hear it.
'The short statement that I wish you to hear from his own lips, Mr
Chuzzlewit,' John pursued--looking attentively at him, and not at
Martin--'he made to me for the first time yesterday, and repeated to me
this morning, without the least variation of any essential particular. I
have already told you that he informed me before he was removed from the
Inn, that he had a secret to disclose to me which lay heavy on his mind.
But, fluctuating between sickness and health and between his desire to
relieve himself of it, and his dread of involving himself by revealing
it, he has, until yesterday, avoided the disclosure. I never pressed
him for it (having no idea of its weight or import, or of my right to do
so), until within a few days past; when, understanding from him, on his
own voluntary avowal, in a letter from the country, that it related to a
person whose name was Jonas Chuzzlewit; and thinking that it might throw
some light on that little mystery which made Tom anxious now and then; I
urged the point upon him, and heard his statement, as you will now,
from his own lips. It is due to him to say, that in the apprehension
of death, he committed it to writing sometime since, and folded it in a
sealed paper, addressed to me; which he could not resolve, however,
to place of his own act in my hands. He has the paper in his breast, I
believe, at this moment.'
The young man touched it hastily; in corroboration of the fact.
'It will be well to leave that in our charge, perhaps,' said John. 'But
do not mind it now.'
As he said this, he held up his hand to bespeak Martin's attention. It
was already fixed upon the man before him, who, after a short silence
said, in a low, weak, hollow voice:
'What relation was Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit, who--'
'--Who died--to me?' said Martin. 'He was my grandfather's brother.'
'I fear he was made away with. Murdered!'
'My God!' said Martin. 'By whom?'
The young man, Lewsome, looked up in his face, and casting down his eyes
again, replied:
'I fear, by me.'
'By you?' cried Martin.
'Not by my act, but I fear by my means.'
'Speak out!' said Martin, 'and speak the truth.'
'I fear this IS the truth.'
Martin was about to interrupt him again, but John Westlock saying
softly, 'Let him tell his story in his own way,' Lewsome went on thus:
'I have been bred a surgeon, and for the last few years have served a
general practitioner in the City, as his assistant. While I was in
his employment I became acquainted with Jonas Chuzzlewit. He is the
principal in this deed.'
'What do you mean?' demanded Martin, sternly. 'Do you know he is the son
of the old man of whom you have spoken?'
'I do,' he answered.
He remained silent for some moments, when he resumed at the point where
he had left off.
'I have reason to know it; for I have often heard him wish his old
father dead, and complain of his being wearisome to him, and a drag
upon him. He was in the habit of doing so, at a place of meeting we
had--three or four of us--at night. There was no good in the place you
may suppose, when you hear that he was the chief of the party. I wish I
had died myself, and never seen it!'
He stopped again; and again resumed as before.
'We met to drink and game; not for large sums, but for sums that were
large to us. He generally won. Whether or no, he lent money at interest
to those who lost; and in this way, though I think we all secretly hated
him, he came to be the master of us. To propitiate him we made a jest of
his father; it began with his debtors; I was one; and we used to toast
a quicker journey to the old man, and a swift inheritance to the young
one.'
He paused again.
'One night he came there in a very bad humour. He had been greatly
tried, he said, by the old man that day. He and I were alone together;
and he angrily told me, that the old man was in his second childhood;
that he was weak, imbecile, and drivelling; as unbearable to himself as
he was to other people; and that it would be a charity to put him out of
the way. He swore that he had often thought of mixing something with the
stuff he took for his cough, which should help him to die easily. People
were sometimes smothered who were bitten by mad dogs, he said; and why
not help these lingering old men out of their troubles too? He looked
full at me as he said so, and I looked full at him; but it went no
farther that night.'
He stopped once more, and was silent for so long an interval that John
Westlock said 'Go on.' Martin had never removed his eyes from his face,
but was so absorbed in horror and astonishment that he could not speak.
'It may have been a week after that, or it may have been less or
more--the matter was in my mind all the time, but I cannot recollect the
time, as I should any other period--when he spoke to me again. We were
alone then, too; being there before the usual hour of assembling. There
was no appointment between us; but I think I went there to meet him, and
I know he came there to meet me. He was there first. He was reading
a newspaper when I went in, and nodded to me without looking up, or
leaving off reading. I sat down opposite and close to him. He said,
immediately, that he wanted me to get him some of two sorts of drugs.
One that was instantaneous in its effect; of which he wanted very
little. One that was slow and not suspicious in appearance; of which he
wanted more. While he was speaking to me he still read the newspaper. He
said "Drugs," and never used any other word. Neither did I.'
'This all agrees with what I have heard before,' observed John Westlock.
'I asked him what he wanted the drugs for? He said for no harm; to
physic cats; what did it matter to me? I was going out to a distant
colony (I had recently got the appointment, which, as Mr Westlock
knows, I have since lost by my sickness, and which was my only hope of
salvation from ruin), and what did it matter to me? He could get them
without my aid at half a hundred places, but not so easily as he could
get them of me. This was true. He might not want them at all, he said,
and he had no present idea of using them; but he wished to have them
by him. All this time he still read the newspaper. We talked about the
price. He was to forgive me a small debt--I was quite in his power--and
to pay me five pounds; and there the matter dropped, through others
coming in. But, next night, under exactly similar circumstances, I gave
him the drugs, on his saying I was a fool to think that he should ever
use them for any harm; and he gave me the money. We have never met
since. I only know that the poor old father died soon afterwards, just
as he would have died from this cause; and that I have undergone, and
suffer now, intolerable misery. Nothing' he added, stretching out his
hands, 'can paint my misery! It is well deserved, but nothing can paint
it.'
With that he hung his head, and said no more, wasted and wretched, he
was not a creature upon whom to heap reproaches that were unavailing.
'Let him remain at hand,' said Martin, turning from him; 'but out of
sight, in Heaven's name!'
'He will remain here,' John whispered. 'Come with me!' Softly turning
the key upon him as they went out, he conducted Martin into the
adjoining room, in which they had been before.
Martin was so amazed, so shocked, and confounded by what he had heard
that it was some time before he could reduce it to any order in his
mind, or could sufficiently comprehend the bearing of one part upon
another, to take in all the details at one view. When he, at length, had
the whole narrative clearly before him, John Westlock went on to point
out the great probability of the guilt of Jonas being known to other
people, who traded in it for their own benefit, and who were, by
such means, able to exert that control over him which Tom Pinch had
accidentally witnessed, and unconsciously assisted. This appeared so
plain, that they agreed upon it without difficulty; but instead of
deriving the least assistance from this source, they found that it
embarrassed them the more.
They knew nothing of the real parties who possessed this power. The only
person before them was Tom's landlord. They had no right to question
Tom's landlord, even if they could find him, which, according to Tom's
account, it would not be easy to do. And granting that they did question
him, and he answered (which was taking a good deal for granted), he had
only to say, with reference to the adventure on the wharf, that he had
been sent from such and such a place to summon Jonas back on urgent
business, and there was an end of it.
Besides, there was the great difficulty and responsibility of moving at
all in the matter. Lewsome's story might be false; in his wretched state
it might be greatly heightened by a diseased brain; or admitting it
to be entirely true, the old man might have died a natural death. Mr
Pecksniff had been there at the time; as Tom immediately remembered,
when he came back in the afternoon, and shared their counsels; and there
had been no secrecy about it. Martin's grandfather was of right the
person to decide upon the course that should be taken; but to get at his
views would be impossible, for Mr Pecksniff's views were certain to
be his. And the nature of Mr Pecksniff's views in reference to his own
son-in-law might be easily reckoned upon.
Apart from these considerations, Martin could not endure the thought
of seeming to grasp at this unnatural charge against his relative, and
using it as a stepping-stone to his grandfather's favour. But that he
would seem to do so, if he presented himself before his grandfather in
Mr Pecksniff's house again, for the purpose of declaring it; and that
Mr Pecksniff, of all men, would represent his conduct in that despicable
light, he perfectly well knew. On the other hand to be in possession of
such a statement, and take no measures of further inquiry in reference
to it, was tantamount to being a partner in the guilt it professed to
disclose.
In a word, they were wholly unable to discover any outlet from this maze
of difficulty, which did not lie through some perplexed and entangled
thicket. And although Mr Tapley was promptly taken into their
confidence; and the fertile imagination of that gentleman suggested many
bold expedients, which, to do him justice, he was quite ready to carry
into instant operation on his own personal responsibility; still 'bating
the general zeal of Mr Tapley's nature, nothing was made particularly
clearer by these offers of service.
It was in this position of affairs that Tom's account of the strange
behaviour of the decayed clerk, on the night of the tea-party, became
of great moment, and finally convinced them that to arrive at a more
accurate knowledge of the workings of that old man's mind and memory,
would be to take a most important stride in their pursuit of the truth.
So, having first satisfied themselves that no communication had ever
taken place between Lewsome and Mr Chuffey (which would have accounted
at once for any suspicions the latter might entertain), they unanimously
resolved that the old clerk was the man they wanted.
But, like the unanimous resolution of a public meeting, which will
oftentimes declare that this or that grievance is not to be borne
a moment longer, which is nevertheless borne for a century or two
afterwards, without any modification, they only reached in this the
conclusion that they were all of one mind. For it was one thing to want
Mr Chuffey, and another thing to get at him; and to do that without
alarming him, or without alarming Jonas, or without being discomfited
by the difficulty of striking, in an instrument so out of tune and so
unused, the note they sought, was an end as far from their reach as
ever.
The question then became, who of those about the old clerk had had most
influence with him that night? Tom said his young mistress clearly.
But Tom and all of them shrunk from the thought of entrapping her,
and making her the innocent means of bringing retribution on her cruel
husband. Was there nobody else? Why yes. In a very different way, Tom
said, he was influenced by Mrs Gamp, the nurse; who had once had the
control of him, as he understood, for some time.
They caught at this immediately. Here was a new way out, developed in a
quarter until then overlooked. John Westlock knew Mrs Gamp; he had given
her employment; he was acquainted with her place of residence: for that
good lady had obligingly furnished him, at parting, with a pack of her
professional cards for general distribution. It was decided that Mrs
Gamp should be approached with caution, but approached without delay;
and that the depths of that discreet matron's knowledge of Mr Chuffey,
and means of bringing them, or one of them, into communication with him,
should be carefully sounded.
On this service, Martin and John Westlock determined to proceed that
night; waiting on Mrs Gamp first, at her lodgings; and taking their
chance of finding her in the repose of private life, or of having to
seek her out, elsewhere, in the exercise of her professional duties. Tom
returned home, that he might lose no opportunity of having an interview
with Nadgett, by being absent in the event of his reappearance. And Mr
Tapley remained (by his own particular desire) for the time being in
Furnival's Inn, to look after Lewsome; who might safely have been left
to himself, however, for any thought he seemed to entertain of giving
them the slip.
Before they parted on their several errands, they caused him to read
aloud, in the presence of them all, the paper which he had about him,
and the declaration he had attached to it, which was to the effect that
he had written it voluntarily, in the fear of death and in the torture
of his mind. And when he had done so, they all signed it, and taking it
from him, of his free will, locked it in a place of safety.
Martin also wrote, by John's advice, a letter to the trustees of the
famous Grammar School, boldly claiming the successful design as his,
and charging Mr Pecksniff with the fraud he had committed. In this
proceeding also, John was hotly interested; observing, with his usual
irreverance, that Mr Pecksniff had been a successful rascal all his
life through, and that it would be a lasting source of happiness to him
(John) if he could help to do him justice in the smallest particular.
A busy day! But Martin had no lodgings yet; so when these matters were
disposed of, he excused himself from dining with John Westlock and was
fain to wander out alone, and look for some. He succeeded, after great
trouble, in engaging two garrets for himself and Mark, situated in a
court in the Strand, not far from Temple Bar. Their luggage, which was
waiting for them at a coach-office, he conveyed to this new place of
refuge; and it was with a glow of satisfaction, which as a selfish man
he never could have known and never had, that, thinking how much pains
and trouble he had saved Mark, and how pleased and astonished Mark would
be, he afterwards walked up and down, in the Temple, eating a meat-pie
for his dinner.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
IN WHICH MRS HARRIS ASSISTED BY A TEAPOT, IS THE CAUSE OF A DIVISION
BETWEEN FRIENDS
Mrs Gamp's apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, wore,
metaphorically speaking, a robe of state. It was swept and garnished for
the reception of a visitor. That visitor was Betsey Prig; Mrs Prig, of
Bartlemy's; or as some said Barklemy's, or as some said Bardlemy's; for
by all these endearing and familiar appellations, had the hospital of
Saint Bartholomew become a household word among the sisterhood which
Betsey Prig adorned.
Mrs Gamp's apartment was not a spacious one, but, to a contented mind,
a closet is a palace; and the first-floor front at Mr Sweedlepipe's may
have been, in the imagination of Mrs Gamp, a stately pile. If it were
not exactly that, to restless intellects, it at least comprised as much
accommodation as any person, not sanguine to insanity, could have looked
for in a room of its dimensions. For only keep the bedstead always in
your mind; and you were safe. That was the grand secret. Remembering the
bedstead, you might even stoop to look under the little round table
for anything you had dropped, without hurting yourself much against the
chest of drawers, or qualifying as a patient of Saint Bartholomew, by
falling into the fire.
Visitors were much assisted in their cautious efforts to preserve an
unflagging recollection of this piece of furniture, by its size; which
was great. It was not a turn-up bedstead, nor yet a French bedstead,
nor yet a four-post bedstead, but what is poetically called a tent; the
sacking whereof was low and bulgy, insomuch that Mrs Gamp's box would
not go under it, but stopped half-way, in a manner which, while it did
violence to the reason, likewise endangered the legs of a stranger. The
frame too, which would have supported the canopy and hangings if there
had been any, was ornamented with divers pippins carved in timber,
which on the slightest provocation, and frequently on none at all, came
tumbling down; harassing the peaceful guest with inexplicable terrors.
The bed itself was decorated with a patchwork quilt of great antiquity;
and at the upper end, upon the side nearest to the door, hung a scanty
curtain of blue check, which prevented the Zephyrs that were abroad in
Kingsgate Street, from visiting Mrs Gamp's head too roughly. Some rusty
gowns and other articles of that lady's wardrobe depended from the
posts; and these had so adapted themselves by long usage to her figure,
that more than one impatient husband coming in precipitately, at about
the time of twilight, had been for an instant stricken dumb by the
supposed discovery that Mrs Gamp had hanged herself. One gentleman,
coming on the usual hasty errand, had said indeed, that they looked like
guardian angels 'watching of her in her sleep.' But that, as Mrs Gamp
said, 'was his first;' and he never repeated the sentiment, though he
often repeated his visit.
The chairs in Mrs Gamp's apartment were extremely large and
broad-backed, which was more than a sufficient reason for there being
but two in number. They were both elbow-chairs, of ancient mahogany; and
were chiefly valuable for the slippery nature of their seats, which had
been originally horsehair, but were now covered with a shiny substance
of a bluish tint, from which the visitor began to slide away with a
dismayed countenance, immediately after sitting down. What Mrs Gamp
wanted in chairs she made up in bandboxes; of which she had a great
collection, devoted to the reception of various miscellaneous valuables,
which were not, however, as well protected as the good woman, by a
pleasant fiction, seemed to think; for, though every bandbox had a
carefully closed lid, not one among them had a bottom; owing to which
cause the property within was merely, as it were, extinguished. The
chest of drawers having been originally made to stand upon the top of
another chest, had a dwarfish, elfin look, alone; but in regard of its
security it had a great advantage over the bandboxes, for as all the
handles had been long ago pulled off, it was very difficult to get at
its contents. This indeed was only to be done by one or two devices;
either by tilting the whole structure forward until all the drawers fell
out together, or by opening them singly with knives, like oysters.
Mrs Gamp stored all her household matters in a little cupboard by the
fire-place; beginning below the surface (as in nature) with the coals,
and mounting gradually upwards to the spirits, which, from motives of
delicacy, she kept in a teapot. The chimney-piece was ornamented with
a small almanack, marked here and there in Mrs Gamp's own hand with a
memorandum of the date at which some lady was expected to fall due. It
was also embellished with three profiles: one, in colours, of Mrs Gamp
herself in early life; one, in bronze, of a lady in feathers, supposed
to be Mrs Harris, as she appeared when dressed for a ball; and one, in
black, of Mr Gamp, deceased. The last was a full length, in order
that the likeness might be rendered more obvious and forcible by the
introduction of the wooden leg.
A pair of bellows, a pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a
pap-boat, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory,
and lastly, Mrs Gamp's umbrella, which as something of great price
and rarity, was displayed with particular ostentation, completed the
decorations of the chimney-piece and adjacent wall. Towards these
objects Mrs Gamp raised her eyes in satisfaction when she had arranged
the tea-board, and had concluded her arrangements for the reception
of Betsey Prig, even unto the setting forth of two pounds of Newcastle
salmon, intensely pickled.
'There! Now drat you, Betsey, don't be long!' said Mrs Gamp,
apostrophizing her absent friend. 'For I can't abear to wait, I do
assure you. To wotever place I goes, I sticks to this one mortar, "I'm
easy pleased; it is but little as I wants; but I must have that little
of the best, and to the minute when the clock strikes, else we do not
part as I could wish, but bearin' malice in our arts."'
Her own preparations were of the best, for they comprehended a delicate
new loaf, a plate of fresh butter, a basin of fine white sugar, and
other arrangements on the same scale. Even the snuff with which she
now refreshed herself, was so choice in quality that she took a second
pinch.
'There's the little bell a-ringing now,' said Mrs Gamp, hurrying to
the stair-head and looking over. 'Betsey Prig, my--why it's that there
disapintin' Sweedlepipes, I do believe.'
'Yes, it's me,' said the barber in a faint voice; 'I've just come in.'
'You're always a-comin' in, I think,' muttered Mrs Gamp to herself,
'except wen you're a-goin' out. I ha'n't no patience with that man!'
'Mrs Gamp,' said the barber. 'I say! Mrs Gamp!'
'Well,' cried Mrs Gamp, impatiently, as she descended the stairs. 'What
is it? Is the Thames a-fire, and cooking its own fish, Mr Sweedlepipes?
Why wot's the man gone and been a-doin' of to himself? He's as white as
chalk!'
She added the latter clause of inquiry, when she got downstairs, and
found him seated in the shaving-chair, pale and disconsolate.
'You recollect,' said Poll. 'You recollect young--'
'Not young Wilkins!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'Don't say young Wilkins, wotever
you do. If young Wilkins's wife is took--'
'It isn't anybody's wife,' exclaimed the little barber. 'Bailey, young
Bailey!'
'Why, wot do you mean to say that chit's been a-doin' of?' retorted Mrs
Gamp, sharply. 'Stuff and nonsense, Mrs Sweedlepipes!'
'He hasn't been a-doing anything!' exclaimed poor Poll, quite desperate.
'What do you catch me up so short for, when you see me put out to that
extent that I can hardly speak? He'll never do anything again. He's done
for. He's killed. The first time I ever see that boy,' said Poll, 'I
charged him too much for a red-poll. I asked him three-halfpence for a
penny one, because I was afraid he'd beat me down. But he didn't.
And now he's dead; and if you was to crowd all the steam-engines and
electric fluids that ever was, into this shop, and set 'em every one to
work their hardest, they couldn't square the account, though it's only a
ha'penny!'
Mr Sweedlepipe turned aside to the towel, and wiped his eyes with it.
'And what a clever boy he was!' he said. 'What a surprising young chap
he was! How he talked! and what a deal he know'd! Shaved in this very
chair he was; only for fun; it was all his fun; he was full of it. Ah!
to think that he'll never be shaved in earnest! The birds might every
one have died, and welcome,' cried the little barber, looking round him
at the cages, and again applying to the towel, 'sooner than I'd have
heard this news!'
'How did you ever come to hear it?' said Mrs Gamp, 'who told you?'
'I went out,' returned the little barber, 'into the City, to meet a
sporting gent upon the Stock Exchange, that wanted a few slow pigeons to
practice at; and when I'd done with him, I went to get a little drop
of beer, and there I heard everybody a-talking about it. It's in the
papers.'
'You are in a nice state of confugion, Mr Sweedlepipes, you are!' said
Mrs Gamp, shaking her head; 'and my opinion is, as half-a-dudgeon fresh
young lively leeches on your temples, wouldn't be too much to clear your
mind, which so I tell you. Wot were they a-talkin' on, and wot was in
the papers?'
'All about it!' cried the barber. 'What else do you suppose? Him and his
master were upset on a journey, and he was carried to Salisbury, and
was breathing his last when the account came away. He never spoke
afterwards. Not a single word. That's the worst of it to me; but that
ain't all. His master can't be found. The other manager of their office
in the city, Crimple, David Crimple, has gone off with the money, and is
advertised for, with a reward, upon the walls. Mr Montague, poor young
Bailey's master (what a boy he was!) is advertised for, too. Some say
he's slipped off, to join his friend abroad; some say he mayn't have got
away yet; and they're looking for him high and low. Their office is a
smash; a swindle altogether. But what's a Life Assurance office to a
Life! And what a Life Young Bailey's was!'
'He was born into a wale,' said Mrs Gamp, with philosophical coolness.
'and he lived in a wale; and he must take the consequences of sech a
sitiwation. But don't you hear nothink of Mr Chuzzlewit in all this?'
'No,' said Poll, 'nothing to speak of. His name wasn't printed as one of
the board, though some people say it was just going to be. Some believe
he was took in, and some believe he was one of the takers-in; but
however that may be, they can't prove nothing against him. This morning
he went up of his own accord afore the Lord Mayor or some of them City
big-wigs, and complained that he'd been swindled, and that these two
persons had gone off and cheated him, and that he had just found out
that Montague's name wasn't even Montague, but something else. And they
do say that he looked like Death, owing to his losses. But, Lord
forgive me,' cried the barber, coming back again to the subject of
his individual grief, 'what's his looks to me! He might have died and
welcome, fifty times, and not been such a loss as Bailey!'
At this juncture the little bell rang, and the deep voice of Mrs Prig
struck into the conversation.
'Oh! You're a-talkin' about it, are you!' observed that lady. 'Well, I
hope you've got it over, for I ain't interested in it myself.'
'My precious Betsey,' said Mrs Gamp, 'how late you are!'
The worthy Mrs Prig replied, with some asperity, 'that if perwerse
people went off dead, when they was least expected, it warn't no fault
of her'n.' And further, 'that it was quite aggrawation enough to be made
late when one was dropping for one's tea, without hearing on it again.'
Mrs Gamp, deriving from this exhibition of repartee some clue to the
state of Mrs Prig's feelings, instantly conducted her upstairs; deeming
that the sight of pickled salmon might work a softening change.
But Betsey Prig expected pickled salmon. It was obvious that she did;
for her first words, after glancing at the table, were:
'I know'd she wouldn't have a cowcumber!'
Mrs Gamp changed colour, and sat down upon the bedstead.
'Lord bless you, Betsey Prig, your words is true. I quite forgot it!'
Mrs Prig, looking steadfastly at her friend, put her hand in her
pocket, and with an air of surly triumph drew forth either the oldest of
lettuces or youngest of cabbages, but at any rate, a green vegetable of
an expansive nature, and of such magnificent proportions that she was
obliged to shut it up like an umbrella before she could pull it out.
She also produced a handful of mustard and cress, a trifle of the herb
called dandelion, three bunches of radishes, an onion rather larger than
an average turnip, three substantial slices of beetroot, and a short
prong or antler of celery; the whole of this garden-stuff having been
publicly exhibited, but a short time before, as a twopenny salad, and
purchased by Mrs Prig on condition that the vendor could get it all into
her pocket. Which had been happily accomplished, in High Holborn, to
the breathless interest of a hackney-coach stand. And she laid so little
stress on this surprising forethought, that she did not even smile, but
returning her pocket into its accustomed sphere, merely recommended
that these productions of nature should be sliced up, for immediate
consumption, in plenty of vinegar.
'And don't go a-droppin' none of your snuff in it,' said Mrs Prig.
'In gruel, barley-water, apple-tea, mutton-broth, and that, it don't
signify. It stimulates a patient. But I don't relish it myself.'
'Why, Betsey Prig!' cried Mrs Gamp, 'how CAN you talk so!'
'Why, ain't your patients, wotever their diseases is, always asneezin'
their wery heads off, along of your snuff?' said Mrs Prig.
'And wot if they are!' said Mrs Gamp
'Nothing if they are,' said Mrs Prig. 'But don't deny it, Sairah.'
'Who deniges of it?' Mrs Gamp inquired.
Mrs Prig returned no answer.
'WHO deniges of it, Betsey?' Mrs Gamp inquired again. Then Mrs Gamp, by
reversing the question, imparted a deeper and more awful character of
solemnity to the same. 'Betsey, who deniges of it?'
It was the nearest possible approach to a very decided difference of
opinion between these ladies; but Mrs Prig's impatience for the meal
being greater at the moment than her impatience of contradiction, she
replied, for the present, 'Nobody, if you don't, Sairah,' and prepared
herself for tea. For a quarrel can be taken up at any time, but a
limited quantity of salmon cannot.
Her toilet was simple. She had merely to 'chuck' her bonnet and shawl
upon the bed; give her hair two pulls, one upon the right side and one
upon the left, as if she were ringing a couple of bells; and all was
done. The tea was already made, Mrs Gamp was not long over the salad,
and they were soon at the height of their repast.
The temper of both parties was improved, for the time being, by the
enjoyments of the table. When the meal came to a termination (which it
was pretty long in doing), and Mrs Gamp having cleared away, produced
the teapot from the top shelf, simultaneously with a couple of
wine-glasses, they were quite amiable.
'Betsey,' said Mrs Gamp, filling her own glass and passing the teapot,
'I will now propoge a toast. My frequent pardner, Betsey Prig!'
'Which, altering the name to Sairah Gamp; I drink,' said Mrs Prig, 'with
love and tenderness.'
From this moment symptoms of inflammation began to lurk in the nose of
each lady; and perhaps, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary,
in the temper also.
'Now, Sairah,' said Mrs Prig, 'joining business with pleasure, wot is
this case in which you wants me?'
Mrs Gamp betraying in her face some intention of returning an evasive
answer, Betsey added:
'IS it Mrs Harris?'
'No, Betsey Prig, it ain't,' was Mrs Gamp's reply.
'Well!' said Mrs Prig, with a short laugh. 'I'm glad of that, at any
rate.'
'Why should you be glad of that, Betsey?' Mrs Gamp retorted, warmly.
'She is unbeknown to you except by hearsay, why should you be glad? If
you have anythink to say contrairy to the character of Mrs Harris, which
well I knows behind her back, afore her face, or anywheres, is not to be
impeaged, out with it, Betsey. I have know'd that sweetest and best of
women,' said Mrs Gamp, shaking her head, and shedding tears, 'ever since
afore her First, which Mr Harris who was dreadful timid went and stopped
his ears in a empty dog-kennel, and never took his hands away or come
out once till he was showed the baby, wen bein' took with fits, the
doctor collared him and laid him on his back upon the airy stones, and
she was told to ease her mind, his owls was organs. And I have know'd
her, Betsey Prig, when he has hurt her feelin' art by sayin' of his
Ninth that it was one too many, if not two, while that dear innocent was
cooin' in his face, which thrive it did though bandy, but I have never
know'd as you had occagion to be glad, Betsey, on accounts of Mrs Harris
not requiring you. Require she never will, depend upon it, for her
constant words in sickness is, and will be, "Send for Sairey?"'
During this touching address, Mrs Prig adroitly feigning to be the
victim of that absence of mind which has its origin in excessive
attention to one topic, helped herself from the teapot without appearing
to observe it. Mrs Gamp observed it, however, and came to a premature
close in consequence.
'Well, it ain't her, it seems,' said Mrs Prig, coldly; 'who is it then?'
'You have heerd me mention, Betsey,' Mrs Gamp replied, after glancing in
an expressive and marked manner at the tea-pot, 'a person as I took
care on at the time as you and me was pardners off and on, in that there
fever at the Bull?'
'Old Snuffey,' Mrs Prig observed.
Sarah Gamp looked at her with an eye of fire, for she saw in this
mistake of Mrs Prig, another willful and malignant stab at that same
weakness or custom of hers, an ungenerous allusion to which, on the part
of Betsey, had first disturbed their harmony that evening. And she saw
it still more clearly, when, politely but firmly correcting that lady
by the distinct enunciation of the word 'Chuffey,' Mrs Prig received the
correction with a diabolical laugh.
The best among us have their failings, and it must be conceded of Mrs
Prig, that if there were a blemish in the goodness of her disposition,
it was a habit she had of not bestowing all its sharp and acid
properties upon her patients (as a thoroughly amiable woman would have
done), but of keeping a considerable remainder for the service of her
friends. Highly pickled salmon, and lettuces chopped up in vinegar,
may, as viands possessing some acidity of their own, have encouraged and
increased this failing in Mrs Prig; and every application to the teapot
certainly did; for it was often remarked of her by her friends, that
she was most contradictory when most elevated. It is certain that her
countenance became about this time derisive and defiant, and that she
sat with her arms folded, and one eye shut up, in a somewhat offensive,
because obstrusively intelligent, manner.
Mrs Gamp observing this, felt it the more necessary that Mrs Prig should
know her place, and be made sensible of her exact station in society, as
well as of her obligations to herself. She therefore assumed an air of
greater patronage and importance, as she went on to answer Mrs Prig a
little more in detail.
'Mr Chuffey, Betsey,' said Mrs Gamp, 'is weak in his mind. Excuge me
if I makes remark, that he may neither be so weak as people thinks, nor
people may not think he is so weak as they pretends, and what I knows,
I knows; and what you don't, you don't; so do not ask me, Betsey. But Mr
Chuffey's friends has made propojals for his bein' took care on, and has
said to me, "Mrs Gamp, WILL you undertake it? We couldn't think," they
says, "of trusting him to nobody but you, for, Sairey, you are gold as
has passed the furnage. Will you undertake it, at your own price, day
and night, and by your own self?" "No," I says, "I will not. Do not
reckon on it. There is," I says, "but one creetur in the world as I would
undertake on sech terms, and her name is Harris. But," I says, "I
am acquainted with a friend, whose name is Betsey Prig, that I can
recommend, and will assist me. Betsey," I says, "is always to be trusted
under me, and will be guided as I could desire."'
Here Mrs Prig, without any abatement of her offensive manner again
counterfeited abstraction of mind, and stretched out her hand to the
teapot. It was more than Mrs Gamp could bear. She stopped the hand of
Mrs Prig with her own, and said, with great feeling:
'No, Betsey! Drink fair, wotever you do!'
Mrs Prig, thus baffled, threw herself back in her chair, and closing the
same eye more emphatically, and folding her arms tighter, suffered her
head to roll slowly from side to side, while she surveyed her friend
with a contemptuous smile.
Mrs Gamp resumed:
'Mrs Harris, Betsey--'
'Bother Mrs Harris!' said Betsey Prig.
Mrs Gamp looked at her with amazement, incredulity, and indignation;
when Mrs Prig, shutting her eye still closer, and folding her arms still
tighter, uttered these memorable and tremendous words:
'I don't believe there's no sich a person!'
After the utterance of which expressions, she leaned forward, and
snapped her fingers once, twice, thrice; each time nearer to the face of
Mrs Gamp, and then rose to put on her bonnet, as one who felt that there
was now a gulf between them, which nothing could ever bridge across.
The shock of this blow was so violent and sudden, that Mrs Gamp sat
staring at nothing with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she
were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had put on her bonnet and
her shawl, and was gathering the latter about her throat. Then Mrs Gamp
rose--morally and physically rose--and denounced her.
'What!' said Mrs Gamp, 'you bage creetur, have I know'd Mrs Harris five
and thirty year, to be told at last that there ain't no sech a person
livin'! Have I stood her friend in all her troubles, great and small,
for it to come at last to sech a end as this, which her own sweet picter
hanging up afore you all the time, to shame your Bragian words! But well
you mayn't believe there's no sech a creetur, for she wouldn't demean
herself to look at you, and often has she said, when I have made mention
of your name, which, to my sinful sorrow, I have done, "What, Sairey
Gamp! debage yourself to HER!" Go along with you!'
'I'm a-goin', ma'am, ain't I?' said Mrs Prig, stopping as she said it.
'You had better, ma'am,' said Mrs Gamp.
'Do you know who you're talking to, ma'am?' inquired her visitor.
'Aperiently,' said Mrs Gamp, surveying her with scorn from head to foot,
'to Betsey Prig. Aperiently so. I know her. No one better. Go along with
you!'
'And YOU was a-goin' to take me under you!' cried Mrs Prig, surveying
Mrs Gamp from head to foot in her turn. 'YOU was, was you? Oh, how kind!
Why, deuce take your imperence,' said Mrs Prig, with a rapid change from
banter to ferocity, 'what do you mean?'
'Go along with you!' said Mrs Gamp. 'I blush for you.'
'You had better blush a little for yourself, while you ARE about it!'
said Mrs Prig. 'You and your Chuffeys! What, the poor old creetur isn't
mad enough, isn't he? Aha!'
'He'd very soon be mad enough, if you had anything to do with him,' said
Mrs Gamp.
'And that's what I was wanted for, is it?' cried Mrs Prig, triumphantly.
'Yes. But you'll find yourself deceived. I won't go near him. We shall
see how you get on without me. I won't have nothink to do with him.'
'You never spoke a truer word than that!' said Mrs Gamp. 'Go along with
you!'
She was prevented from witnessing the actual retirement of Mrs Prig from
the room, notwithstanding the great desire she had expressed to behold
it, by that lady, in her angry withdrawal, coming into contact with the
bedstead, and bringing down the previously mentioned pippins; three or
four of which came rattling on the head of Mrs Gamp so smartly, that
when she recovered from this wooden shower-bath, Mrs Prig was gone.
She had the satisfaction, however, of hearing the deep voice of Betsey,
proclaiming her injuries and her determination to have nothing to do
with Mr Chuffey, down the stairs, and along the passage, and even out in
Kingsgate Street. Likewise of seeing in her own apartment, in the place
of Mrs Prig, Mr Sweedlepipe and two gentlemen.
'Why, bless my life!' exclaimed the little barber, 'what's amiss? The
noise you ladies have been making, Mrs Gamp! Why, these two gentlemen
have been standing on the stairs, outside the door, nearly all the time,
trying to make you hear, while you were pelting away, hammer and tongs!
It'll be the death of the little bullfinch in the shop, that draws his
own water. In his fright, he's been a-straining himself all to bits,
drawing more water than he could drink in a twelvemonth. He must have
thought it was Fire!'
Mrs Gamp had in the meanwhile sunk into her chair, from whence, turning
up her overflowing eyes, and clasping her hands, she delivered the
following lamentation:
'Oh, Mr Sweedlepipes, which Mr Westlock also, if my eyes do not deceive,
and a friend not havin' the pleasure of bein' beknown, wot I have took
from Betsey Prig this blessed night, no mortial creetur knows! If she
had abuged me, bein' in liquor, which I thought I smelt her wen she
come, but could not so believe, not bein' used myself'--Mrs Gamp, by the
way, was pretty far gone, and the fragrance of the teapot was strong in
the room--'I could have bore it with a thankful art. But the words she
spoke of Mrs Harris, lambs could not forgive. No, Betsey!' said Mrs
Gamp, in a violent burst of feeling, 'nor worms forget!'
The little barber scratched his head, and shook it, and looked at the
teapot, and gradually got out of the room. John Westlock, taking a
chair, sat down on one side of Mrs Gamp. Martin, taking the foot of the
bed, supported her on the other.
'You wonder what we want, I daresay,' observed John. 'I'll tell you
presently, when you have recovered. It's not pressing, for a few minutes
or so. How do you find yourself? Better?'
Mrs Gamp shed more tears, shook her head and feebly pronounced Mrs
Harris's name.
'Have a little--' John was at a loss what to call it.
'Tea,' suggested Martin.
'It ain't tea,' said Mrs Gamp.
'Physic of some sort, I suppose,' cried John. 'Have a little.'
Mrs Gamp was prevailed upon to take a glassful. 'On condition,' she
passionately observed, 'as Betsey never has another stroke of work from
me.'
'Certainly not,' said John. 'She shall never help to nurse ME.'
'To think,' said Mrs Gamp, 'as she should ever have helped to nuss that
friend of yourn, and been so near of hearing things that--Ah!'
John looked at Martin.
'Yes,' he said. 'That was a narrow escape, Mrs Gamp.'
'Narrer, in-deed!' she returned. 'It was only my having the night, and
hearin' of him in his wanderins; and her the day, that saved it. Wot
would she have said and done, if she had know'd what I know; that
perfeejus wretch! Yet, oh good gracious me!' cried Mrs Gamp, trampling
on the floor, in the absence of Mrs Prig, 'that I should hear from that
same woman's lips what I have heerd her speak of Mrs Harris!'
'Never mind,' said John. 'You know it is not true.'
'Isn't true!' cried Mrs Gamp. 'True! Don't I know as that dear woman
is expecting of me at this minnit, Mr Westlock, and is a-lookin' out of
window down the street, with little Tommy Harris in her arms, as calls
me his own Gammy, and truly calls, for bless the mottled little legs
of that there precious child (like Canterbury Brawn his own dear father
says, which so they are) his own I have been, ever since I found him,
Mr Westlock, with his small red worsted shoe a-gurglin' in his throat,
where he had put it in his play, a chick, wile they was leavin' of
him on the floor a-lookin' for it through the ouse and him a-choakin'
sweetly in the parlour! Oh, Betsey Prig, what wickedness you've showed
this night, but never shall you darken Sairey's doors agen, you twining
serpiant!'
'You were always so kind to her, too!' said John, consolingly.
'That's the cutting part. That's where it hurts me, Mr Westlock,' Mrs
Gamp replied; holding out her glass unconsciously, while Martin filled
it.
'Chosen to help you with Mr Lewsome!' said John. 'Chosen to help you
with Mr Chuffey!'
'Chose once, but chose no more,' cried Mrs Gamp. 'No pardnership with
Betsey Prig agen, sir!'
'No, no,' said John. 'That would never do.'
'I don't know as it ever would have done, sir,' Mrs Gamp replied, with
a solemnity peculiar to a certain stage of intoxication. 'Now that the
marks,' by which Mrs Gamp is supposed to have meant mask, 'is off
that creetur's face, I do not think it ever would have done. There
are reagions in families for keeping things a secret, Mr Westlock, and
havin' only them about you as you knows you can repoge in. Who could
repoge in Betsey Prig, arter her words of Mrs Harris, setting in that
chair afore my eyes!'
'Quite true,' said John; 'quite. I hope you have time to find another
assistant, Mrs Gamp?'
Between her indignation and the teapot, her powers of comprehending what
was said to her began to fail. She looked at John with tearful eyes, and
murmuring the well-remembered name which Mrs Prig had challenged--as if
it were a talisman against all earthly sorrows--seemed to wander in her
mind.
'I hope,' repeated John, 'that you have time to find another assistant?'
'Which short it is, indeed,' cried Mrs Gamp, turning up her languid
eyes, and clasping Mr Westlock's wrist with matronly affection.
'To-morrow evenin', sir, I waits upon his friends. Mr Chuzzlewit apinted
it from nine to ten.'
'From nine to ten,' said John, with a significant glance at Martin. 'and
then Mr Chuffey retires into safe keeping, does he?'
'He needs to be kep safe, I do assure you,' Mrs Gamp replied with a
mysterious air. 'Other people besides me has had a happy deliverance
from Betsey Prig. I little know'd that woman. She'd have let it out!'
'Let HIM out, you mean,' said John.
'Do I!' retorted Mrs Gamp. 'Oh!'
The severely ironical character of this reply was strengthened by a very
slow nod, and a still slower drawing down of the corners of Mrs Gamp's
mouth. She added with extreme stateliness of manner after indulging in a
short doze:
'But I am a-keepin' of you gentlemen, and time is precious.'
Mingling with that delusion of the teapot which inspired her with
the belief that they wanted her to go somewhere immediately, a shrewd
avoidance of any further reference to the topics into which she had
lately strayed, Mrs Gamp rose; and putting away the teapot in its
accustomed place, and locking the cupboard with much gravity proceeded
to attire herself for a professional visit.
This preparation was easily made, as it required nothing more than
the snuffy black bonnet, the snuffy black shawl, the pattens and
the indispensable umbrella, without which neither a lying-in nor a
laying-out could by any possibility be attempted. When Mrs Gamp had
invested herself with these appendages she returned to her chair, and
sitting down again, declared herself quite ready.
'It's a 'appiness to know as one can benefit the poor sweet creetur,'
she observed, 'I'm sure. It isn't all as can. The torters Betsey Prig
inflicts is frightful!'
Closing her eyes as she made this remark, in the acuteness of her
commiseration for Betsey's patients, she forgot to open them again until
she dropped a patten. Her nap was also broken at intervals like the
fabled slumbers of Friar Bacon, by the dropping of the other patten,
and of the umbrella. But when she had got rid of those incumbrances, her
sleep was peaceful.
The two young men looked at each other, ludicrously enough; and Martin,
stifling his disposition to laugh, whispered in John Westlock's ear,
'What shall we do now?'
'Stay here,' he replied.
Mrs Gamp was heard to murmur 'Mrs Harris' in her sleep.
'Rely upon it,' whispered John, looking cautiously towards her, 'that
you shall question this old clerk, though you go as Mrs Harris herself.
We know quite enough to carry her our own way now, at all events; thanks
to this quarrel, which confirms the old saying that when rogues fall
out, honest people get what they want. Let Jonas Chuzzlewit look to
himself; and let her sleep as long as she likes. We shall gain our end
in good time.'
CHAPTER FIFTY
SURPRISES TOM PINCH VERY MUCH, AND SHOWS HOW CERTAIN CONFIDENCES PASSED
BETWEEN HIM AND HIS SISTER
It was the next evening; and Tom and his sister were sitting together
before tea, talking, in their usual quiet way, about a great many
things, but not at all about Lewsome's story or anything connected with
it; for John Westlock--really John, for so young a man, was one of the
most considerate fellows in the world--had particularly advised Tom not
to mention it to his sister just yet, in case it should disquiet her.
'And I wouldn't, Tom,' he said, with a little hesitation, 'I wouldn't
have a shadow on her happy face, or an uneasy thought in her gentle
heart, for all the wealth and honours of the universe!' Really John was
uncommonly kind; extraordinarily kind. If he had been her father, Tom
said, he could not have taken a greater interest in her.
But although Tom and his sister were extremely conversational, they were
less lively, and less cheerful, than usual. Tom had no idea that this
originated with Ruth, but took it for granted that he was rather dull
himself. In truth he was; for the lightest cloud upon the Heaven of her
quiet mind, cast its shadow upon Tom.
And there was a cloud on little Ruth that evening. Yes, indeed. When Tom
was looking in another direction, her bright eyes, stealing on towards
his face, would sparkle still more brightly than their custom was, and
then grow dim. When Tom was silent, looking out upon the summer weather,
she would sometimes make a hasty movement, as if she were about to throw
herself upon his neck; then check the impulse, and when he looked
round, show a laughing face, and speak to him very merrily; when she had
anything to give Tom, or had any excuse for coming near him, she would
flutter about him, and lay her bashful hand upon his shoulder, and not
be willing to withdraw it; and would show by all such means that there
was something on her heart which in her great love she longed to say to
him, but had not the courage to utter.
So they were sitting, she with her work before her, but not working, and
Tom with his book beside him, but not reading, when Martin knocked
at the door. Anticipating who it was, Tom went to open it; and he and
Martin came back into the room together. Tom looked surprised, for in
answer to his cordial greeting Martin had hardly spoken a word.
Ruth also saw that there was something strange in the manner of their
visitor, and raised her eyes inquiringly to Tom's face, as if she were
seeking an explanation there. Tom shook his head, and made the same mute
appeal to Martin.
Martin did not sit down but walked up to the window, and stood there
looking out. He turned round after a few moments to speak, but hastily
averted his head again, without doing so.
'What has happened, Martin?' Tom anxiously inquired. 'My dear fellow,
what bad news do you bring?'
'Oh, Tom!' replied Martin, in a tone of deep reproach. 'To hear you
feign that interest in anything that happens to me, hurts me even more
than your ungenerous dealing.'
'My ungenerous dealing! Martin! My--' Tom could say no more.
'How could you, Tom, how could you suffer me to thank you so fervently
and sincerely for your friendship; and not tell me, like a man, that you
had deserted me! Was it true, Tom! Was it honest! Was it worthy of what
you used to be--of what I am sure you used to be--to tempt me, when you
had turned against me, into pouring out my heart! Oh, Tom!'
His tone was one of such strong injury and yet of so much grief for the
loss of a friend he had trusted in--it expressed such high past love
for Tom, and so much sorrow and compassion for his supposed
unworthiness--that Tom, for a moment, put his hand before his face, and
had no more power of justifying himself, than if he had been a monster
of deceit and falsehood.
'I protest, as I must die,' said Martin, 'that I grieve over the loss
of what I thought you; and have no anger in the recollection of my own
injuries. It is only at such a time, and after such a discovery, that we
know the full measure of our old regard for the subject of it. I swear,
little as I showed it--little as I know I showed it--that when I had the
least consideration for you, Tom, I loved you like a brother.'
Tom was composed by this time, and might have been the Spirit of Truth,
in a homely dress--it very often wears a homely dress, thank God!--when
he replied to him.
'Martin,' he said, 'I don't know what is in your mind, or who has abused
it, or by what extraordinary means. But the means are false. There is
no truth whatever in the impression under which you labour. It is a
delusion from first to last; and I warn you that you will deeply regret
the wrong you do me. I can honestly say that I have been true to you,
and to myself. You will be very sorry for this. Indeed, you will be very
sorry for it, Martin.'
'I AM sorry,' returned Martin, shaking his head. 'I think I never knew
what it was to be sorry in my heart, until now.'
'At least,' said Tom, 'if I had always been what you charge me with
being now, and had never had a place in your regard, but had always been
despised by you, and had always deserved it, you should tell me in what
you have found me to be treacherous; and on what grounds you proceed. I
do not intreat you, therefore, to give me that satisfaction as a favour,
Martin, but I ask it of you as a right.'
'My own eyes are my witnesses,' returned Martin. 'Am I to believe them?'
'No,' said Tom, calmly. 'Not if they accuse me.'
'Your own words. Your own manner,' pursued Martin. 'Am I to believe
THEM?'
'No,' replied Tom, calmly. 'Not if they accuse me. But they never have
accused me. Whoever has perverted them to such a purpose, has wronged
me almost as cruelly'--his calmness rather failed him here--'as you have
done.'
'I came here,' said Martin; 'and I appeal to your good sister to hear
me--'
'Not to her,' interrupted Tom. 'Pray, do not appeal to her. She will
never believe you.'
He drew her arm through his own, as he said it.
'I believe it, Tom!'
'No, no,' cried Tom, 'of course not. I said so. Why, tut, tut, tut. What
a silly little thing you are!'
'I never meant,' said Martin, hastily, 'to appeal to you against your
brother. Do not think me so unmanly and unkind. I merely appealed to you
to hear my declaration, that I came here for no purpose of reproach--I
have not one reproach to vent--but in deep regret. You could not know in
what bitterness of regret, unless you knew how often I have thought of
Tom; how long in almost hopeless circumstances, I have looked forward
to the better estimation of his friendship; and how steadfastly I have
believed and trusted in him.'
'Tut, tut,' said Tom, stopping her as she was about to speak. 'He is
mistaken. He is deceived. Why should you mind? He is sure to be set
right at last.'
'Heaven bless the day that sets me right!' cried Martin, 'if it could
ever come!'
'Amen!' said Tom. 'And it will!'
Martin paused, and then said in a still milder voice:
'You have chosen for yourself, Tom, and will be relieved by our parting.
It is not an angry one. There is no anger on my side--'
'There is none on mine,' said Tom.
'--It is merely what you have brought about, and worked to bring about.
I say again, you have chosen for yourself. You have made the choice that
might have been expected in most people situated as you are, but which I
did not expect in you. For that, perhaps, I should blame my own judgment
more than you. There is wealth and favour worth having, on one side; and
there is the worthless friendship of an abandoned, struggling fellow, on
the other. You were free to make your election, and you made it; and the
choice was not difficult. But those who have not the courage to resist
such temptations, should have the courage to avow what they have yielded
to them; and I DO blame you for this, Tom: that you received me with a
show of warmth, encouraged me to be frank and plain-spoken, tempted me
to confide in you, and professed that you were able to be mine; when
you had sold yourself to others. I do not believe,' said Martin, with
emotion--'hear me say it from my heart--I CANNOT believe, Tom, now that
I am standing face to face with you, that it would have been in your
nature to do me any serious harm, even though I had not discovered, by
chance, in whose employment you were. But I should have encumbered you;
I should have led you into more double-dealing; I should have hazarded
your retaining the favour for which you have paid so high a price,
bartering away your former self; and it is best for both of us that I
have found out what you so much desired to keep secret.'
'Be just,' said Tom; who, had not removed his mild gaze from Martin's
face since the commencement of this last address; 'be just even in
your injustice, Martin. You forget. You have not yet told me what your
accusation is!'
'Why should I?' returned Martin, waving his hand, and moving towards
the door. 'You could not know it the better for my dwelling on it, and
though it would be really none the worse, it might seem to me to be.
No, Tom. Bygones shall be bygones between us. I can take leave of you
at this moment, and in this place--in which you are so amiable and so
good--as heartily, if not as cheerfully, as ever I have done since we
first met. All good go with you, Tom!--I--'
'You leave me so? You can leave me so, can you?' said Tom.
'I--you--you have chosen for yourself, Tom! I--I hope it was a rash
choice,' Martin faltered. 'I think it was. I am sure it was! Good-bye!'
And he was gone.
Tom led his little sister to her chair, and sat down in his own. He took
his book, and read, or seemed to read. Presently he said aloud, turning
a leaf as he spoke: 'He will be very sorry for this.' And a tear stole
down his face, and dropped upon the page.
Ruth nestled down beside him on her knees, and clasped her arms about
his neck.
'No, Tom! No, no! Be comforted! Dear Tom!'
'I am quite--comforted,' said Tom. 'It will be set right.'
'Such a cruel, bad return!' cried Ruth.
'No, no,' said Tom. 'He believes it. I cannot imagine why. But it will
be set right.'
More closely yet, she nestled down about him; and wept as if her heart
would break.
'Don't. Don't,' said Tom. 'Why do you hide your face, my dear!'
Then in a burst of tears, it all broke out at last.
'Oh Tom, dear Tom, I know your secret heart. I have found it out; you
couldn't hide the truth from me. Why didn't you tell me? I am sure I
could have made you happier, if you had! You love her, Tom, so dearly!'
Tom made a motion with his hand as if he would have put his sister
hurriedly away; but it clasped upon hers, and all his little history
was written in the action. All its pathetic eloquence was in the silent
touch.
'In spite of that,' said Ruth, 'you have been so faithful and so good,
dear; in spite of that, you have been so true and self-denying, and have
struggled with yourself; in spite of that, you have been so gentle,
and so kind, and even-tempered, that I have never seen you give a hasty
look, or heard you say one irritable word. In spite of all, you have
been so cruelly mistaken. Oh Tom, dear Tom, will THIS be set right too!
Will it, Tom? Will you always have this sorrow in your breast; you who
deserve to be so happy; or is there any hope?'
And still she hid her face from Tom, and clasped him round the neck,
and wept for him, and poured out all her woman's heart and soul in the
relief and pain of this disclosure.
It was not very long before she and Tom were sitting side by side, and
she was looking with an earnest quietness in Tom's face. Then Tom spoke
to her thus, cheerily, though gravely:
'I am very glad, my dear, that this has passed between us. Not because
it assures me of your tender affection (for I was well assured of that
before), but because it relieves my mind of a great weight.'
Tom's eyes glistened when he spoke of her affection; and he kissed her
on the cheek.
'My dear girl,' said Tom; 'with whatever feeling I regard her'--they
seemed to avoid the name by mutual consent--'I have long ago--I am sure
I may say from the very first--looked upon it as a dream. As something
that might possibly have happened under very different circumstances,
but which can never be. Now, tell me. What would you have set right?'
She gave Tom such a significant little look, that he was obliged to take
it for an answer whether he would or no; and to go on.
'By her own choice and free consent, my love, she is betrothed to
Martin; and was, long before either of them knew of my existence. You
would have her betrothed to me?'
'Yes,' she said directly.
'Yes,' rejoined Tom, 'but that might be setting it wrong, instead of
right. Do you think,' said Tom, with a grave smile, 'that even if she
had never seen him, it is very likely she would have fallen in love with
Me?'
'Why not, dear Tom?'
Tom shook his head, and smiled again.
'You think of me, Ruth,' said Tom, 'and it is very natural that you
should, as if I were a character in a book; and you make it a sort of
poetical justice that I should, by some impossible means or other, come,
at last, to marry the person I love. But there is a much higher justice
than poetical justice, my dear, and it does not order events upon the
same principle. Accordingly, people who read about heroes in books, and
choose to make heroes of themselves out of books, consider it a very
fine thing to be discontented and gloomy, and misanthropical, and
perhaps a little blasphemous, because they cannot have everything
ordered for their individual accommodation. Would you like me to become
one of that sort of people?'
'No, Tom. But still I know,' she added timidly, 'that this is a sorrow
to you in your own better way.'
Tom thought of disputing the position. But it would have been mere
folly, and he gave it up.
'My dear,' said Tom, 'I will repay your affection with the Truth and all
the Truth. It is a sorrow to me. I have proved it to be so sometimes,
though I have always striven against it. But somebody who is precious to
you may die, and you may dream that you are in heaven with the departed
spirit, and you may find it a sorrow to wake to the life on earth, which
is no harder to be borne than when you fell asleep. It is sorrowful to
me to contemplate my dream which I always knew was a dream, even when
it first presented itself; but the realities about me are not to blame.
They are the same as they were. My sister, my sweet companion, who makes
this place so dear, is she less devoted to me, Ruth, than she would
have been, if this vision had never troubled me? My old friend John, who
might so easily have treated me with coldness and neglect, is he less
cordial to me? The world about me, is there less good in that? Are my
words to be harsh and my looks to be sour, and is my heart to grow cold,
because there has fallen in my way a good and beautiful creature, who
but for the selfish regret that I cannot call her my own, would, like
all other good and beautiful creatures, make me happier and better!
No, my dear sister. No,' said Tom stoutly. 'Remembering all my means of
happiness, I hardly dare to call this lurking something a sorrow; but
whatever name it may justly bear, I thank Heaven that it renders me more
sensible of affection and attachment, and softens me in fifty ways. Not
less happy. Not less happy, Ruth!'
She could not speak to him, but she loved him, as he well deserved. Even
as he deserved, she loved him.
'She will open Martin's eyes,' said Tom, with a glow of pride, 'and that
(which is indeed wrong) will be set right. Nothing will persuade her, I
know, that I have betrayed him. It will be set right through her, and he
will be very sorry for it. Our secret, Ruth, is our own, and lives and
dies with us. I don't believe I ever could have told it you,' said Tom,
with a smile, 'but how glad I am to think you have found it out!'
They had never taken such a pleasant walk as they took that night. Tom
told her all so freely and so simply, and was so desirous to return
her tenderness with his fullest confidence, that they prolonged it far
beyond their usual hour, and sat up late when they came home. And
when they parted for the night there was such a tranquil, beautiful
expression in Tom's face, that she could not bear to shut it out, but
going back on tiptoe to his chamber-door, looked in and stood there till
he saw her, and then embracing him again, withdrew. And in her prayers
and in her sleep--good times to be remembered with such fervour,
Tom!--his name was uppermost.
When he was left alone, Tom pondered very much on this discovery of
hers, and greatly wondered what had led her to it. 'Because,' thought
Tom, 'I have been so very careful. It was foolish and unnecessary in
me, as I clearly see now, when I am so relieved by her knowing it; but I
have been so very careful to conceal it from her. Of course I knew that
she was intelligent and quick, and for that reason was more upon my
guard; but I was not in the least prepared for this. I am sure her
discovery has been sudden too. Dear me!' said Tom. 'It's a most singular
instance of penetration!'
Tom could not get it out of his head. There it was, when his head was on
his pillow.
'How she trembled when she began to tell me she knew it!' thought Tom,
recalling all the little incidents and circumstances; 'and how her
face flushed! But that was natural! Oh, quite natural! That needs no
accounting for.'
Tom little thought how natural it was. Tom little knew that there was
that in Ruth's own heart, but newly set there, which had helped her to
the reading of his mystery. Ah, Tom! He didn't understand the whispers
of the Temple Fountain, though he passed it every day.
Who so lively and cheerful as busy Ruth next morning! Her early tap at
Tom's door, and her light foot outside, would have been music to him
though she had not spoken. But she said it was the brightest morning
ever seen; and so it was; and if it had been otherwise, she would have
made it so to Tom.
She was ready with his neat breakfast when he went downstairs, and had
her bonnet ready for the early walk, and was so full of news, that Tom
was lost in wonder. She might have been up all night, collecting it for
his entertainment. There was Mr Nadgett not come home yet, and there was
bread down a penny a loaf, and there was twice as much strength in this
tea as in the last, and the milk-woman's husband had come out of the
hospital cured, and the curly-headed child over the way had been lost
all yesterday, and she was going to make all sorts of preserves in a
desperate hurry, and there happened to be a saucepan in the house which
was the very saucepan for the purpose; and she knew all about the last
book Tom had brought home, all through, though it was a teaser to read;
and she had so much to tell him that she had finished breakfast first.
Then she had her little bonnet on, and the tea and sugar locked up, and
the keys in her reticule, and the flower, as usual, in Tom's coat, and
was in all respects quite ready to accompany him, before Tom knew she
had begun to prepare. And in short, as Tom said, with a confidence in
his own assertion which amounted to a defiance of the public in general,
there never was such a little woman.
She made Tom talkative. It was impossible to resist her. She put such
enticing questions to him; about books, and about dates of churches,
and about organs and about the Temple, and about all kinds of things.
Indeed, she lightened the way (and Tom's heart with it) to that degree,
that the Temple looked quite blank and solitary when he parted from her
at the gate.
'No Mr Fips's friend to-day, I suppose,' thought Tom, as he ascended the
stairs.
Not yet, at any rate, for the door was closed as usual, and Tom opened
it with his key. He had got the books into perfect order now, and
had mended the torn leaves, and had pasted up the broken backs, and
substituted neat labels for the worn-out letterings. It looked a
different place, it was so orderly and neat. Tom felt some pride in
comtemplating the change he had wrought, though there was no one to
approve or disapprove of it.
He was at present occupied in making a fair copy of his draught of
the catalogue; on which, as there was no hurry, he was painfully
concentrating all the ingenious and laborious neatness he had ever
expended on map or plan in Mr Pecksniff's workroom. It was a very marvel
of a catalogue; for Tom sometimes thought he was really getting his
money too easily, and he had determined within himself that this
document should take a little of his superfluous leisure out of him.
So with pens and ruler, and compasses and india-rubber, and pencil, and
black ink, and red ink, Tom worked away all the morning. He thought a
good deal about Martin, and their interview of yesterday, and would have
been far easier in his mind if he could have resolved to confide it
to his friend John, and to have taken his opinion on the subject.
But besides that he knew what John's boiling indignation would be, he
bethought himself that he was helping Martin now in a matter of great
moment, and that to deprive the latter of his assistance at such a
crisis of affairs, would be to inflict a serious injury upon him.
'So I'll keep it to myself,' said Tom, with a sigh. 'I'll keep it to
myself.'
And to work he went again, more assiduously than ever, with the pens,
and the ruler, and the india-rubber, and the pencils, and the red ink,
that he might forget it.
He had laboured away another hour or more, when he heard a footstep in
the entry, down below.
'Ah!' said Tom, looking towards the door; 'time was, not long ago
either, when that would have set me wondering and expecting. But I have
left off now.'
The footstep came on, up the stairs.
'Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight,' said Tom, counting. 'Now
you'll stop. Nobody ever comes past the thirty-eighth stair.'
The person did, certainly, but only to take breath; for up the footstep
came again. Forty, forty-one, forty-two, and so on.
The door stood open. As the tread advanced, Tom looked impatiently and
eagerly towards it. When a figure came upon the landing, and arriving
in the doorway, stopped and gazed at him, he rose up from his chair, and
half believed he saw a spirit.
Old Martin Chuzzlewit! The same whom he had left at Mr Pecksniff's, weak
and sinking!
The same? No, not the same, for this old man, though old, was strong,
and leaned upon his stick with a vigorous hand, while with the other
he signed to Tom to make no noise. One glance at the resolute face, the
watchful eye, the vigorous hand upon the staff, the triumphant purpose
in the figure, and such a light broke in on Tom as blinded him.
'You have expected me,' said Martin, 'a long time.'
'I was told that my employer would arrive soon,' said Tom; 'but--'
'I know. You were ignorant who he was. It was my desire. I am glad it
has been so well observed. I intended to have been with you much sooner.
I thought the time had come. I thought I could know no more, and no
worse, of him, than I did on that day when I saw you last. But I was
wrong.'
He had by this time come up to Tom, and now he grasped his hand.
'I have lived in his house, Pinch, and had him fawning on me days and
weeks and months. You know it. I have suffered him to treat me like
his tool and instrument. You know it; you have seen me there. I have
undergone ten thousand times as much as I could have endured if I had
been the miserable weak old man he took me for. You know it. I have seen
him offer love to Mary. You know it; who better--who better, my true
heart! I have had his base soul bare before me, day by day, and have not
betrayed myself once. I never could have undergone such torture but for
looking forward to this time.'
He stopped, even in the passion of his speech--if that can be called
passion which was so resolute and steady--to press Tom's hand again.
Then he said, in great excitement:
'Close the door, close the door. He will not be long after me, but
may come too soon. The time now drawing on,' said the old man,
hurriedly--his eyes and whole face brightening as he spoke--'will make
amends for all. I wouldn't have him die or hang himself, for millions of
golden pieces! Close the door!'
Tom did so; hardly knowing yet whether he was awake or in a dream.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
SHEDS NEW AND BRIGHTER LIGHT UPON THE VERY DARK PLACE; AND CONTAINS THE
SEQUEL OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
The night had now come, when the old clerk was to be delivered over
to his keepers. In the midst of his guilty distractions, Jonas had not
forgotten it.
It was a part of his guilty state of mind to remember it; for on his
persistence in the scheme depended one of his precautions for his own
safety. A hint, a word, from the old man, uttered at such a moment in
attentive ears, might fire the train of suspicion, and destroy him. His
watchfulness of every avenue by which the discovery of his guilt might
be approached, sharpened with his sense of the danger by which he was
encompassed. With murder on his soul, and its innumerable alarms and
terrors dragging at him night and day, he would have repeated the crime,
if he had seen a path of safety stretching out beyond. It was in his
punishment; it was in his guilty condition. The very deed which his
fears rendered insupportable, his fears would have impelled him to
commit again.
But keeping the old man close, according to his design, would serve his
turn. His purpose was to escape, when the first alarm and wonder had
subsided; and when he could make the attempt without awakening instant
suspicion. In the meanwhile these women would keep him quiet; and if
the talking humour came upon him, would not be easily startled. He knew
their trade.
Nor had he spoken idly when he said the old man should be gagged. He had
resolved to ensure his silence; and he looked to the end, not the means.
He had been rough and rude and cruel to the old man all his life; and
violence was natural to his mind in connection with him. 'He shall be
gagged if he speaks, and pinioned if he writes,' said Jonas, looking at
him; for they sat alone together. 'He is mad enough for that; I'll go
through with it!'
Hush!
Still listening! To every sound. He had listened ever since, and it
had not come yet. The exposure of the Assurance office; the flight of
Crimple and Bullamy with the plunder, and among the rest, as he feared,
with his own bill, which he had not found in the pocket-book of the
murdered man, and which with Mr Pecksniff's money had probably been
remitted to one or other of those trusty friends for safe deposit at the
banker's; his immense losses, and peril of being still called to account
as a partner in the broken firm; all these things rose in his mind at
one time and always, but he could not contemplate them. He was aware of
their presence, and of the rage, discomfiture, and despair, they brought
along with them; but he thought--of his own controlling power and
direction he thought--of the one dread question only. When they would
find the body in the wood.
He tried--he had never left off trying--not to forget it was there, for
that was impossible, but to forget to weary himself by drawing vivid
pictures of it in his fancy; by going softly about it and about it
among the leaves, approaching it nearer and nearer through a gap in the
boughs, and startling the very flies that were thickly sprinkled all
over it, like heaps of dried currants. His mind was fixed and fastened
on the discovery, for intelligence of which he listened intently to
every cry and shout; listened when any one came in or went out; watched
from the window the people who passed up and down the street; mistrusted
his own looks and words. And the more his thoughts were set upon the
discovery, the stronger was the fascination which attracted them to
the thing itself; lying alone in the wood. He was for ever showing and
presenting it, as it were, to every creature whom he saw. 'Look here!
Do you know of this? Is it found? Do you suspect ME?' If he had been
condemned to bear the body in his arms, and lay it down for recognition
at the feet of every one he met, it could not have been more constantly
with him, or a cause of more monotonous and dismal occupation than it
was in this state of his mind.
Still he was not sorry. It was no contrition or remorse for what he had
done that moved him; it was nothing but alarm for his own security. The
vague consciousness he possessed of having wrecked his fortune in the
murderous venture, intensified his hatred and revenge, and made him set
the greater store by what he had gained The man was dead; nothing could
undo that. He felt a triumph yet, in the reflection.
He had kept a jealous watch on Chuffey ever since the deed; seldom
leaving him but on compulsion, and then for as short intervals as
possible. They were alone together now. It was twilight, and the
appointed time drew near at hand. Jonas walked up and down the room. The
old man sat in his accustomed corner.
The slightest circumstance was matter of disquiet to the murderer, and
he was made uneasy at this time by the absence of his wife, who had left
home early in the afternoon, and had not returned yet. No tenderness
for her was at the bottom of this; but he had a misgiving that she
might have been waylaid, and tempted into saying something that would
criminate him when the news came. For anything he knew, she might have
knocked at the door of his room, while he was away, and discovered his
plot. Confound her, it was like her pale face to be wandering up and
down the house! Where was she now?
'She went to her good friend, Mrs Todgers,' said the old man, when he
asked the question with an angry oath.
Aye! To be sure! Always stealing away into the company of that woman.
She was no friend of his. Who could tell what devil's mischief they
might hatch together! Let her be fetched home directly.
The old man, muttering some words softly, rose as if he would have gone
himself, but Jonas thrust him back into his chair with an impatient
imprecation, and sent a servant-girl to fetch her. When he had charged
her with her errand he walked to and fro again, and never stopped till
she came back, which she did pretty soon; the way being short, and the
woman having made good haste.
Well! Where was she? Had she come?
No. She had left there, full three hours.
'Left there! Alone?'
The messenger had not asked; taking that for granted.
'Curse you for a fool. Bring candles!'
She had scarcely left the room when the old clerk, who had been
unusually observant of him ever since he had asked about his wife, came
suddenly upon him.
'Give her up!' cried the old man. 'Come! Give her up to me! Tell me what
you have done with her. Quick! I have made no promises on that score.
Tell me what you have done with her.'
He laid his hands upon his collar as he spoke, and grasped it; tightly
too.
'You shall not leave me!' cried the old man. 'I am strong enough to cry
out to the neighbours, and I will, unless you give her up. Give her up
to me!'
Jonas was so dismayed and conscience-stricken, that he had not even
hardihood enough to unclench the old man's hands with his own; but stood
looking at him as well as he could in the darkness, without moving a
finger. It was as much as he could do to ask him what he meant.
'I will know what you have done with her!' retorted Chuffey. 'If you
hurt a hair of her head, you shall answer it. Poor thing! Poor thing!
Where is she?'
'Why, you old madman!' said Jonas, in a low voice, and with trembling
lips. 'What Bedlam fit has come upon you now?'
'It is enough to make me mad, seeing what I have seen in this house!'
cried Chuffey. 'Where is my dear old master! Where is his only son that
I have nursed upon my knee, a child! Where is she, she who was the last;
she that I've seen pining day by day, and heard weeping in the dead of
night! She was the last, the last of all my friends! Heaven help me, she
was the very last!'
Seeing that the tears were stealing down his face, Jonas mustered
courage to unclench his hands, and push him off before he answered:
'Did you hear me ask for her? Did you hear me send for her? How can I
give you up what I haven't got, idiot! Ecod, I'd give her up to you and
welcome, if I could; and a precious pair you'd be!'
'If she has come to any harm,' cried Chuffey, 'mind! I'm old and silly;
but I have my memory sometimes; and if she has come to any harm--'
'Devil take you,' interrupted Jonas, but in a suppressed voice still;
'what harm do you suppose she has come to? I know no more where she is
than you do; I wish I did. Wait till she comes home, and see; she can't
be long. Will that content you?'
'Mind!' exclaimed the old man. 'Not a hair of her head! not a hair of
her head ill-used! I won't bear it. I--I--have borne it too long Jonas.
I am silent, but I--I--I can speak. I--I--I can speak--' he stammered,
as he crept back to his chair, and turned a threatening, though a
feeble, look upon him.
'You can speak, can you!' thought Jonas. 'So, so, we'll stop your
speaking. It's well I knew of this in good time. Prevention is better
than cure.'
He had made a poor show of playing the bully and evincing a desire to
conciliate at the same time, but was so afraid of the old man that
great drops had started out upon his brow; and they stood there yet. His
unusual tone of voice and agitated manner had sufficiently expressed his
fear; but his face would have done so now, without that aid, as he again
walked to and fro, glancing at him by the candelight.
He stopped at the window to think. An opposite shop was lighted up; and
the tradesman and a customer were reading some printed bill together
across the counter. The sight brought him back, instantly, to the
occupation he had forgotten. 'Look here! Do you know of this? Is it
found? Do you suspect ME?'
A hand upon the door. 'What's that!'
'A pleasant evenin',' said the voice of Mrs Gamp, 'though warm, which,
bless you, Mr Chuzzlewit, we must expect when cowcumbers is three for
twopence. How does Mr Chuffey find his self to-night, sir?'
Mrs Gamp kept particularly close to the door in saying this, and
curtseyed more than usual. She did not appear to be quite so much at her
ease as she generally was.
'Get him to his room,' said Jonas, walking up to her, and speaking in
her ear. 'He has been raving to-night--stark mad. Don't talk while he's
here, but come down again.'
'Poor sweet dear!' cried Mrs Gamp, with uncommon tenderness. 'He's all
of a tremble.'
'Well he may be,' said Jonas, 'after the mad fit he has had. Get him
upstairs.'
She was by this time assisting him to rise.
'There's my blessed old chick!' cried Mrs Gamp, in a tone that was at
once soothing and encouraging. 'There's my darlin' Mr Chuffey! Now come
up to your own room, sir, and lay down on your bed a bit; for you're
a-shakin' all over, as if your precious jints was hung upon wires.
That's a good creetur! Come with Sairey!'
'Is she come home?' inquired the old man.
'She'll be here directly minit,' returned Mrs Gamp. 'Come with Sairey,
Mr Chuffey. Come with your own Sairey!'
The good woman had no reference to any female in the world in promising
this speedy advent of the person for whom Mr Chuffey inquired, but
merely threw it out as a means of pacifying the old man. It had its
effect, for he permitted her to lead him away; and they quitted the room
together.
Jonas looked out of the window again. They were still reading the
printed paper in the shop opposite, and a third man had joined in the
perusal. What could it be, to interest them so?'
A dispute or discussion seemed to arise among them, for they all looked
up from their reading together, and one of the three, who had been
glancing over the shoulder of another, stepped back to explain or
illustrate some action by his gestures.
Horror! How like the blow he had struck in the wood!
It beat him from the window as if it had lighted on himself. As he
staggered into a chair, he thought of the change in Mrs Gamp exhibited
in her new-born tenderness to her charge. Was that because it was
found?--because she knew of it?--because she suspected him?
'Mr Chuffey is a-lyin' down,' said Mrs Gamp, returning, 'and much good
may it do him, Mr Chuzzlewit, which harm it can't and good it may; be
joyful!'
'Sit down,' said Jonas, hoarsely, 'and let us get this business done.
Where is the other woman?'
'The other person's with him now,' she answered.
'That's right,' said Jonas. 'He is not fit to be left to himself. Why,
he fastened on me to-night; here, upon my coat; like a savage dog. Old
as he is, and feeble as he is usually, I had some trouble to shake him
off. You--Hush!--It's nothing. You told me the other woman's name. I
forget it.'
'I mentioned Betsey Prig,' said Mrs Gamp.
'She is to be trusted, is she?'
'That she ain't!' said Mrs Gamp; 'nor have I brought her, Mr Chuzzlewit.
I've brought another, which engages to give every satigefaction.'
'What is her name?' asked Jonas.
Mrs Gamp looked at him in an odd way without returning any answer, but
appeared to understand the question too.
'What is her name?' repeated Jonas.
'Her name,' said Mrs Gamp, 'is Harris.'
It was extraordinary how much effort it cost Mrs Gamp to pronounce the
name she was commonly so ready with. She made some three or four gasps
before she could get it out; and, when she had uttered it, pressed her
hand upon her side, and turned up her eyes, as if she were going to
faint away. But, knowing her to labour under a complication of internal
disorders, which rendered a few drops of spirits indispensable at
certain times to her existence, and which came on very strong when that
remedy was not at hand, Jonas merely supposed her to be the victim of
one of these attacks.
'Well!' he said, hastily, for he felt how incapable he was of confining
his wandering attention to the subject. 'You and she have arranged to
take care of him, have you?'
Mrs Gamp replied in the affirmative, and softly discharged herself of
her familiar phrase, 'Turn and turn about; one off, one on.' But
she spoke so tremulously that she felt called upon to add, 'which
fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this night!'
Jonas stopped to listen. Then said, hurriedly:
'We shall not quarrel about terms. Let them be the same as they were
before. Keep him close, and keep him quiet. He must be restrained.
He has got it in his head to-night that my wife's dead, and has been
attacking me as if I had killed her. It's--it's common with mad people
to take the worst fancies of those they like best. Isn't it?'
Mrs Gamp assented with a short groan.
'Keep him close, then, or in one of his fits he'll be doing me a
mischief. And don't trust him at any time; for when he seems most
rational, he's wildest in his talk. But that you know already. Let me
see the other.'
'The t'other person, sir?' said Mrs Gamp.
'Aye! Go you to him and send the other. Quick! I'm busy.'
Mrs Gamp took two or three backward steps towards the door, and stopped
there.
'It is your wishes, Mr Chuzzlewit,' she said, in a sort of quavering
croak, 'to see the t'other person. Is it?'
But the ghastly change in Jonas told her that the other person was
already seen. Before she could look round towards the door, she was put
aside by old Martin's hand; and Chuffey and John Westlock entered with
him.
'Let no one leave the house,' said Martin. 'This man is my brother's
son. Ill-met, ill-trained, ill-begotten. If he moves from the spot on
which he stands, or speaks a word above his breath to any person here,
open the window, and call for help!'
'What right have you to give such directions in this house?' asked Jonas
faintly.
'The right of your wrong-doing. Come in there!'
An irrepressible exclamation burst from the lips of Jonas, as Lewsome
entered at the door. It was not a groan, or a shriek, or a word, but was
wholly unlike any sound that had ever fallen on the ears of those who
heard it, while at the same time it was the most sharp and terrible
expression of what was working in his guilty breast, that nature could
have invented.
He had done murder for this! He had girdled himself about with perils,
agonies of mind, innumerable fears, for this! He had hidden his secret
in the wood; pressed and stamped it down into the bloody ground; and
here it started up when least expected, miles upon miles away; known to
many; proclaiming itself from the lips of an old man who had renewed his
strength and vigour as by a miracle, to give it voice against him!
He leaned his hand on the back of a chair, and looked at them. It was
in vain to try to do so scornfully, or with his usual insolence. He
required the chair for his support. But he made a struggle for it.
'I know that fellow,' he said, fetching his breath at every word, and
pointing his trembling finger towards Lewsome. 'He's the greatest liar
alive. What's his last tale? Ha, ha! You're rare fellows, too! Why, that
uncle of mine is childish; he's even a greater child than his brother,
my father, was, in his old age; or than Chuffey is. What the devil do
you mean,' he added, looking fiercely at John Westlock and Mark Tapley
(the latter had entered with Lewsome), 'by coming here, and bringing
two idiots and a knave with you to take my house by storm? Hallo, there!
Open the door! Turn these strangers out!'
'I tell you what,' cried Mr Tapley, coming forward, 'if it wasn't
for your name, I'd drag you through the streets of my own accord, and
single-handed I would! Ah, I would! Don't try and look bold at me.
You can't do it! Now go on, sir,' this was to old Martin. 'Bring the
murderin' wagabond upon his knees! If he wants noise, he shall have
enough of it; for as sure as he's a shiverin' from head to foot I'll
raise a uproar at this winder that shall bring half London in. Go on,
sir! Let him try me once, and see whether I'm a man of my word or not.'
With that, Mark folded his arms, and took his seat upon the
window-ledge, with an air of general preparation for anything, which
seemed to imply that he was equally ready to jump out himself, or to
throw Jonas out, upon receiving the slightest hint that it would be
agreeable to the company.
Old Martin turned to Lewsome:
'This is the man,' he said, extending his hand towards Jonas. 'Is it?'
'You need do no more than look at him to be sure of that, or of the
truth of what I have said,' was the reply. 'He is my witness.'
'Oh, brother!' cried old Martin, clasping his hands and lifting up his
eyes. 'Oh, brother, brother! Were we strangers half our lives that you
might breed a wretch like this, and I make life a desert by withering
every flower that grew about me! Is it the natural end of your precepts
and mine, that this should be the creature of your rearing, training,
teaching, hoarding, striving for; and I the means of bringing him to
punishment, when nothing can repair the wasted past!'
He sat down upon a chair as he spoke, and turning away his face, was
silent for a few moments. Then with recovered energy he proceeded:
'But the accursed harvest of our mistaken lives shall be trodden down.
It is not too late for that. You are confronted with this man, you
monster there; not to be spared, but to be dealt with justly. Hear what
he says! Reply, be silent, contradict, repeat, defy, do what you please.
My course will be the same. Go on! And you,' he said to Chuffey, 'for
the love of your old friend, speak out, good fellow!'
'I have been silent for his love!' cried the old man. 'He urged me to
it. He made me promise it upon his dying bed. I never would have spoken,
but for your finding out so much. I have thought about it ever since;
I couldn't help that; and sometimes I have had it all before me in
a dream; but in the day-time, not in sleep. Is there such a kind of
dream?' said Chuffey, looking anxiously in old Martin's face.
As Martin made him an encouraging reply, he listened attentively to his
voice, and smiled.
'Ah, aye!' he cried. 'He often spoke to me like that. We were at school
together, he and I. I couldn't turn against his son, you know--his only
son, Mr Chuzzlewit!'
'I would to Heaven you had been his son!' said Martin.
'You speak so like my dear old master,' cried the old man with a
childish delight, 'that I almost think I hear him. I can hear you quite
as well as I used to hear him. It makes me young again. He never spoke
unkindly to me, and I always understood him. I could always see him too,
though my sight was dim. Well, well! He's dead, he's dead. He was very
good to me, my dear old master!'
He shook his head mournfully over the brother's hand. At this moment
Mark, who had been glancing out of the window, left the room.
'I couldn't turn against his only son, you know,' said Chuffey. 'He has
nearly driven me to do it sometimes; he very nearly did tonight. Ah!'
cried the old man, with a sudden recollection of the cause. 'Where is
she? She's not come home!'
'Do you mean his wife?' said Mr Chuzzlewit.
'Yes.'
'I have removed her. She is in my care, and will be spared the present
knowledge of what is passing here. She has known misery enough, without
that addition.'
Jonas heard this with a sinking heart. He knew that they were on his
heels, and felt that they were resolute to run him to destruction. Inch
by inch the ground beneath him was sliding from his feet; faster and
faster the encircling ruin contracted and contracted towards himself,
its wicked centre, until it should close in and crush him.
And now he heard the voice of his accomplice stating to his face,
with every circumstance of time and place and incident; and openly
proclaiming, with no reserve, suppression, passion, or concealment; all
the truth. The truth, which nothing would keep down; which blood
would not smother, and earth would not hide; the truth, whose terrible
inspiration seemed to change dotards into strong men; and on whose
avenging wings, one whom he had supposed to be at the extremest corner
of the earth came swooping down upon him.
He tried to deny it, but his tongue would not move. He conceived some
desperate thought of rushing away, and tearing through the streets; but
his limbs would as little answer to his will as his stark, stiff staring
face. All this time the voice went slowly on, denouncing him. It was as
if every drop of blood in the wood had found a voice to jeer him with.
When it ceased, another voice took up the tale, but strangely; for the
old clerk, who had watched, and listened to the whole, and had wrung his
hands from time to time, as if he knew its truth and could confirm it,
broke in with these words:
'No, no, no! you're wrong; you're wrong--all wrong together! Have
patience, for the truth is only known to me!'
'How can that be,' said his old master's brother, 'after what you have
heard? Besides, you said just now, above-stairs, when I told you of the
accusation against him, that you knew he was his father's murderer.'
'Aye, yes! and so he was!' cried Chuffey, wildly. 'But not as you
suppose--not as you suppose. Stay! Give me a moment's time. I have
it all here--all here! It was foul, foul, cruel, bad; but not as you
suppose. Stay, stay!'
He put his hands up to his head, as if it throbbed or pained him. After
looking about him in a wandering and vacant manner for some moments, his
eyes rested upon Jonas, when they kindled up with sudden recollection
and intelligence.
'Yes!' cried old Chuffey, 'yes! That's how it was. It's all upon me now.
He--he got up from his bed before he died, to be sure, to say that he
forgave him; and he came down with me into this room; and when he saw
him--his only son, the son he loved--his speech forsook him; he had
no speech for what he knew--and no one understood him except me. But I
did--I did!'
Old Martin regarded him in amazement; so did his companions. Mrs Gamp,
who had said nothing yet; but had kept two-thirds of herself behind the
door, ready for escape, and one-third in the room, ready for siding with
the strongest party; came a little further in and remarked, with a sob,
that Mr Chuffey was 'the sweetest old creetur goin'.'
'He bought the stuff,' said Chuffey, stretching out his arm towards
Jonas while an unwonted fire shone in his eye, and lightened up his
face; 'he bought the stuff, no doubt, as you have heard, and brought it
home. He mixed the stuff--look at him!--with some sweetmeat in a jar,
exactly as the medicine for his father's cough was mixed, and put it
in a drawer; in that drawer yonder in the desk; he knows which drawer
I mean! He kept it there locked up. But his courage failed him or his
heart was touched--my God! I hope it was his heart! He was his only
son!--and he did not put it in the usual place, where my old master
would have taken it twenty times a day.'
The trembling figure of the old man shook with the strong emotions that
possessed him. But, with the same light in his eye, and with his arm
outstretched, and with his grey hair stirring on his head, he seemed to
grow in size, and was like a man inspired. Jonas shrunk from looking at
him, and cowered down into the chair by which he had held. It seemed as
if this tremendous Truth could make the dumb speak.
'I know it every word now!' cried Chuffey. 'Every word! He put it in
that drawer, as I have said. He went so often there, and was so secret,
that his father took notice of it; and when he was out, had it opened.
We were there together, and we found the mixture--Mr Chuzzlewit and I.
He took it into his possession, and made light of it at the time; but in
the night he came to my bedside, weeping, and told me that his own son
had it in his mind to poison him. "Oh, Chuff," he said, "oh, dear old
Chuff! a voice came into my room to-night, and told me that this crime
began with me. It began when I taught him to be too covetous of what I
have to leave, and made the expectation of it his great business!" Those
were his words; aye, they are his very words! If he was a hard man now
and then, it was for his only son. He loved his only son, and he was
always good to me!'
Jonas listened with increased attention. Hope was breaking in upon him.
'"He shall not weary for my death, Chuff;" that was what he said next,'
pursued the old clerk, as he wiped his eyes; 'that was what he said
next, crying like a little child: "He shall not weary for my death,
Chuff. He shall have it now; he shall marry where he has a fancy, Chuff,
although it don't please me; and you and I will go away and live upon a
little. I always loved him; perhaps he'll love me then. It's a dreadful
thing to have my own child thirsting for my death. But I might have
known it. I have sown, and I must reap. He shall believe that I am
taking this; and when I see that he is sorry, and has all he wants, I'll
tell him that I found it out, and I'll forgive him. He'll make a better
man of his own son, and be a better man himself, perhaps, Chuff!"'
Poor Chuffey paused to dry his eyes again. Old Martin's face was hidden
in his hands. Jonas listened still more keenly, and his breast heaved
like a swollen water, but with hope. With growing hope.
'My dear old master made believe next day,' said Chuffey, 'that he had
opened the drawer by mistake with a key from the bunch, which happened
to fit it (we had one made and hung upon it); and that he had been
surprised to find his fresh supply of cough medicine in such a place,
but supposed it had been put there in a hurry when the drawer stood
open. We burnt it; but his son believed that he was taking it--he knows
he did. Once Mr Chuzzlewit, to try him, took heart to say it had a
strange taste; and he got up directly, and went out.'
Jonas gave a short, dry cough; and, changing his position for an easier
one, folded his arms without looking at them, though they could now see
his face.
'Mr Chuzzlewit wrote to her father; I mean the father of the poor thing
who's his wife,' said Chuffey; 'and got him to come up, intending to
hasten on the marriage. But his mind, like mine, went a little wrong
through grief, and then his heart broke. He sank and altered from the
time when he came to me in the night; and never held up his head again.
It was only a few days, but he had never changed so much in twice the
years. "Spare him, Chuff!" he said, before he died. They were the only
words he could speak. "Spare him, Chuff!" I promised him I would. I've
tried to do it. He's his only son.'
On his recollection of the last scene in his old friend's life, poor
Chuffey's voice, which had grown weaker and weaker, quite deserted him.
Making a motion with his hand, as if he would have said that Anthony had
taken it, and had died with it in his, he retreated to the corner where
he usually concealed his sorrows; and was silent.
Jonas could look at his company now, and vauntingly too. 'Well!' he
said, after a pause. 'Are you satisfied? or have you any more of your
plots to broach? Why that fellow, Lewsome, can invent 'em for you by the
score. Is this all? Have you nothing else?'
Old Martin looked at him steadily.
'Whether you are what you seemed to be at Pecksniff's, or are something
else and a mountebank, I don't know and I don't care,' said Jonas,
looking downward with a smile, 'but I don't want you here. You were here
so often when your brother was alive, and were always so fond of him
(your dear, dear brother, and you would have been cuffing one another
before this, ecod!), that I am not surprised at your being attached to
the place; but the place is not attached to you, and you can't leave it
too soon, though you may leave it too late. And for my wife, old man,
send her home straight, or it will be the worse for her. Ha, ha! You
carry it with a high hand, too! But it isn't hanging yet for a man to
keep a penn'orth of poison for his own purposes, and have it taken from
him by two old crazy jolter-heads who go and act a play about it. Ha,
ha! Do you see the door?'
His base triumph, struggling with his cowardice, and shame, and guilt,
was so detestable, that they turned away from him, as if he were some
obscene and filthy animal, repugnant to the sight. And here that last
black crime was busy with him too; working within him to his perdition.
But for that, the old clerk's story might have touched him, though never
so lightly; but for that, the sudden removal of so great a load might
have brought about some wholesome change even in him. With that deed
done, however; with that unnecessary wasteful danger haunting him;
despair was in his very triumph and relief; wild, ungovernable, raging
despair, for the uselessness of the peril into which he had plunged;
despair that hardened him and maddened him, and set his teeth a-grinding
in a moment of his exultation.
'My good friend!' said old Martin, laying his hand on Chuffey's sleeve.
'This is no place for you to remain in. Come with me.'
'Just his old way!' cried Chuffey, looking up into his face. 'I almost
believe it's Mr Chuzzlewit alive again. Yes! Take me with you! Stay,
though, stay.'
'For what?' asked old Martin.
'I can't leave her, poor thing!' said Chuffey. 'She has been very good
to me. I can't leave her, Mr Chuzzlewit. Thank you kindly. I'll remain
here. I haven't long to remain; it's no great matter.'
As he meekly shook his poor, grey head, and thanked old Martin in these
words, Mrs Gamp, now entirely in the room, was affected to tears.
'The mercy as it is!' she said, 'as sech a dear, good, reverend creetur
never got into the clutches of Betsey Prig, which but for me he would
have done, undoubted; facts bein' stubborn and not easy drove!'
'You heard me speak to you just now, old man,' said Jonas to his uncle.
'I'll have no more tampering with my people, man or woman. Do you see
the door?'
'Do YOU see the door?' returned the voice of Mark, coming from that
direction. 'Look at it!'
He looked, and his gaze was nailed there. Fatal, ill-omened blighted
threshold, cursed by his father's footsteps in his dying hour, cursed by
his young wife's sorrowing tread, cursed by the daily shadow of the old
clerk's figure, cursed by the crossing of his murderer's feet--what men
were standing in the door way!
Nadgett foremost.
Hark! It came on, roaring like a sea! Hawkers burst into the street,
crying it up and down; windows were thrown open that the inhabitants
might hear it; people stopped to listen in the road and on the pavement;
the bells, the same bells, began to ring; tumbling over one another in a
dance of boisterous joy at the discovery (that was the sound they had in
his distempered thoughts), and making their airy play-ground rock.
'That is the man,' said Nadgett. 'By the window!'
Three others came in, laid hands upon him, and secured him. It was so
quickly done, that he had not lost sight of the informer's face for an
instant when his wrists were manacled together.
'Murder,' said Nadgett, looking round on the astonished group. 'Let no
one interfere.'
The sounding street repeated Murder; barbarous and dreadful Murder.
Murder, Murder, Murder. Rolling on from house to house, and echoing from
stone to stone, until the voices died away into the distant hum, which
seemed to mutter the same word!
They all stood silent: listening, and gazing in each other's faces, as
the noise passed on.
Old Martin was the first to speak. 'What terrible history is this?' he
demanded.
'Ask HIM,' said Nadgett. 'You're his friend, sir. He can tell you, if he
will. He knows more of it than I do, though I know much.'
'How do you know much?'
'I have not been watching him so long for nothing,' returned Nadgett. 'I
never watched a man so close as I have watched him.'
Another of the phantom forms of this terrific Truth! Another of the many
shapes in which it started up about him, out of vacancy. This man, of
all men in the world, a spy upon him; this man, changing his identity;
casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and
springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead man might have come out of
his grave, and not confounded and appalled him more.
The game was up. The race was at an end; the rope was woven for his
neck. If, by a miracle, he could escape from this strait, he had but to
turn his face another way, no matter where, and there would rise some
new avenger front to front with him; some infant in an hour grown old,
or old man in an hour grown young, or blind man with his sight restored,
or deaf man with his hearing given him. There was no chance. He sank
down in a heap against the wall, and never hoped again from that moment.
'I am not his friend, although I have the honour to be his relative,'
said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'You may speak to me. Where have you watched, and
what have you seen?'
'I have watched in many places,' returned Nadgett, 'night and day. I
have watched him lately, almost without rest or relief;' his anxious
face and bloodshot eyes confirmed it. 'I little thought to what my
watching was to lead. As little as he did when he slipped out in the
night, dressed in those clothes which he afterwards sunk in a bundle at
London Bridge!'
Jonas moved upon the ground like a man in bodily torture. He uttered a
suppressed groan, as if he had been wounded by some cruel weapon; and
plucked at the iron band upon his wrists, as though (his hands being
free) he would have torn himself.
'Steady, kinsman!' said the chief officer of the party. 'Don't be
violent.'
'Whom do you call kinsman?' asked old Martin sternly.
'You,' said the man, 'among others.'
Martin turned his scrutinizing gaze upon him. He was sitting lazily
across a chair with his arms resting on the back; eating nuts, and
throwing the shells out of window as he cracked them, which he still
continued to do while speaking.
'Aye,' he said, with a sulky nod. 'You may deny your nephews till you
die; but Chevy Slyme is Chevy Slyme still, all the world over. Perhaps
even you may feel it some disgrace to your own blood to be employed in
this way. I'm to be bought off.'
'At every turn!' cried Martin. 'Self, self, self. Every one among them
for himself!'
'You had better save one or two among them the trouble then and be for
them as well as YOURself,' replied his nephew. 'Look here at me! Can you
see the man of your family who has more talent in his little finger than
all the rest in their united brains, dressed as a police officer without
being ashamed? I took up with this trade on purpose to shame you. I
didn't think I should have to make a capture in the family, though.'
'If your debauchery, and that of your chosen friends, has really brought
you to this level,' returned the old man, 'keep it. You are living
honestly, I hope, and that's something.'
'Don't be hard upon my chosen friends,' returned Slyme, 'for they were
sometimes your chosen friends too. Don't say you never employed my
friend Tigg, for I know better. We quarrelled upon it.'
'I hired the fellow,' retorted Mr Chuzzlewit, 'and I paid him.'
'It's well you paid him,' said his nephew, 'for it would be too late to
do so now. He has given his receipt in full; or had it forced from him
rather.'
The old man looked at him as if he were curious to know what he meant,
but scorned to prolong the conversation.
'I have always expected that he and I would be brought together again in
the course of business,' said Slyme, taking a fresh handful of nuts from
his pocket; 'but I thought he would be wanted for some swindling job; it
never entered my head that I should hold a warrant for the apprehension
of his murderer.'
'HIS murderer!' cried Mr Chuzzlewit, looking from one to another.
'His or Mr Montague's,' said Nadgett. 'They are the same, I am told.
I accuse him yonder of the murder of Mr Montague, who was found last
night, killed, in a wood. You will ask me why I accuse him as you have
already asked me how I know so much. I'll tell you. It can't remain a
secret long.'
The ruling passion of the man expressed itself even then, in the tone of
regret in which he deplored the approaching publicity of what he knew.
'I told you I had watched him,' he proceeded. 'I was instructed to do
so by Mr Montague, in whose employment I have been for some time. We had
our suspicions of him; and you know what they pointed at, for you have
been discussing it since we have been waiting here, outside the room. If
you care to hear, now it's all over, in what our suspicions began, I'll
tell you plainly: in a quarrel (it first came to our ears through a hint
of his own) between him and another office in which his father's life
was insured, and which had so much doubt and distrust upon the subject,
that he compounded with them, and took half the money; and was glad to
do it. Bit by bit, I ferreted out more circumstances against him, and
not a few. It required a little patience, but it's my calling. I found
the nurse--here she is to confirm me; I found the doctor, I found
the undertaker, I found the undertaker's man. I found out how the old
gentleman there, Mr Chuffey, had behaved at the funeral; and I found out
what this man,' touching Lewsome on the arm, 'had talked about in his
fever. I found out how he conducted himself before his father's death,
and how since and how at the time; and writing it all down, and putting
it carefully together, made case enough for Mr Montague to tax him
with the crime, which (as he himself believed until to-night) he had
committed. I was by when this was done. You see him now. He is only
worse than he was then.'
Oh, miserable, miserable fool! oh, insupportable, excruciating torture!
To find alive and active--a party to it all--the brain and right-hand
of the secret he had thought to crush! In whom, though he had walled the
murdered man up, by enchantment in a rock, the story would have lived
and walked abroad! He tried to stop his ears with his fettered arms,
that he might shut out the rest.
As he crouched upon the floor, they drew away from him as if a
pestilence were in his breath. They fell off, one by one, from that part
of the room, leaving him alone upon the ground. Even those who had him
in their keeping shunned him, and (with the exception of Slyme, who was
still occupied with his nuts) kept apart.
'From that garret-window opposite,' said Nadgett, pointing across the
narrow street, 'I have watched this house and him for days and nights.
From that garret-window opposite I saw him return home, alone, from a
journey on which he had set out with Mr Montague. That was my token that
Mr Montague's end was gained; and I might rest easy on my watch, though
I was not to leave it until he dismissed me. But, standing at the door
opposite, after dark that same night, I saw a countryman steal out of
this house, by a side-door in the court, who had never entered it.
I knew his walk, and that it was himself, disguised. I followed him
immediately. I lost him on the western road, still travelling westward.'
Jonas looked up at him for an instant, and muttered an oath.
'I could not comprehend what this meant,' said Nadgett; 'but, having
seen so much, I resolved to see it out, and through. And I did.
Learning, on inquiry at his house from his wife, that he was supposed
to be sleeping in the room from which I had seen him go out, and that he
had given strict orders not to be disturbed, I knew that he was
coming back; and for his coming back I watched. I kept my watch in
the street--in doorways, and such places--all that night; at the same
window, all next day; and when night came on again, in the street once
more. For I knew he would come back, as he had gone out, when this part
of the town was empty. He did. Early in the morning, the same countryman
came creeping, creeping, creeping home.'
'Look sharp!' interposed Slyme, who had now finished his nuts. 'This is
quite irregular, Mr Nadgett.'
'I kept at the window all day,' said Nadgett, without heeding him.
'I think I never closed my eyes. At night, I saw him come out with a
bundle. I followed him again. He went down the steps at London Bridge,
and sunk it in the river. I now began to entertain some serious fears,
and made a communication to the Police, which caused that bundle to
be--'
'To be fished up,' interrupted Slyme. 'Be alive, Mr Nadgett.'
'It contained the dress I had seen him wear,' said Nadgett; 'stained
with clay, and spotted with blood. Information of the murder was
received in town last night. The wearer of that dress is already
known to have been seen near the place; to have been lurking in that
neighbourhood; and to have alighted from a coach coming from that part
of the country, at a time exactly tallying with the very minute when
I saw him returning home. The warrant has been out, and these officers
have been with me, some hours. We chose our time; and seeing you come
in, and seeing this person at the window--'
'Beckoned to him,' said Mark, taking up the thread of the narrative, on
hearing this allusion to himself, 'to open the door; which he did with a
deal of pleasure.'
'That's all at present,' said Nadgett, putting up his great pocketbook,
which from mere habit he had produced when he began his revelation, and
had kept in his hand all the time; 'but there is plenty more to come.
You asked me for the facts, so far I have related them, and need not
detain these gentlemen any longer. Are you ready, Mr Slyme?'
'And something more,' replied that worthy, rising. 'If you walk round to
the office, we shall be there as soon as you. Tom! Get a coach!'
The officer to whom he spoke departed for that purpose. Old Martin
lingered for a few moments, as if he would have addressed some words
to Jonas; but looking round, and seeing him still seated on the floor,
rocking himself in a savage manner to and fro, took Chuffey's arm, and
slowly followed Nadgett out. John Westlock and Mark Tapley accompanied
them. Mrs Gamp had tottered out first, for the better display of her
feelings, in a kind of walking swoon; for Mrs Gamp performed swoons of
different sorts, upon a moderate notice, as Mr Mould did Funerals.
'Ha!' muttered Slyme, looking after them. 'Upon my soul! As insensible
of being disgraced by having such a nephew as myself, in such a
situation, as he was of my being an honour and a credit to the family!
That's the return I get for having humbled my spirit--such a spirit as
mine--to earn a livelihood, is it?'
He got up from his chair, and kicked it away indignantly.
'And such a livelihood too! When there are hundreds of men, not fit to
hold a candle to me, rolling in carriages and living on their fortunes.
Upon my soul it's a nice world!'
His eyes encountered Jonas, who looked earnestly towards him, and moved
his lips as if he were whispering.
'Eh?' said Slyme.
Jonas glanced at the attendant whose back was towards him, and made a
clumsy motion with his bound hands towards the door.
'Humph!' said Slyme, thoughtfully. 'I couldn't hope to disgrace him into
anything when you have shot so far ahead of me though. I forgot that.'
Jonas repeated the same look and gesture.
'Jack!' said Slyme.
'Hallo!' returned his man.
'Go down to the door, ready for the coach. Call out when it comes. I'd
rather have you there. Now then,' he added, turning hastily to Jonas,
when the man was gone. 'What's the matter?'
Jonas essayed to rise.
'Stop a bit,' said Slyme. 'It's not so easy when your wrists are tight
together. Now then! Up! What is it?'
'Put your hand in my pocket. Here! The breast pocket, on the left!' said
Jonas.
He did so; and drew out a purse.
'There's a hundred pound in it,' said Jonas, whose words were almost
unintelligible; as his face, in its pallor and agony, was scarcely
human.
Slyme looked at him; gave it into his hands; and shook his head.
'I can't. I daren't. I couldn't if I dared. Those fellows below--'
'Escape's impossible,' said Jonas. 'I know it. One hundred pound for
only five minutes in the next room!'
'What to do?' he asked.
The face of his prisoner as he advanced to whisper in his ear, made him
recoil involuntarily. But he stopped and listened to him. The words were
few, but his own face changed as he heard them.
'I have it about me,' said Jonas, putting his hands to his throat, as
though whatever he referred to were hidden in his neckerchief. 'How
should you know of it? How could you know? A hundred pound for only five
minutes in the next room! The time's passing. Speak!'
'It would be more--more creditable to the family,' observed Slyme, with
trembling lips. 'I wish you hadn't told me half so much. Less would have
served your purpose. You might have kept it to yourself.'
'A hundred pound for only five minutes in the next room! Speak!' cried
Jonas, desperately.
He took the purse. Jonas, with a wild unsteady step, retreated to the
door in the glass partition.
'Stop!' cried Slyme, catching at his skirts. 'I don't know about this.
Yet it must end so at last. Are you guilty?'
'Yes!' said Jonas.
'Are the proofs as they were told just now?'
'Yes!' said Jonas.
'Will you--will you engage to say a--a Prayer, now, or something of that
sort?' faltered Slyme.
Jonas broke from him without replying, and closed the door between them.
Slyme listened at the keyhole. After that, he crept away on tiptoe, as
far off as he could; and looked awfully towards the place. He was roused
by the arrival of the coach, and their letting down the steps.
'He's getting a few things together,' he said, leaning out of window,
and speaking to the two men below, who stood in the full light of a
street-lamp. 'Keep your eye upon the back, one of you, for form's sake.'
One of the men withdrew into the court. The other, seating himself self
on the steps of the coach, remained in conversation with Slyme at the
window who perhaps had risen to be his superior, in virtue of his old
propensity (one so much lauded by the murdered man) of being always
round the corner. A useful habit in his present calling.
'Where is he?' asked the man.
Slyme looked into the room for an instant and gave his head a jerk as
much as to say, 'Close at hand. I see him.'
'He's booked,' observed the man.
'Through,' said Slyme.
They looked at each other, and up and down the street. The man on
the coach-steps took his hat off, and put it on again, and whistled a
little.
'I say! He's taking his time!' he remonstrated.
'I allowed him five minutes,' said Slyme. 'Time's more than up, though.
I'll bring him down.'
He withdrew from the window accordingly, and walked on tiptoe to the
door in the partition. He listened. There was not a sound within. He set
the candles near it, that they might shine through the glass.
It was not easy, he found, to make up his mind to the opening of
the door. But he flung it wide open suddenly, and with a noise; then
retreated. After peeping in and listening again, he entered.
He started back as his eyes met those of Jonas, standing in an angle of
the wall, and staring at him. His neckerchief was off; his face was ashy
pale.
'You're too soon,' said Jonas, with an abject whimper. 'I've not had
time. I have not been able to do it. I--five minutes more--two minutes
more!--only one!'
Slyme gave him no reply, but thrusting the purse upon him and forcing it
back into his pocket, called up his men.
He whined, and cried, and cursed, and entreated them, and struggled, and
submitted, in the same breath, and had no power to stand. They got him
away and into the coach, where they put him on a seat; but he soon fell
moaning down among the straw at the bottom, and lay there.
The two men were with him. Slyme being on the box with the driver; and
they let him lie. Happening to pass a fruiterer's on their way; the door
of which was open, though the shop was by this time shut; one of them
remarked how faint the peaches smelled.
The other assented at the moment, but presently stooped down in quick
alarm, and looked at the prisoner.
'Stop the coach! He has poisoned himself! The smell comes from this
bottle in his hand!'
The hand had shut upon it tight. With that rigidity of grasp with which
no living man, in the full strength and energy of life, can clutch a
prize he has won.
They dragged him out into the dark street; but jury, judge, and hangman,
could have done no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, dead, dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
IN WHICH THE TABLES ARE TURNED, COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN
Old Martin's cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so
frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth
of the indignation he had hoarded up during his residence with Mr
Pecksniff, were retarded, but not beyond a few hours, by the occurrences
just now related. Stunned, as he had been at first by the intelligence
conveyed to him through Tom Pinch and John Westlock, of the supposed
manner of his brother's death; overwhelmed as he was by the subsequent
narratives of Chuffey and Nadgett, and the forging of that chain of
circumstances ending in the death of Jonas, of which catastrophe he was
immediately informed; scattered as his purposes and hopes were for the
moment, by the crowding in of all these incidents between him and his
end; still their very intensity and the tumult of their assemblage
nerved him to the rapid and unyielding execution of his scheme. In every
single circumstance, whether it were cruel, cowardly, or false, he
saw the flowering of the same pregnant seed. Self; grasping, eager,
narrow-ranging, overreaching self; with its long train of suspicions,
lusts, deceits, and all their growing consequences; was the root of the
vile tree. Mr Pecksniff had so presented his character before the old
man's eyes, that he--the good, the tolerant, enduring Pecksniff--had
become the incarnation of all selfishness and treachery; and the more
odious the shapes in which those vices ranged themselves before him now,
the sterner consolation he had in his design of setting Mr Pecksniff
right and Mr Pecksniff's victims too.
To this work he brought, not only the energy and determination natural
to his character (which, as the reader may have observed in the
beginning of his or her acquaintance with this gentleman, was remarkable
for the strong development of those qualities), but all the forced and
unnaturally nurtured energy consequent upon their long suppression. And
these two tides of resolution setting into one and sweeping on, became
so strong and vigorous, that, to prevent themselves from being carried
away before it, Heaven knows where, was as much as John Westlock and
Mark Tapley together (though they were tolerably energetic too) could
manage to effect.
He had sent for John Westlock immediately on his arrival; and John,
under the conduct of Tom Pinch, had waited on him. Having a lively
recollection of Mr Tapley, he had caused that gentleman's attendance to
be secured, through John's means, without delay; and thus, as we have
seen, they had all repaired together to the City. But his grandson he
had refused to see until to-morrow, when Mr Tapley was instructed to
summon him to the Temple at ten o'clock in the forenoon. Tom he would
not allow to be employed in anything, lest he should be wrongfully
suspected; but he was a party to all their proceedings, and was with
them until late at night--until after they knew of the death of Jonas;
when he went home to tell all these wonders to little Ruth, and to
prepare her for accompanying him to the Temple in the morning, agreeably
to Mr Chuzzlewit's particular injunction.
It was characteristic of old Martin, and his looking on to something
which he had distinctly before him, that he communicated to them nothing
of his intentions, beyond such hints of reprisal on Mr Pecksniff as they
gathered from the game he had played in that gentleman's house, and the
brightening of his eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Even to John
Westlock, in whom he was evidently disposed to place great confidence
(which may indeed be said of every one of them), he gave no explanation
whatever. He merely requested him to return in the morning; and with
this for their utmost satisfaction, they left him, when the night was
far advanced, alone.
The events of such a day might have worn out the body and spirit of
a much younger man than he, but he sat in deep and painful meditation
until the morning was bright. Nor did he even then seek any prolonged
repose, but merely slumbered in his chair, until seven o'clock, when Mr
Tapley had appointed to come to him by his desire; and came--as fresh
and clean and cheerful as the morning itself.
'You are punctual,' said Mr Chuzzlewit, opening the door to him in reply
to his light knock, which had roused him instantly.
'My wishes, sir,' replied Mr Tapley, whose mind would appear from the
context to have been running on the matrimonial service, 'is to love,
honour, and obey. The clock's a-striking now, sir.'
'Come in!'
'Thank'ee, sir,' rejoined Mr Tapley, 'what could I do for you first,
sir?'
'You gave my message to Martin?' said the old man, bending his eyes upon
him.
'I did, sir,' returned Mark; 'and you never see a gentleman more
surprised in all your born days than he was.'
'What more did you tell him?' Mr Chuzzlewit inquired.
'Why, sir,' said Mr Tapley, smiling, 'I should have liked to tell him a
deal more, but not being able, sir, I didn't tell it him.'
'You told him all you knew?'
'But it was precious little, sir,' retorted Mr Tapley. 'There was very
little respectin' you that I was able to tell him, sir. I only mentioned
my opinion that Mr Pecksniff would find himself deceived, sir, and
that you would find yourself deceived, and that he would find himself
deceived, sir.'
'In what?' asked Mr Chuzzlewit.
'Meaning him, sir?'
'Meaning both him and me.'
'Well, sir,' said Mr Tapley. 'In your old opinions of each other. As
to him, sir, and his opinions, I know he's a altered man. I know it.
I know'd it long afore he spoke to you t'other day, and I must say it.
Nobody don't know half as much of him as I do. Nobody can't. There
was always a deal of good in him, but a little of it got crusted over,
somehow. I can't say who rolled the paste of that 'ere crust myself,
but--'
'Go on,' said Martin. 'Why do you stop?'
'But it--well! I beg your pardon, but I think it may have been you, sir.
Unintentional I think it may have been you. I don't believe that neither
of you gave the other quite a fair chance. There! Now I've got rid on
it,' said Mr Tapley in a fit of desperation: 'I can't go a-carryin' it
about in my own mind, bustin' myself with it; yesterday was quite long
enough. It's out now. I can't help it. I'm sorry for it. Don't wisit on
him, sir, that's all.'
It was clear that Mark expected to be ordered out immediately, and was
quite prepared to go.
'So you think,' said Martin, 'that his old faults are, in some degree,
of my creation, do you?'
'Well, sir,' retorted Mr Tapley, 'I'm werry sorry, but I can't unsay it.
It's hardly fair of you, sir, to make a ignorant man conwict himself in
this way, but I DO think so. I am as respectful disposed to you, sir, as
a man can be; but I DO think so.'
The light of a faint smile seemed to break through the dull steadiness
of Martin's face, as he looked attentively at him, without replying.
'Yet you are an ignorant man, you say,' he observed after a long pause.
'Werry much so,' Mr Tapley replied.
'And I a learned, well-instructed man, you think?'
'Likewise wery much so,' Mr Tapley answered.
The old man, with his chin resting on his hand, paced the room twice or
thrice before he added:
'You have left him this morning?'
'Come straight from him now, sir.'
'For what does he suppose?'
'He don't know what to suppose, sir, no more than myself. I told him
jest wot passed yesterday, sir, and that you had said to me, "Can you be
here by seven in the morning?" and that you had said to him, through me,
"Can you be here by ten in the morning?" and that I had said "Yes" to
both. That's all, sir.'
His frankness was so genuine that it plainly WAS all.
'Perhaps,' said Martin, 'he may think you are going to desert him, and
to serve me?'
'I have served him in that sort of way, sir,' replied Mark, without the
loss of any atom of his self-possession; 'and we have been that sort of
companions in misfortune, that my opinion is, he don't believe a word on
it. No more than you do, sir.'
'Will you help me to dress, and get me some breakfast from the hotel?'
asked Martin.
'With pleasure, sir,' said Mark.
'And by-and-bye,' said Martin, 'remaining in the room, as I wish you to
do, will you attend to the door yonder--give admission to visitors, I
mean, when they knock?'
'Certainly, sir,' said Mr Tapley.
'You will not find it necessary to express surprise at their
appearance,' Martin suggested.
'Oh dear no, sir!' said Mr Tapley, 'not at all.'
Although he pledged himself to this with perfect confidence, he was in a
state of unbounded astonishment even now. Martin appeared to observe it,
and to have some sense of the ludicrous bearing of Mr Tapley under these
perplexing circumstances; for, in spite of the composure of his voice
and the gravity of his face, the same indistinct light flickered on the
latter several times. Mark bestirred himself, however, to execute the
offices with which he was entrusted; and soon lost all tendency to any
outward expression of his surprise, in the occupation of being brisk and
busy.
But when he had put Mr Chuzzlewit's clothes in good order for dressing,
and when that gentleman was dressed and sitting at his breakfast,
Mr Tapley's feelings of wonder began to return upon him with great
violence; and, standing beside the old man with a napkin under his
arm (it was as natural and easy to joke to Mark to be a butler in the
Temple, as it had been to volunteer as cook on board the Screw), he
found it difficult to resist the temptation of casting sidelong glances
at him very often. Nay, he found it impossible; and accordingly yielded
to this impulse so often, that Martin caught him in the fact some fifty
times. The extraordinary things Mr Tapley did with his own face when
any of these detections occurred; the sudden occasions he had to rub
his eyes or his nose or his chin; the look of wisdom with which he
immediately plunged into the deepest thought, or became intensely
interested in the habits and customs of the flies upon the ceiling, or
the sparrows out of doors; or the overwhelming politeness with which
he endeavoured to hide his confusion by handing the muffin; may not
unreasonably be assumed to have exercised the utmost power of feature
that even Martin Chuzzlewit the elder possessed.
But he sat perfectly quiet and took his breakfast at his leisure, or
made a show of doing so, for he scarcely ate or drank, and frequently
lapsed into long intervals of musing. When he had finished, Mark sat
down to his breakfast at the same table; and Mr Chuzzlewit, quite silent
still, walked up and down the room.
Mark cleared away in due course, and set a chair out for him, in which,
as the time drew on towards ten o'clock, he took his seat, leaning his
hands upon his stick, and clenching them upon the handle, and resting
his chin on them again. All his impatience and abstraction of manner had
vanished now; and as he sat there, looking, with his keen eyes, steadily
towards the door, Mark could not help thinking what a firm, square,
powerful face it was; or exulting in the thought that Mr Pecksniff,
after playing a pretty long game of bowls with its owner, seemed to be
at last in a very fair way of coming in for a rubber or two.
Mark's uncertainty in respect of what was going to be done or said, and
by whom to whom, would have excited him in itself. But knowing for
a certainty besides, that young Martin was coming, and in a very few
minutes must arrive, he found it by no means easy to remain quiet and
silent. But, excepting that he occasionally coughed in a hollow and
unnatural manner to relieve himself, he behaved with great decorum
through the longest ten minutes he had ever known.
A knock at the door. Mr Westlock. Mr Tapley, in admitting him, raised
his eyebrows to the highest possible pitch, implying thereby that he
considered himself in an unsatisfactory position. Mr Chuzzlewit received
him very courteously.
Mark waited at the door for Tom Pinch and his sister, who were coming up
the stairs. The old man went to meet them; took their hands in his;
and kissed her on the cheek. As this looked promising, Mr Tapley smiled
benignantly.
Mr Chuzzlewit had resumed his chair before young Martin, who was close
behind them, entered. The old man, scarcely looking at him, pointed to
a distant seat. This was less encouraging; and Mr Tapley's spirits fell
again.
He was quickly summoned to the door by another knock. He did not start,
or cry, or tumble down, at sight of Miss Graham and Mrs Lupin, but he
drew a very long breath, and came back perfectly resigned, looking on
them and on the rest with an expression which seemed to say that nothing
could surprise him any more; and that he was rather glad to have done
with that sensation for ever.
The old man received Mary no less tenderly than he had received Tom
Pinch's sister. A look of friendly recognition passed between himself
and Mrs Lupin, which implied the existence of a perfect understanding
between them. It engendered no astonishment in Mr Tapley; for, as he
afterwards observed, he had retired from the business, and sold off the
stock.
Not the least curious feature in this assemblage was, that everybody
present was so much surprised and embarrassed by the sight of everybody
else, that nobody ventured to speak. Mr Chuzzlewit alone broke silence.
'Set the door open, Mark!' he said; 'and come here.'
Mark obeyed.
The last appointed footstep sounded now upon the stairs. They all knew
it. It was Mr Pecksniff's; and Mr Pecksniff was in a hurry too, for he
came bounding up with such uncommon expedition that he stumbled twice or
thrice.
'Where is my venerable friend?' he cried upon the upper landing; and
then with open arms came darting in.
Old Martin merely looked at him; but Mr Pecksniff started back as if he
had received the charge from an electric battery.
'My venerable friend is well?' cried Mr Pecksniff.
'Quite well.'
It seemed to reassure the anxious inquirer. He clasped his hands and,
looking upwards with a pious joy, silently expressed his gratitude.
He then looked round on the assembled group, and shook his head
reproachfully. For such a man severely, quite severely.
'Oh, vermin!' said Mr Pecksniff. 'Oh, bloodsuckers! Is it not enough
that you have embittered the existence of an individual wholly
unparalleled in the biographical records of amiable persons, but must
you now, even now, when he has made his election, and reposed his trust
in a Numble, but at least sincere and disinterested relative; must
you now, vermin and swarmers (I regret to make use of these strong
expressions, my dear sir, but there are times when honest indignation
will not be controlled), must you now, vermin and swarmers (for I WILL
repeat it), take advantage of his unprotected state, assemble round
him from all quarters, as wolves and vultures, and other animals of
the feathered tribe assemble round--I will not say round carrion or a
carcass, for Mr Chuzzlewit is quite the contrary--but round their prey;
their prey; to rifle and despoil; gorging their voracious maws, and
staining their offensive beaks, with every description of carnivorous
enjoyment!'
As he stopped to fetch his breath, he waved them off, in a solemn
manner, with his hand.
'Horde of unnatural plunderers and robbers!' he continued; 'leave him!
leave him, I say! Begone! Abscond! You had better be off! Wander over
the face of the earth, young sirs, like vagabonds as you are, and do not
presume to remain in a spot which is hallowed by the grey hairs of the
patriarchal gentleman to whose tottering limbs I have the honour to act
as an unworthy, but I hope an unassuming, prop and staff. And you, my
tender sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, addressing himself in a tone of gentle
remonstrance to the old man, 'how could you ever leave me, though even
for this short period! You have absented yourself, I do not doubt, upon
some act of kindness to me; bless you for it; but you must not do it;
you must not be so venturesome. I should really be angry with you if I
could, my friend!'
He advanced with outstretched arms to take the old man's hand. But he
had not seen how the hand clasped and clutched the stick within its
grasp. As he came smiling on, and got within his reach, old Martin, with
his burning indignation crowded into one vehement burst, and flashing
out of every line and wrinkle in his face, rose up, and struck him down
upon the ground.
With such a well-directed nervous blow, that down he went, as heavily
and true as if the charge of a Life-Guardsman had tumbled him out of a
saddle. And whether he was stunned by the shock, or only confused by the
wonder and novelty of this warm reception, he did not offer to get up
again; but lay there, looking about him with a disconcerted meekness
in his face so enormously ridiculous, that neither Mark Tapley nor John
Westlock could repress a smile, though both were actively interposing to
prevent a repetition of the blow; which the old man's gleaming eyes and
vigorous attitude seemed to render one of the most probable events in
the world.
'Drag him away! Take him out of my reach!' said Martin; 'or I can't help
it. The strong restraint I have put upon my hands has been enough to
palsy them. I am not master of myself while he is within their range.
Drag him away!'
Seeing that he still did not rise, Mr Tapley, without any compromise
about it, actually did drag him away, and stick him up on the floor,
with his back against the opposite wall.
'Hear me, rascal!' said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'I have summoned you here to
witness your own work. I have summoned you here to witness it, because
I know it will be gall and wormwood to you! I have summoned you here to
witness it, because I know the sight of everybody here must be a dagger
in your mean, false heart! What! do you know me as I am, at last!'
Mr Pecksniff had cause to stare at him, for the triumph in his face and
speech and figure was a sight to stare at.
'Look there!' said the old man, pointing at him, and appealing to the
rest. 'Look there! And then--come hither, my dear Martin--look here!
here! here!' At every repetition of the word he pressed his grandson
closer to his breast.
'The passion I felt, Martin, when I dared not do this,' he said, 'was
in the blow I struck just now. Why did we ever part! How could we ever
part! How could you ever fly from me to him!'
Martin was about to answer, but he stopped him, and went on.
'The fault was mine no less than yours. Mark has told me so today, and
I have known it long; though not so long as I might have done. Mary, my
love, come here.'
As she trembled and was very pale, he sat her in his own chair, and
stood beside it with her hand in his; and Martin standing by him.
'The curse of our house,' said the old man, looking kindly down upon
her, 'has been the love of self; has ever been the love of self. How
often have I said so, when I never knew that I had wrought it upon
others.'
He drew one hand through Martin's arm, and standing so, between them,
proceeded thus:
'You all know how I bred this orphan up, to tend me. None of you can
know by what degrees I have come to regard her as a daughter; for
she has won upon me, by her self-forgetfulness, her tenderness, her
patience, all the goodness of her nature, when Heaven is her witness
that I took but little pains to draw it forth. It blossomed without
cultivation, and it ripened without heat. I cannot find it in my heart
to say that I am sorry for it now, or yonder fellow might be holding up
his head.'
Mr Pecksniff put his hand into his waistcoat, and slightly shook that
part of him to which allusion had been made; as if to signify that it
was still uppermost.
'There is a kind of selfishness,' said Martin--'I have learned it in my
own experience of my own breast--which is constantly upon the watch for
selfishness in others; and holding others at a distance, by suspicions
and distrusts, wonders why they don't approach, and don't confide, and
calls that selfishness in them. Thus I once doubted those about me--not
without reason in the beginning--and thus I once doubted you, Martin.'
'Not without reason,' Martin answered, 'either.'
'Listen, hypocrite! Listen, smooth-tongued, servile, crawling knave!'
said Martin. 'Listen, you shallow dog. What! When I was seeking him, you
had already spread your nets; you were already fishing for him, were ye?
When I lay ill in this good woman's house and your meek spirit pleaded
for my grandson, you had already caught him, had ye? Counting on the
restoration of the love you knew I bore him, you designed him for one
of your two daughters did ye? Or failing that, you traded in him as a
speculation which at any rate should blind me with the lustre of your
charity, and found a claim upon me! Why, even then I knew you, and I
told you so. Did I tell you that I knew you, even then?'
'I am not angry, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, softly. 'I can bear a great
deal from you. I will never contradict you, Mr Chuzzlewit.'
'Observe!' said Martin, looking round. 'I put myself in that man's
hands on terms as mean and base, and as degrading to himself, as I could
render them in words. I stated them at length to him, before his own
children, syllable by syllable, as coarsely as I could, and with as much
offence, and with as plain an exposition of my contempt, as words--not
looks and manner merely--could convey. If I had only called the angry
blood into his face, I would have wavered in my purpose. If I had only
stung him into being a man for a minute I would have abandoned it. If he
had offered me one word of remonstrance, in favour of the grandson whom
he supposed I had disinherited; if he had pleaded with me, though never
so faintly, against my appeal to him to abandon him to misery and
cast him from his house; I think I could have borne with him for ever
afterwards. But not a word, not a word. Pandering to the worst of human
passions was the office of his nature; and faithfully he did his work!'
'I am not angry,' observed Mr Pecksniff. 'I am hurt, Mr Chuzzlewit;
wounded in my feelings; but I am not angry, my good sir.'
Mr Chuzzlewit resumed.
'Once resolved to try him, I was resolute to pursue the trial to the
end; but while I was bent on fathoming the depth of his duplicity, I
made a sacred compact with myself that I would give him credit on the
other side for any latent spark of goodness, honour, forbearance--any
virtue--that might glimmer in him. For first to last there has been no
such thing. Not once. He cannot say I have not given him opportunity.
He cannot say I have ever led him on. He cannot say I have not left
him freely to himself in all things; or that I have not been a passive
instrument in his hands, which he might have used for good as easily as
evil. Or if he can, he Lies! And that's his nature, too.'
'Mr Chuzzlewit,' interrupted Pecksniff, shedding tears. 'I am not angry,
sir. I cannot be angry with you. But did you never, my dear sir,
express a desire that the unnatural young man who by his wicked arts has
estranged your good opinion from me, for the time being; only for the
time being; that your grandson, Mr Chuzzlewit, should be dismissed my
house? Recollect yourself, my Christian friend.'
'I have said so, have I not?' retorted the old man, sternly. 'I could
not tell how far your specious hypocrisy had deceived him, knave; and
knew no better way of opening his eyes than by presenting you before him
in your own servile character. Yes. I did express that desire. And you
leaped to meet it; and you met it; and turning in an instant on the
hand you had licked and beslavered, as only such hounds can, you
strengthened, and confirmed, and justified me in my scheme.'
Mr Pecksniff made a bow; a submissive, not to say a grovelling and an
abject bow. If he had been complimented on his practice of the loftiest
virtues, he never could have bowed as he bowed then.
'The wretched man who has been murdered,' Mr Chuzzlewit went on to say;
'then passing by the name of--'
'Tigg,' suggested Mark.
'Of Tigg; brought begging messages to me on behalf of a friend of his,
and an unworthy relative of mine; and finding him a man well enough
suited to my purpose, I employed him to glean some news of you, Martin,
for me. It was from him I learned that you had taken up your abode with
yonder fellow. It was he, who meeting you here in town, one evening--you
remember where?'
'At the pawnbroker's shop,' said Martin.
'Yes; watched you to your lodging, and enabled me to send you a
bank-note.'
'I little thought,' said Martin, greatly moved, 'that it had come from
you; I little thought that you were interested in my fate. If I had--'
'If you had,' returned the old man, sorrowfully, 'you would have shown
less knowledge of me as I seemed to be, and as I really was. I hoped to
bring you back, Martin, penitent and humbled. I hoped to distress you
into coming back to me. Much as I loved you, I had that to acknowledge
which I could not reconcile it to myself to avow, then, unless you
made submission to me first. Thus it was I lost you. If I have had,
indirectly, any act or part in the fate of that unhappy man, by putting
means, however small, within his reach, Heaven forgive me! I might have
known, perhaps, that he would misuse money; that it was ill-bestowed
upon him; and that sown by his hands it could engender mischief only.
But I never thought of him at that time as having the disposition or
ability to be a serious impostor, or otherwise than as a thoughtless,
idle-humoured, dissipated spendthrift, sinning more against himself than
others, and frequenting low haunts and indulging vicious tastes, to his
own ruin only.'
'Beggin' your pardon, sir,' said Mr Tapley, who had Mrs Lupin on his
arm by this time, quite agreeably; 'if I may make so bold as say so, my
opinion is, as you was quite correct, and that he turned out perfectly
nat'ral for all that. There's surprisin' number of men sir, who as long
as they've only got their own shoes and stockings to depend upon, will
walk down hill, along the gutters quiet enough and by themselves, and
not do much harm. But set any on 'em up with a coach and horses, sir;
and it's wonderful what a knowledge of drivin' he'll show, and how he'll
fill his wehicle with passengers, and start off in the middle of the
road, neck or nothing, to the Devil! Bless your heart, sir, there's ever
so many Tiggs a-passin' this here Temple-gate any hour in the day, that
only want a chance to turn out full-blown Montagues every one!'
'Your ignorance, as you call it, Mark,' said Mr Chuzzlewit, 'is wiser
than some men's enlightenment, and mine among them. You are right; not
for the first time to-day. Now hear me out, my dears. And hear me, you,
who, if what I have been told be accurately stated, are Bankrupt in
pocket no less than in good name! And when you have heard me, leave this
place, and poison my sight no more!'
Mr Pecksniff laid his hand upon his breast, and bowed again.
'The penance I have done in this house,' said Mr Chuzzlewit, 'has earned
this reflection with it constantly, above all others. That if it had
pleased Heaven to visit such infirmity on my old age as really had
reduced me to the state in which I feigned to be, I should have brought
its misery upon myself. Oh, you whose wealth, like mine, has been a
source of continual unhappiness, leading you to distrust the nearest and
dearest, and to dig yourself a living grave of suspicion and reserve;
take heed that, having cast off all whom you might have bound to you,
and tenderly, you do not become in your decay the instrument of such a
man as this, and waken in another world to the knowledge of such wrong
as would embitter Heaven itself, if wrong or you could ever reach it!'
And then he told them how he had sometimes thought, in the beginning,
that love might grow up between Mary and Martin; and how he had pleased
his fancy with the picture of observing it when it was new, and taking
them to task, apart, in counterfeited doubt, and then confessing to them
that it had been an object dear to his heart; and by his sympathy with
them, and generous provision for their young fortunes, establishing a
claim on their affection and regard which nothing should wither, and
which should surround his old age with means of happiness. How in the
first dawn of this design, and when the pleasure of such a scheme for
the happiness of others was new and indistinct within him, Martin had
come to tell him that he had already chosen for himself; knowing that
he, the old man, had some faint project on that head, but ignorant whom
it concerned. How it was little comfort to him to know that Martin
had chosen Her, because the grace of his design was lost, and because
finding that she had returned his love, he tortured himself with
the reflection that they, so young, to whom he had been so kind a
benefactor, were already like the world, and bent on their own selfish,
stealthy ends. How in the bitterness of this impression, and of his past
experience, he had reproached Martin so harshly (forgetting that he had
never invited his confidence on such a point, and confounding what
he had meant to do with what he had done), that high words sprung up
between them, and they separated in wrath. How he loved him still, and
hoped he would return. How on the night of his illness at the Dragon,
he had secretly written tenderly of him, and made him his heir, and
sanctioned his marriage with Mary; and how, after his interview with Mr
Pecksniff, he had distrusted him again, and burnt the paper to ashes,
and had lain down in his bed distracted by suspicions, doubts, and
regrets.
And then he told them how, resolved to probe this Pecksniff, and to
prove the constancy and truth of Mary (to himself no less than
Martin), he had conceived and entered on his plan; and how, beneath her
gentleness and patience, he had softened more and more; still more and
more beneath the goodness and simplicity, the honour and the manly faith
of Tom. And when he spoke of Tom, he said God bless him; and the tears
were in his eyes; for he said that Tom, mistrusted and disliked by him
at first, had come like summer rain upon his heart; and had disposed it
to believe in better things. And Martin took him by the hand, and Mary
too, and John, his old friend, stoutly too; and Mark, and Mrs Lupin,
and his sister, little Ruth. And peace of mind, deep, tranquil peace of
mind, was in Tom's heart.
The old man then related how nobly Mr Pecksniff had performed the duty
in which he stood indebted to society, in the matter of Tom's
dismissal; and how, having often heard disparagement of Mr Westlock from
Pecksniffian lips, and knowing him to be a friend to Tom, he had used,
through his confidential agent and solicitor, that little artifice which
had kept him in readiness to receive his unknown friend in London. And
he called on Mr Pecksniff (by the name of Scoundrel) to remember that
there again he had not trapped him to do evil, but that he had done it
of his own free will and agency; nay, that he had cautioned him against
it. And once again he called on Mr Pecksniff (by the name of Hang-dog)
to remember that when Martin coming home at last, an altered man, had
sued for the forgiveness which awaited him, he, Pecksniff, had rejected
him in language of his own, and had remorsely stepped in between him and
the least touch of natural tenderness. 'For which,' said the old man,
'if the bending of my finger would remove a halter from your neck, I
wouldn't bend it!'
'Martin,' he added, 'your rival has not been a dangerous one, but Mrs
Lupin here has played duenna for some weeks; not so much to watch your
love as to watch her lover. For that Ghoul'--his fertility in finding
names for Mr Pecksniff was astonishing--'would have crawled into her
daily walks otherwise, and polluted the fresh air. What's this? Her hand
is trembling strangely. See if you can hold it.'
Hold it! If he clasped it half as tightly as he did her waist. Well,
well!
But it was good in him that even then, in his high fortune and
happiness, with her lips nearly printed on his own, and her proud young
beauty in his close embrace, he had a hand still left to stretch out to
Tom Pinch.
'Oh, Tom! Dear Tom! I saw you, accidentally, coming here. Forgive me!'
'Forgive!' cried Tom. 'I'll never forgive you as long as I live, Martin,
if you say another syllable about it. Joy to you both! Joy, my dear
fellow, fifty thousand times.'
Joy! There is not a blessing on earth that Tom did not wish them. There
is not a blessing on earth that Tom would not have bestowed upon them,
if he could.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Mr Tapley, stepping forward, 'but yow was
mentionin', just now, a lady of the name of Lupin, sir.'
'I was,' returned old Martin
'Yes, sir. It's a pretty name, sir?'
'A very good name,' said Martin.
'It seems a'most a pity to change such a name into Tapley. Don't it,
sir?' said Mark.
'That depends upon the lady. What is HER opinion?'
'Why, sir,' said Mr Tapley, retiring, with a bow, towards the buxom
hostess, 'her opinion is as the name ain't a change for the better, but
the indiwidual may be, and, therefore, if nobody ain't acquainted
with no jest cause or impediment, et cetrer, the Blue Dragon will be
con-werted into the Jolly Tapley. A sign of my own inwention, sir. Wery
new, conwivial, and expressive!'
The whole of these proceedings were so agreeable to Mr Pecksniff that
he stood with his eyes fixed upon the floor and his hands clasping one
another alternately, as if a host of penal sentences were being passed
upon him. Not only did his figure appear to have shrunk, but his
discomfiture seemed to have extended itself even to his dress. His
clothes seemed to have grown shabbier, his linen to have turned yellow,
his hair to have become lank and frowsy; his very boots looked villanous
and dim, as if their gloss had departed with his own.
Feeling, rather than seeing, that the old man now pointed to the door,
he raised his eyes, picked up his hat, and thus addressed him:
'Mr Chuzzlewit, sir! you have partaken of my hospitality.'
'And paid for it,' he observed.
'Thank you. That savours,' said Mr Pecksniff, taking out his
pocket-handkerchief, 'of your old familiar frankness. You have paid for
it. I was about to make the remark. You have deceived me, sir. Thank you
again. I am glad of it. To see you in the possession of your health and
faculties on any terms, is, in itself, a sufficient recompense. To have
been deceived implies a trusting nature. Mine is a trusting nature. I
am thankful for it. I would rather have a trusting nature, do you know,
sir, than a doubting one!'
Here Mr Pecksniff, with a sad smile, bowed, and wiped his eyes.
'There is hardly any person present, Mr Chuzzlewit,' said Pecksniff,
'by whom I have not been deceived. I have forgiven those persons on the
spot. That was my duty; and, of course, I have done it. Whether it was
worthy of you to partake of my hospitality, and to act the part you
did act in my house, that, sir, is a question which I leave to your own
conscience. And your conscience does not acquit you. No, sir, no!'
Pronouncing these last words in a loud and solemn voice, Mr Pecksniff
was not so absolutely lost in his own fervour as to be unmindful of the
expediency of getting a little nearer to the door.
'I have been struck this day,' said Mr Pecksniff, 'with a walking
stick (which I have every reason to believe has knobs upon it), on that
delicate and exquisite portion of the human anatomy--the brain. Several
blows have been inflicted, sir, without a walking-stick, upon that
tenderer portion of my frame--my heart. You have mentioned, sir,
my being bankrupt in my purse. Yes, sir, I am. By an unfortunate
speculation, combined with treachery, I find myself reduced to poverty;
at a time, sir, when the child of my bosom is widowed, and affliction
and disgrace are in my family.'
Here Mr Pecksniff wiped his eyes again, and gave himself two or three
little knocks upon the breast, as if he were answering two or three
other little knocks from within, given by the tinkling hammer of his
conscience, to express 'Cheer up, my boy!'
'I know the human mind, although I trust it. That is my weakness. Do I
not know, sir'--here he became exceedingly plaintive and was observed to
glance towards Tom Pinch--'that my misfortunes bring this treatment on
me? Do I not know, sir, that but for them I never should have heard what
I have heard to-day? Do I not know that in the silence and the solitude
of night, a little voice will whisper in your ear, Mr Chuzzlewit, "This
was not well. This was not well, sir!" Think of this, sir (if you will
have the goodness), remote from the impulses of passion, and apart from
the specialities, if I may use that strong remark, of prejudice. And if
you ever contemplate the silent tomb, sir, which you will excuse me for
entertaining some doubt of your doing, after the conduct into which you
have allowed yourself to be betrayed this day; if you ever contemplate
the silent tomb sir, think of me. If you find yourself approaching to
the silent tomb, sir, think of me. If you should wish to have anything
inscribed upon your silent tomb, sir, let it be, that I--ah, my
remorseful sir! that I--the humble individual who has now the honour of
reproaching you, forgave you. That I forgave you when my injuries were
fresh, and when my bosom was newly wrung. It may be bitterness to you to
hear it now, sir, but you will live to seek a consolation in it. May you
find a consolation in it when you want it, sir! Good morning!'
With this sublime address, Mr Pecksniff departed. But the effect of
his departure was much impaired by his being immediately afterwards run
against, and nearly knocked down, by a monstrously excited little man in
velveteen shorts and a very tall hat; who came bursting up the stairs,
and straight into the chambers of Mr Chuzzlewit, as if he were deranged.
'Is there anybody here that knows him?' cried the little man. 'Is there
anybody here that knows him? Oh, my stars, is there anybody here that
knows him?'
They looked at each other for an explanation; but nobody knew anything
more than that here was an excited little man with a very tall hat on,
running in and out of the room as hard as he could go; making his single
pair of bright blue stockings appear at least a dozen; and constantly
repeating in a shrill voice, 'IS there anybody here that knows him?'
'If your brains is not turned topjy turjey, Mr Sweedlepipes!' exclaimed
another voice, 'hold that there nige of yourn, I beg you, sir.'
At the same time Mrs Gamp was seen in the doorway; out of breath from
coming up so many stairs, and panting fearfully; but dropping curtseys
to the last.
'Excuge the weakness of the man,' said Mrs Gamp, eyeing Mr Sweedlepipe
with great indignation; 'and well I might expect it, as I should have
know'd, and wishin' he was drownded in the Thames afore I had brought
him here, which not a blessed hour ago he nearly shaved the noge off
from the father of as lovely a family as ever, Mr Chuzzlewit, was born
three sets of twins, and would have done it, only he see it a-goin' in
the glass, and dodged the rager. And never, Mr Sweedlepipes, I do assure
you, sir, did I so well know what a misfortun it was to be acquainted
with you, as now I do, which so I say, sir, and I don't deceive you!'
'I ask your pardon, ladies and gentlemen all,' cried the little barber,
taking off his hat, 'and yours too, Mrs Gamp. But--but,' he added this
half laughing and half crying, 'IS there anybody here that knows him?'
As the barber said these words, a something in top-boots, with its head
bandaged up, staggered into the room, and began going round and round
and round, apparently under the impression that it was walking straight
forward.
'Look at him!' cried the excited little barber. 'Here he is! That'll
soon wear off, and then he'll be all right again. He's no more dead than
I am. He's all alive and hearty. Aint you, Bailey?'
'R--r--reether so, Poll!' replied that gentleman.
'Look here!' cried the little barber, laughing and crying in the same
breath. 'When I steady him he comes all right. There! He's all right
now. Nothing's the matter with him now, except that he's a little shook
and rather giddy; is there, Bailey?'
'R--r--reether shook, Poll--reether so!' said Mr Bailey. 'What, my
lovely Sairey! There you air!'
'What a boy he is!' cried the tender-hearted Poll, actually sobbing
over him. 'I never see sech a boy! It's all his fun. He's full of it.
He shall go into the business along with me. I am determined he shall.
We'll make it Sweedlepipe and Bailey. He shall have the sporting branch
(what a one he'll be for the matches!) and me the shavin'. I'll make
over the birds to him as soon as ever he's well enough. He shall have
the little bullfinch in the shop, and all. He's sech a boy! I ask your
pardon, ladies and gentlemen, but I thought there might be some one here
that know'd him!'
Mrs Gamp had observed, not without jealousy and scorn, that a favourable
impression appeared to exist in behalf of Mr Sweedlepipe and his
young friend; and that she had fallen rather into the background in
consequence. She now struggled to the front, therefore, and stated her
business.
'Which, Mr Chuzzlewit,' she said, 'is well beknown to Mrs Harris as has
one sweet infant (though she DO not wish it known) in her own family by
the mother's side, kep in spirits in a bottle; and that sweet babe she
see at Greenwich Fair, a-travelling in company with a pink-eyed lady,
Prooshan dwarf, and livin' skelinton, which judge her feelings when the
barrel organ played, and she was showed her own dear sister's child, the
same not bein' expected from the outside picter, where it was painted
quite contrairy in a livin' state, a many sizes larger, and performing
beautiful upon the Arp, which never did that dear child know or do;
since breathe it never did, to speak on in this wale! And Mrs Harris, Mr
Chuzzlewit, has knowed me many year, and can give you information that
the lady which is widdered can't do better and may do worse, than let me
wait upon her, which I hope to do. Permittin' the sweet faces as I see
afore me.'
'Oh!' said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'Is that your business? Was this good person
paid for the trouble we gave her?'
'I paid her, sir,' returned Mark Tapley; 'liberal.'
'The young man's words is true,' said Mrs Gamp, 'and thank you kindly.'
'Then here we will close our acquaintance, Mrs Gamp,' retorted Mr
Chuzzlewit. 'And Mr Sweedlepipe--is that your name?'
'That is my name, sir,' replied Poll, accepting with a profusion of
gratitude, some chinking pieces which the old man slipped into his hand.
'Mr Sweedlepipe, take as much care of your lady-lodger as you can, and
give her a word or two of good advice now and then. Such,' said old
Martin, looking gravely at the astonished Mrs Gamp, 'as hinting at the
expediency of a little less liquor, and a little more humanity, and
a little less regard for herself, and a little more regard for her
patients, and perhaps a trifle of additional honesty. Or when Mrs Gamp
gets into trouble, Mr Sweedlepipe, it had better not be at a time when I
am near enough to the Old Bailey to volunteer myself as a witness to her
character. Endeavour to impress that upon her at your leisure, if you
please.'
Mrs Gamp clasped her hands, turned up her eyes until they were quite
invisible, threw back her bonnet for the admission of fresh air to her
heated brow; and in the act of saying faintly--'Less liquor!--Sairey
Gamp--Bottle on the chimney-piece, and let me put my lips to it, when I
am so dispoged!'--fell into one of the walking swoons; in which pitiable
state she was conducted forth by Mr Sweedlepipe, who, between his two
patients, the swooning Mrs Gamp and the revolving Bailey, had enough to
do, poor fellow.
The old man looked about him, with a smile, until his eyes rested on Tom
Pinch's sister; when he smiled the more.
'We will all dine here together,' he said; 'and as you and Mary have
enough to talk of, Martin, you shall keep house for us until the
afternoon, with Mr and Mrs Tapley. I must see your lodgings in the
meanwhile, Tom.'
Tom was quite delighted. So was Ruth. She would go with them.
'Thank you, my love,' said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'But I am afraid I must take
Tom a little out of the way, on business. Suppose you go on first, my
dear?'
Pretty little Ruth was equally delighted to do that.
'But not alone,' said Martin, 'not alone. Mr Westlock, I dare say, will
escort you.'
Why, of course he would: what else had Mr Westlock in his mind? How dull
these old men are!
'You are sure you have no engagement?' he persisted.
Engagement! As if he could have any engagement!
So they went off arm-in-arm. When Tom and Mr Chuzzlewit went off
arm-in-arm a few minutes after them, the latter was still smiling; and
really, for a gentleman of his habits, in rather a knowing manner.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
WHAT JOHN WESTLOCK SAID TO TOM PINCH'S SISTER; WHAT TOM PINCH'S SISTER
SAID TO JOHN WESTLOCK; WHAT TOM PINCH SAID TO BOTH OF THEM; AND HOW THEY
ALL PASSED THE REMAINDER OF THE DAY
Brilliantly the Temple Fountain sparkled in the sun, and laughingly
its liquid music played, and merrily the idle drops of water danced and
danced, and peeping out in sport among the trees, plunged lightly down
to hide themselves, as little Ruth and her companion came toward it.
And why they came toward the Fountain at all is a mystery; for they had
no business there. It was not in their way. It was quite out of their
way. They had no more to do with the Fountain, bless you, than they had
with--with Love, or any out-of-the-way thing of that sort.
It was all very well for Tom and his sister to make appointments by the
Fountain, but that was quite another affair. Because, of course, when
she had to wait a minute or two, it would have been very awkward for her
to have had to wait in any but a tolerably quiet spot; but that was as
quiet a spot, everything considered, as they could choose. But when she
had John Westlock to take care of her, and was going home with her arm
in his (home being in a different direction altogether), their coming
anywhere near that Fountain was quite extraordinary.
However, there they found themselves. And another extraordinary part
of the matter was, that they seemed to have come there, by a silent
understanding. Yet when they got there, they were a little confused
by being there, which was the strangest part of all; because there is
nothing naturally confusing in a Fountain. We all know that.
'What a good old place it was!' John said. With quite an earnest affection
for it.
'A pleasant place indeed,' said little Ruth. 'So shady!'
Oh wicked little Ruth!
They came to a stop when John began to praise it. The day was exquisite;
and stopping at all, it was quite natural--nothing could be more
so--that they should glance down Garden Court; because Garden Court ends
in the Garden, and the Garden ends in the River, and that glimpse is
very bright and fresh and shining on a summer's day. Then, oh, little
Ruth, why not look boldly at it! Why fit that tiny, precious, blessed
little foot into the cracked corner of an insensible old flagstone in
the pavement; and be so very anxious to adjust it to a nicety!
If the Fiery-faced matron in the crunched bonnet could have seen them
as they walked away, how many years' purchase might Fiery Face have been
disposed to take for her situation in Furnival's Inn as laundress to Mr
Westlock!
They went away, but not through London's streets! Through some enchanted
city, where the pavements were of air; where all the rough sounds of
a stirring town were softened into gentle music; where everything
was happy; where there was no distance, and no time. There were two
good-tempered burly draymen letting down big butts of beer into a
cellar, somewhere; and when John helped her--almost lifted her--the
lightest, easiest, neatest thing you ever saw--across the rope, they
said he owed them a good turn for giving him the chance. Celestial
draymen!
Green pastures in the summer tide, deep-littered straw yards in the
winter, no start of corn and clover, ever, to that noble horse who WOULD
dance on the pavement with a gig behind him, and who frightened her, and
made her clasp his arm with both hands (both hands meeting one upon the
another so endearingly!), and caused her to implore him to take
refuge in the pastry-cook's, and afterwards to peep out at the door so
shrinkingly; and then, looking at him with those eyes, to ask him was
he sure--now was he sure--they might go safely on! Oh for a string of
rampant horses! For a lion, for a bear, for a mad bull, for anything to
bring the little hands together on his arm again!
They talked, of course. They talked of Tom, and all these changes and
the attachment Mr Chuzzlewit had conceived for him, and the bright
prospects he had in such a friend, and a great deal more to the same
purpose. The more they talked, the more afraid this fluttering little
Ruth became of any pause; and sooner than have a pause she would say the
same things over again; and if she hadn't courage or presence of mind
enough for that (to say the truth she very seldom had), she was ten
thousand times more charming and irresistible than she had been before.
'Martin will be married very soon now, I suppose?' said John.
She supposed he would. Never did a bewitching little woman suppose
anything in such a faint voice as Ruth supposed that.
But seeing that another of those alarming pauses was approaching, she
remarked that he would have a beautiful wife. Didn't Mr Westlock think
so?
'Ye--yes,' said John, 'oh, yes.'
She feared he was rather hard to please, he spoke so coldly.
'Rather say already pleased,' said John. 'I have scarcely seen her. I
had no care to see her. I had no eyes for HER, this morning.'
Oh, good gracious!
It was well they had reached their destination. She never could have
gone any further. It would have been impossible to walk in such a
tremble.
Tom had not come in. They entered the triangular parlour together, and
alone. Fiery Face, Fiery Face, how many years' purchase NOW!
She sat down on the little sofa, and untied her bonnet-strings. He sat
down by her side, and very near her; very, very near her. Oh rapid,
swelling, bursting little heart, you knew that it would come to this,
and hoped it would. Why beat so wildly, heart!
'Dear Ruth! Sweet Ruth! If I had loved you less, I could have told you
that I loved you, long ago. I have loved you from the first. There never
was a creature in the world more truly loved than you, dear Ruth, by
me!'
She clasped her little hands before her face. The gushing tears of joy,
and pride, and hope, and innocent affection, would not be restrained.
Fresh from her full young heart they came to answer him.
'My dear love! If this is--I almost dare to hope it is, now--not painful
or distressing to you, you make me happier than I can tell, or you
imagine. Darling Ruth! My own good, gentle, winning Ruth! I hope I know
the value of your heart, I hope I know the worth of your angel nature.
Let me try and show you that I do; and you will make me happier, Ruth--'
'Not happier,' she sobbed, 'than you make me. No one can be happier,
John, than you make me!'
Fiery Face, provide yourself! The usual wages or the usual warning. It's
all over, Fiery Face. We needn't trouble you any further.
The little hands could meet each other now, without a rampant horse
to urge them. There was no occasion for lions, bears, or mad bulls. It
could all be done, and infinitely better, without their assistance.
No burly drayman or big butts of beer, were wanted for apologies. No
apology at all was wanted. The soft light touch fell coyly, but quite
naturally, upon the lover's shoulder; the delicate waist, the drooping
head, the blushing cheek, the beautiful eyes, the exquisite mouth
itself, were all as natural as possible. If all the horses in Araby had
run away at once, they couldn't have improved upon it.
They soon began to talk of Tom again.
'I hope he will be glad to hear of it!' said John, with sparkling eyes.
Ruth drew the little hands a little tighter when he said it, and looked
up seriously into his face.
'I am never to leave him, AM I, dear? I could never leave Tom. I am sure
you know that.'
'Do you think I would ask you?' he returned, with a--well! Never mind
with what.
'I am sure you never would,' she answered, the bright tears standing in
her eyes.
'And I will swear it, Ruth, my darling, if you please. Leave Tom! That
would be a strange beginning. Leave Tom, dear! If Tom and we be not
inseparable, and Tom (God bless him) have not all honour and all love
in our home, my little wife, may that home never be! And that's a strong
oath, Ruth.'
Shall it be recorded how she thanked him? Yes, it shall. In all
simplicity and innocence and purity of heart, yet with a timid,
graceful, half-determined hesitation, she set a little rosy seal upon
the vow, whose colour was reflected in her face, and flashed up to the
braiding of her dark brown hair.
'Tom will be so happy, and so proud, and glad,' she said, clasping her
little hands. 'But so surprised! I am sure he had never thought of such
a thing.'
Of course John asked her immediately--because you know they were in that
foolish state when great allowances must be made--when SHE had begun to
think of such a thing, and this made a little diversion in their talk; a
charming diversion to them, but not so interesting to us; at the end of
which, they came back to Tom again.
'Ah! dear Tom!' said Ruth. 'I suppose I ought to tell you everything
now. I should have no secrets from you. Should I, John, love?'
It is of no use saying how that preposterous John answered her, because
he answered in a manner which is untranslatable on paper though highly
satisfactory in itself. But what he conveyed was, No no no, sweet Ruth;
or something to that effect.
Then she told him Tom's great secret; not exactly saying how she had
found it out, but leaving him to understand it if he liked; and John was
sadly grieved to hear it, and was full of sympathy and sorrow. But they
would try, he said, only the more, on this account to make him happy,
and to beguile him with his favourite pursuits. And then, in all the
confidence of such a time, he told her how he had a capital opportunity
of establishing himself in his old profession in the country; and how he
had been thinking, in the event of that happiness coming upon him which
had actually come--there was another slight diversion here--how he had
been thinking that it would afford occupation to Tom, and enable them to
live together in the easiest manner, without any sense of dependence on
Tom's part; and to be as happy as the day was long. And Ruth receiving
this with joy, they went on catering for Tom to that extent that they
had already purchased him a select library and built him an organ, on
which he was performing with the greatest satisfaction, when they heard
him knocking at the door.
Though she longed to tell him what had happened, poor little Ruth was
greatly agitated by his arrival; the more so because she knew that Mr
Chuzzlewit was with him. So she said, all in a tremble:
'What shall I do, dear John! I can't bear that he should hear it from
any one but me, and I could not tell him, unless we were alone.'
'Do, my love,' said John, 'whatever is natural to you on the impulse of
the moment, and I am sure it will be right.'
He had hardly time to say thus much, and Ruth had hardly time to--just
to get a little farther off--upon the sofa, when Tom and Mr Chuzzlewit
came in. Mr Chuzzlewit came first, and Tom was a few seconds behind him.
Now Ruth had hastily resolved that she would beckon Tom upstairs after
a short time, and would tell him in his little bedroom. But when she saw
his dear old face come in, her heart was so touched that she ran into
his arms, and laid her head down on his breast and sobbed out, 'Bless
me, Tom! My dearest brother!'
Tom looked up, in surprise, and saw John Westlock close beside him,
holding out his hand.
'John!' cried Tom. 'John!'
'Dear Tom,' said his friend, 'give me your hand. We are brothers, Tom.'
Tom wrung it with all his force, embraced his sister fervently, and put
her in John Westlock's arms.
'Don't speak to me, John. Heaven is very good to us. I--' Tom could find
no further utterance, but left the room; and Ruth went after him.
And when they came back, which they did by-and-bye, she looked more
beautiful, and Tom more good and true (if that were possible) than ever.
And though Tom could not speak upon the subject even now; being yet
too newly glad, he put both his hands in both of John's with emphasis
sufficient for the best speech ever spoken.
'I am glad you chose to-day,' said Mr Chuzzlewit to John; with the same
knowing smile as when they had left him. 'I thought you would. I hoped
Tom and I lingered behind a discreet time. It's so long since I had
any practical knowledge of these subjects, that I have been anxious, I
assure you.'
'Your knowledge is still pretty accurate, sir,' returned John, laughing,
'if it led you to foresee what would happen to-day.'
'Why, I am not sure, Mr Westlock,' said the old man, 'that any great
spirit of prophecy was needed, after seeing you and Ruth together. Come
hither, pretty one. See what Tom and I purchased this morning, while you
were dealing in exchange with that young merchant there.'
The old man's way of seating her beside him, and humouring his voice as
if she were a child, was whimsical enough, but full of tenderness, and
not ill adapted, somehow, to little Ruth.
'See here!' he said, taking a case from his pocket, 'what a beautiful
necklace. Ah! How it glitters! Earrings, too, and bracelets, and a zone
for your waist. This set is yours, and Mary has another like it. Tom
couldn't understand why I wanted two. What a short-sighted Tom! Earrings
and bracelets, and a zone for your waist! Ah! Beautiful! Let us see how
brave they look. Ask Mr Westlock to clasp them on.'
It was the prettiest thing to see her holding out her round, white arm;
and John (oh deep, deep John!) pretending that the bracelet was very
hard to fasten; it was the prettiest thing to see her girding on the
precious little zone, and yet obliged to have assistance because her
fingers were in such terrible perplexity; it was the prettiest thing
to see her so confused and bashful, with the smiles and blushes playing
brightly on her face, like the sparkling light upon the jewels; it was
the prettiest thing that you would see, in the common experiences of a
twelvemonth, rely upon it.
'The set of jewels and the wearer are so well matched,' said the old
man, 'that I don't know which becomes the other most. Mr Westlock could
tell me, I have no doubt, but I'll not ask him, for he is bribed. Health
to wear them, my dear, and happiness to make you forgetful of them,
except as a remembrance from a loving friend!'
He patted her upon the cheek, and said to Tom:
'I must play the part of a father here, Tom, also. There are not many
fathers who marry two such daughters on the same day; but we will
overlook the improbability for the gratification of an old man's fancy.
I may claim that much indulgence,' he added, 'for I have gratified few
fancies enough in my life tending to the happiness of others, Heaven
knows!'
These various proceedings had occupied so much time, and they fell into
such a pleasant conversation now, that it was within a quarter of an
hour of the time appointed for dinner before any of them thought about
it. A hackney-coach soon carried them to the Temple, however; and there
they found everything prepared for their reception.
Mr Tapley having been furnished with unlimited credentials relative to
the ordering of dinner, had so exerted himself for the honour of the
party, that a prodigious banquet was served, under the joint direction
of himself and his Intended. Mr Chuzzlewit would have had them of the
party, and Martin urgently seconded his wish, but Mark could by no means
be persuaded to sit down at table; observing, that in having the honour
of attending to their comforts, he felt himself, indeed, the landlord of
the Jolly Tapley, and could almost delude himself into the belief that
the entertainment was actually being held under the Jolly Tapley's roof.
For the better encouragement of himself in this fable, Mr Tapley took
it upon him to issue divers general directions to the waiters from the
hotel, relative to the disposal of the dishes and so forth; and as they
were usually in direct opposition to all precedent, and were always
issued in his most facetious form of thought and speech, they occasioned
great merriment among those attendants; in which Mr Tapley participated,
with an infinite enjoyment of his own humour. He likewise entertained
them with short anecdotes of his travels appropriate to the occasion;
and now and then with some comic passage or other between himself and
Mrs Lupin; so that explosive laughs were constantly issuing from the
side-board, and from the backs of chairs; and the head-waiter (who wore
powder, and knee-smalls, and was usually a grave man) got to be a bright
scarlet in the face, and broke his waistcoat-strings audibly.
Young Martin sat at the head of the table, and Tom Pinch at the foot;
and if there were a genial face at that board, it was Tom's. They all
took their tone from Tom. Everybody drank to him, everybody looked to
him, everybody thought of him, everybody loved him. If he so much as
laid down his knife and fork, somebody put out a hand to shake with him.
Martin and Mary had taken him aside before dinner, and spoken to him so
heartily of the time to come, laying such fervent stress upon the trust
they had in his completion of their felicity, by his society and closest
friendship, that Tom was positively moved to tears. He couldn't bear it.
His heart was full, he said, of happiness. And so it was. Tom spoke the
honest truth. It was. Large as thy heart was, dear Tom Pinch, it had no
room that day for anything but happiness and sympathy!
And there was Fips, old Fips of Austin Friars, present at the dinner,
and turning out to be the jolliest old dog that ever did violence to his
convivial sentiments by shutting himself up in a dark office. 'Where is
he?' said Fips, when he came in. And then he pounced on Tom, and told
him that he wanted to relieve himself of all his old constraint; and in
the first place shook him by one hand, and in the second place shook him
by the other, and in the third place nudged him in the waistcoat, and in
the fourth place said, 'How are you?' and in a great many other places
did a great many other things to show his friendliness and joy. And he
sang songs, did Fips; and made speeches, did Fips; and knocked off his
wine pretty handsomely, did Fips; and in short, he showed himself a
perfect Trump, did Fips, in all respects.
But ah! the happiness of strolling home at night--obstinate little Ruth,
she wouldn't hear of riding!--as they had done on that dear night, from
Furnival's Inn! The happiness of being able to talk about it, and to
confide their happiness to each other! The happiness of stating all
their little plans to Tom, and seeing his bright face grow brighter as
they spoke!
When they reached home, Tom left John and his sister in the parlour, and
went upstairs into his own room, under pretence of seeking a book. And
Tom actually winked to himself when he got upstairs; he thought it such
a deep thing to have done.
'They like to be by themselves, of course,' said Tom; 'and I came away
so naturally, that I have no doubt they are expecting me, every moment,
to return. That's capital!'
But he had not sat reading very long, when he heard a tap at his door.
'May I come in?' said John.
'Oh, surely!' Tom replied.
'Don't leave us, Tom. Don't sit by yourself. We want to make you merry;
not melancholy.'
'My dear friend,' said Tom, with a cheerful smile.
'Brother, Tom. Brother.'
'My dear brother,' said Tom; 'there is no danger of my being melancholy,
how can I be melancholy, when I know that you and Ruth are so blest in
each other! I think I can find my tongue tonight, John,' he added, after
a moment's pause. 'But I never can tell you what unutterable joy this
day has given me. It would be unjust to you to speak of your having
chosen a portionless girl, for I feel that you know her worth; I am sure
you know her worth. Nor will it diminish in your estimation, John, which
money might.'
'Which money would, Tom,' he returned. 'Her worth! Oh, who could see her
here, and not love her! Who could know her, Tom, and not honour her! Who
could ever stand possessed of such a heart as hers, and grow indifferent
to the treasure! Who could feel the rapture that I feel to-day, and love
as I love her, Tom, without knowing something of her worth! Your joy
unutterable! No, no, Tom. It's mine, it's mine.
'No, no, John,' said Tom. 'It's mine, it's mine.'
Their friendly contention was brought to a close by little Ruth herself,
who came peeping in at the door. And oh, the look, the glorious,
half-proud, half-timid look she gave Tom, when her lover drew her to his
side! As much as to say, 'Yes, indeed, Tom, he will do it. But then he
has a right, you know. Because I AM fond of him, Tom.'
As to Tom, he was perfectly delighted. He could have sat and looked at
them, just as they were, for hours.
'I have told Tom, love, as we agreed, that we are not going to permit
him to run away, and that we cannot possibly allow it. The loss of one
person, and such a person as Tom, too, out of our small household of
three, is not to be endured; and so I have told him. Whether he is
considerate, or whether he is only selfish, I don't know. But he needn't
be considerate, for he is not the least restraint upon us. Is he,
dearest Ruth?'
Well! He really did not seem to be any particular restraint upon them.
Judging from what ensued.
Was it folly in Tom to be so pleased by their remembrance of him at
such a time? Was their graceful love a folly, were their dear caresses
follies, was their lengthened parting folly? Was it folly in him to
watch her window from the street, and rate its scantiest gleam of light
above all diamonds; folly in her to breathe his name upon her knees, and
pour out her pure heart before that Being from whom such hearts and such
affections come?
If these be follies, then Fiery Face go on and prosper! If they be not,
then Fiery Face avaunt! But set the crunched bonnet at some other single
gentleman, in any case, for one is lost to thee for ever!
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
GIVES THE AUTHOR GREAT CONCERN. FOR IT IS THE LAST IN THE BOOK
Todger's was in high feather, and mighty preparations for a late
breakfast were astir in its commercial bowers. The blissful morning
had arrived when Miss Pecksniff was to be united in holy matrimony, to
Augustus.
Miss Pecksniff was in a frame of mind equally becoming to herself and
the occasion. She was full of clemency and conciliation. She had laid
in several caldrons of live coals, and was prepared to heap them on the
heads of her enemies. She bore no spite nor malice in her heart. Not the
least.
Quarrels, Miss Pecksniff said, were dreadful things in families; and
though she never could forgive her dear papa, she was willing to receive
her other relations. They had been separated, she observed, too long.
It was enough to call down a judgment upon the family. She believed the
death of Jonas WAS a judgment on them for their internal dissensions.
And Miss Pecksniff was confirmed in this belief, by the lightness with
which the visitation had fallen on herself.
By way of doing sacrifice--not in triumph; not, of course, in triumph,
but in humiliation of spirit--this amiable young person wrote,
therefore, to her kinswoman of the strong mind, and informed her that
her nuptials would take place on such a day. That she had been much hurt
by the unnatural conduct of herself and daughters, and hoped they might
not have suffered in their consciences. That, being desirous to forgive
her enemies, and make her peace with the world before entering into the
most solemn of covenants with the most devoted of men, she now held out
the hand of friendship. That if the strong-minded women took that hand,
in the temper in which it was extended to her, she, Miss Pecksniff,
did invite her to be present at the ceremony of her marriage, and did
furthermore invite the three red-nosed spinsters, her daughters
(but Miss Pecksniff did not particularize their noses), to attend as
bridesmaids.
The strong-minded women returned for answer, that herself and daughters
were, as regarded their consciences, in the enjoyment of robust health,
which she knew Miss Pecksniff would be glad to hear. That she had
received Miss Pecksniff's note with unalloyed delight, because she
never had attached the least importance to the paltry and insignificant
jealousies with which herself and circle had been assailed; otherwise
than as she had found them, in the contemplation, a harmless source of
innocent mirth. That she would joyfully attend Miss Pecksniff's bridal;
and that her three dear daughters would be happy to assist, on so
interesting, and SO VERY UNEXPECTED--which the strong-minded woman
underlined--SO VERY UNEXPECTED an occasion.
On the receipt of this gracious reply, Miss Pecksniff extended her
forgiveness and her invitations to Mr and Mrs Spottletoe; to Mr George
Chuzzlewit the bachelor cousin; to the solitary female who usually had
the toothache; and to the hairy young gentleman with the outline of
a face; surviving remnants of the party that had once assembled in Mr
Pecksniff's parlour. After which Miss Pecksniff remarked that there was
a sweetness in doing our duty, which neutralized the bitter in our cups.
The wedding guests had not yet assembled, and indeed it was so early
that Miss Pecksniff herself was in the act of dressing at her leisure,
when a carriage stopped near the Monument; and Mark, dismounting from
the rumble, assisted Mr Chuzzlewit to alight. The carriage remained in
waiting; so did Mr Tapley. Mr Chuzzlewit betook himself to Todger's.
He was shown, by the degenerate successor of Mr Bailey, into the
dining-parlour; where--for his visit was expected--Mrs Todgers
immediately appeared.
'You are dressed, I see, for the wedding,' he said.
Mrs Todgers, who was greatly flurried by the preparations, replied in
the affirmative.
'It goes against my wishes to have it in progress just now, I assure
you, sir,' said Mrs Todgers; 'but Miss Pecksniff's mind was set upon it,
and it really is time that Miss Pecksniff was married. That cannot be
denied, sir.'
'No,' said Mr Chuzzlewit, 'assuredly not. Her sister takes no part in
the proceedings?'
'Oh, dear no, sir. Poor thing!' said Mrs Todgers, shaking her head, and
dropping her voice. 'Since she has known the worst, she has never left
my room; the next room.'
'Is she prepared to see me?' he inquired.
'Quite prepared, sir.'
'Then let us lose no time.'
Mrs Todgers conducted him into the little back chamber commanding the
prospect of the cistern; and there, sadly different from when it had
first been her lodging, sat poor Merry, in mourning weeds. The room
looked very dark and sorrowful; and so did she; but she had one friend
beside her, faithful to the last. Old Chuffey.
When Mr Chuzzlewit sat down at her side, she took his hand and put it
to her lips. She was in great grief. He too was agitated; for he had not
seen her since their parting in the churchyard.
'I judged you hastily,' he said, in a low voice. 'I fear I judged you
cruelly. Let me know that I have your forgiveness.'
She kissed his hand again; and retaining it in hers, thanked him in a
broken voice, for all his kindness to her since.
'Tom Pinch,' said Martin, 'has faithfully related to me all that you
desired him to convey; at a time when he deemed it very improbable that
he would ever have an opportunity of delivering your message. Believe
me, that if I ever deal again with an ill-advised and unawakened
nature, hiding the strength it thinks its weakness, I will have long and
merciful consideration for it.'
'You had for me; even for me,' she answered. 'I quite believe it. I said
the words you have repeated, when my distress was very sharp and hard to
bear; I say them now for others; but I cannot urge them for myself.
You spoke to me after you had seen and watched me day by day. There
was great consideration in that. You might have spoken, perhaps,
more kindly; you might have tried to invite my confidence by greater
gentleness; but the end would have been the same.'
He shook his head in doubt, and not without some inward self-reproach.
'How can I hope,' she said, 'that your interposition would have
prevailed with me, when I know how obdurate I was! I never thought at
all; dear Mr Chuzzlewit, I never thought at all; I had no thought,
no heart, no care to find one; at that time. It has grown out of my
trouble. I have felt it in my trouble. I wouldn't recall my trouble such
as it is and has been--and it is light in comparison with trials which
hundreds of good people suffer every day, I know--I wouldn't recall
it to-morrow, if I could. It has been my friend, for without it no one
could have changed me; nothing could have changed me. Do not mistrust me
because of these tears; I cannot help them. I am grateful for it, in my
soul. Indeed I am!'
'Indeed she is!' said Mrs Todgers. 'I believe it, sir.'
'And so do I!' said Mr Chuzzlewit. 'Now, attend to me, my dear. Your
late husband's estate, if not wasted by the confession of a large debt
to the broken office (which document, being useless to the runaways,
has been sent over to England by them; not so much for the sake of the
creditors as for the gratification of their dislike to him, whom they
suppose to be still living), will be seized upon by law; for it is not
exempt, as I learn, from the claims of those who have suffered by the
fraud in which he was engaged. Your father's property was all, or nearly
all, embarked in the same transaction. If there be any left, it will be
seized on, in like manner. There is no home THERE.'
'I couldn't return to him,' she said, with an instinctive reference to
his having forced her marriage on. 'I could not return to him.'
'I know it,' Mr Chuzzlewit resumed; 'and I am here because I know
it. Come with me! From all who are about me, you are certain (I
have ascertained it) of a generous welcome. But until your health is
re-established, and you are sufficiently composed to bear that welcome,
you shall have your abode in any quiet retreat of your own choosing,
near London; not so far removed but that this kind-hearted lady may
still visit you as often as she pleases. You have suffered much; but you
are young, and have a brighter and a better future stretching out before
you. Come with me. Your sister is careless of you, I know. She hurries
on and publishes her marriage, in a spirit which (to say no more of it)
is barely decent, is unsisterly, and bad. Leave the house before her
guests arrive. She means to give you pain. Spare her the offence, and
come with me!'
Mrs Todgers, though most unwilling to part with her, added her
persuasions. Even poor old Chuffey (of course included in the project)
added his. She hurriedly attired herself, and was ready to depart, when
Miss Pecksniff dashed into the room.
Miss Pecksniff dashed in so suddenly, that she was placed in an
embarrassing position. For though she had completed her bridal toilette
as to her head, on which she wore a bridal bonnet with orange flowers,
she had not completed it as to her skirts, which displayed no choicer
decoration than a dimity bedgown. She had dashed in, in fact, about
half-way through, to console her sister, in her affliction, with a sight
of the aforesaid bonnet; and being quite unconscious of the presence of
a visitor, until she found Mr Chuzzlewit standing face to face with her,
her surprise was an uncomfortable one.
'So, young lady!' said the old man, eyeing her with strong disfavour.
'You are to be married to-day!'
'Yes, sir,' returned Miss Pecksniff, modestly. 'I am. I--my dress is
rather--really, Mrs Todgers!'
'Your delicacy,' said old Martin, 'is troubled, I perceive. I am not
surprised to find it so. You have chosen the period of your marriage
unfortunately.'
'I beg your pardon, Mr Chuzzlewit,' retorted Cherry; very red and angry
in a moment; 'but if you have anything to say on that subject, I must
beg to refer you to Augustus. You will scarcely think it manly, I hope,
to force an argument on me, when Augustus is at all times ready to
discuss it with you. I have nothing to do with any deceptions that may
have been practiced on my parent,' said Miss Pecksniff, pointedly; 'and
as I wish to be on good terms with everybody at such a time, I should
have been glad if you would have favoured us with your company at
breakfast. But I will not ask you as it is; seeing that you have been
prepossessed and set against me in another quarter. I hope I have my
natural affections for another quarter, and my natural pity for
another quarter; but I cannot always submit to be subservient to it, Mr
Chuzzlewit. That would be a little too much. I trust I have more respect
for myself, as well as for the man who claims me as his Bride.'
'Your sister, meeting--as I think; not as she says, for she has said
nothing about it--with little consideration from you, is going away with
me,' said Mr Chuzzlewit.
'I am very happy to find that she has some good fortune at last,'
returned Miss Pecksniff, tossing her head. 'I congratulate her, I
am sure. I am not surprised that this event should be painful to
her--painful to her--but I can't help that, Mr Chuzzlewit. It's not my
fault.'
'Come, Miss Pecksniff!' said the old man, quietly. 'I should like to see
a better parting between you. I should like to see a better parting on
your side, in such circumstances. It would make me your friend. You may
want a friend one day or other.'
'Every relation of life, Mr Chuzzlewit, begging your pardon; and every
friend in life,' returned Miss Pecksniff, with dignity, 'is now bound up
and cemented in Augustus. So long as Augustus is my own, I cannot want
a friend. When you speak of friends, sir, I must beg, once for all, to
refer you to Augustus. That is my impression of the religious ceremony
in which I am so soon to take a part at that altar to which Augustus
will conduct me. I bear no malice at any time, much less in a moment of
triumph, towards any one; much less towards my sister. On the contrary,
I congratulate her. If you didn't hear me say so, I am not to blame.
And as I owe it to Augustus, to be punctual on an occasion when he may
naturally be supposed to be--to be impatient--really, Mrs Todgers!--I
must beg your leave, sir, to retire.'
After these words the bridal bonnet disappeared; with as much state as
the dimity bedgown left in it.
Old Martin gave his arm to the younger sister without speaking; and led
her out. Mrs Todgers, with her holiday garments fluttering in the wind,
accompanied them to the carriage, clung round Merry's neck at parting,
and ran back to her own dingy house, crying the whole way. She had
a lean, lank body, Mrs Todgers, but a well-conditioned soul within.
Perhaps the good Samaritan was lean and lank, and found it hard to live.
Who knows!
Mr Chuzzlewit followed her so closely with his eyes, that, until she had
shut her own door, they did not encounter Mr Tapley's face.
'Why, Mark!' he said, as soon as he observed it, 'what's the matter?'
'The wonderfulest ewent, sir!' returned Mark, pumping at his voice in
a most laborious manner, and hardly able to articulate with all his
efforts. 'A coincidence as never was equalled! I'm blessed if here ain't
two old neighbours of ourn, sir!'
'What neighbours?' cried old Martin, looking out of window. 'Where?'
'I was a-walkin' up and down not five yards from this spot,' said Mr
Tapley, breathless, 'and they come upon me like their own ghosts, as I
thought they was! It's the wonderfulest ewent that ever happened. Bring
a feather, somebody, and knock me down with it!'
'What do you mean!' exclaimed old Martin, quite as much excited by
the spectacle of Mark's excitement as that strange person was himself.
'Neighbours, where?'
'Here, sir!' replied Mr Tapley. 'Here in the city of London! Here upon
these very stones! Here they are, sir! Don't I know 'em? Lord love their
welcome faces, don't I know 'em!'
With which ejaculations Mr Tapley not only pointed to a decent-looking
man and woman standing by, but commenced embracing them alternately,
over and over again, in Monument Yard.
'Neighbours, WHERE? old Martin shouted; almost maddened by his
ineffectual efforts to get out at the coach-door.
'Neighbours in America! Neighbours in Eden!' cried Mark. 'Neighbours in
the swamp, neighbours in the bush, neighbours in the fever. Didn't she
nurse us! Didn't he help us! Shouldn't we both have died without 'em!
Haven't they come a-strugglin' back, without a single child for their
consolation! And talk to me of neighbours!'
Away he went again, in a perfectly wild state, hugging them, and
skipping round them, and cutting in between them, as if he were
performing some frantic and outlandish dance.
Mr Chuzzlewit no sooner gathered who these people were, than he burst
open the coach-door somehow or other, and came tumbling out among them;
and as if the lunacy of Mr Tapley were contagious, he immediately began
to shake hands too, and exhibit every demonstration of the liveliest
joy.
'Get up, behind!' he said. 'Get up in the rumble. Come along with me! Go
you on the box, Mark. Home! Home!'
'Home!' cried Mr Tapley, seizing the old man's hand in a burst of
enthusiasm. 'Exactly my opinion, sir. Home for ever! Excuse the liberty,
sir, I can't help it. Success to the Jolly Tapley! There's nothin' in
the house they shan't have for the askin' for, except a bill. Home to be
sure! Hurrah!'
Home they rolled accordingly, when he had got the old man in again, as
fast as they could go; Mark abating nothing of his fervour by the way,
by allowing it to vent itself as unrestrainedly as if he had been on
Salisbury Plain.
And now the wedding party began to assemble at Todgers's. Mr Jinkins,
the only boarder invited, was on the ground first. He wore a white
favour in his button-hole, and a bran new extra super double-milled blue
saxony dress coat (that was its description in the bill), with a variety
of tortuous embellishments about the pockets, invented by the artist
to do honour to the day. The miserable Augustus no longer felt strongly
even on the subject of Jinkins. He hadn't strength of mind enough to do
it. 'Let him come!' he had said, in answer to Miss Pecksniff, when she
urged the point. 'Let him come! He has ever been my rock ahead through
life. 'Tis meet he should be there. Ha, ha! Oh, yes! let Jinkins come!'
Jinkins had come with all the pleasure in life, and there he was. For
some few minutes he had no companion but the breakfast, which was set
forth in the drawing-room, with unusual taste and ceremony. But Mrs
Todgers soon joined him; and the bachelor cousin, the hairy young
gentleman, and Mr and Mrs Spottletoe, arrived in quick succession.
Mr Spottletoe honoured Jinkins with an encouraging bow. 'Glad to know
you, sir,' he said. 'Give you joy!' Under the impression that Jinkins
was the happy man.
Mr Jinkins explained. He was merely doing the honours for his friend
Moddle, who had ceased to reside in the house, and had not yet arrived.
'Not arrived, sir!' exclaimed Spottletoe, in a great heat.
'Not yet,' said Mr Jinkins.
'Upon my soul!' cried Spottletoe. 'He begins well! Upon my life and
honour this young man begins well! But I should very much like to know
how it is that every one who comes into contact with this family is
guilty of some gross insult to it. Death! Not arrived yet. Not here to
receive us!'
The nephew with the outline of a countenance, suggested that perhaps he
had ordered a new pair of boots, and they hadn't come home.
'Don't talk to me of Boots, sir!' retorted Spottletoe, with immense
indignation. 'He is bound to come here in his slippers then; he is bound
to come here barefoot. Don't offer such a wretched and evasive plea to
me on behalf of your friend, as Boots, sir.'
'He is not MY friend,' said the nephew. 'I never saw him.'
'Very well, sir,' returned the fiery Spottletoe. 'Then don't talk to
me!'
The door was thrown open at this juncture, and Miss Pecksniff entered,
tottering, and supported by her three bridesmaids. The strong-minded
woman brought up the rear; having waited outside until now, for the
purpose of spoiling the effect.
'How do you do, ma'am!' said Spottletoe to the strong-minded woman in a
tone of defiance. 'I believe you see Mrs Spottletoe, ma'am?'
The strong-minded woman with an air of great interest in Mrs
Spottletoe's health, regretted that she was not more easily seen. Nature
erring, in that lady's case, upon the slim side.
'Mrs Spottletoe is at least more easily seen than the bridegroom,
ma'am,' returned that lady's husband. 'That is, unless he has confined
his attentions to any particular part or branch of this family, which
would be quite in keeping with its usual proceedings.'
'If you allude to me, sir--' the strong-minded woman began.
'Pray,' interposed Miss Pecksniff, 'do not allow Augustus, at this awful
moment of his life and mine, to be the means of disturbing that harmony
which it is ever Augustus's and my wish to maintain. Augustus has not
been introduced to any of my relations now present. He preferred not.'
'Why, then, I venture to assert,' cried Mr Spottletoe, 'that the man who
aspires to join this family, and "prefers not" to be introduced to its
members, is an impertinent Puppy. That is my opinion of HIM!'
The strong-minded woman remarked with great suavity, that she was afraid
he must be. Her three daughters observed aloud that it was 'Shameful!'
'You do not know Augustus,' said Miss Pecksniff, tearfully, 'indeed you
do not know him. Augustus is all mildness and humility. Wait till you
see Augustus, and I am sure he will conciliate your affections.'
'The question arises,' said Spottletoe, folding his arms: 'How long we
are to wait. I am not accustomed to wait; that's the fact. And I want to
know how long we are expected to wait.'
'Mrs Todgers!' said Charity, 'Mr Jinkins! I am afraid there must be some
mistake. I think Augustus must have gone straight to the Altar!'
As such a thing was possible, and the church was close at hand, Mr
Jinkins ran off to see, accompanied by Mr George Chuzzlewit the bachelor
cousin, who preferred anything to the aggravation of sitting near the
breakfast, without being able to eat it. But they came back with no
other tidings than a familiar message from the clerk, importing that if
they wanted to be married that morning they had better look sharp, as
the curate wasn't going to wait there all day.
The bride was now alarmed; seriously alarmed. Good Heavens, what could
have happened! Augustus! Dear Augustus!
Mr Jinkins volunteered to take a cab, and seek him at the
newly-furnished house. The strong-minded woman administered comfort to
Miss Pecksniff. 'It was a specimen of what she had to expect. It would
do her good. It would dispel the romance of the affair.' The red-nosed
daughters also administered the kindest comfort. 'Perhaps he'd come,'
they said. The sketchy nephew hinted that he might have fallen off a
bridge. The wrath of Mr Spottletoe resisted all the entreaties of his
wife. Everybody spoke at once, and Miss Pecksniff, with clasped hands,
sought consolation everywhere and found it nowhere, when Jinkins, having
met the postman at the door, came back with a letter, which he put into
her hand.
Miss Pecksniff opened it, uttered a piercing shriek, threw it down upon
the ground, and fainted away.
They picked it up; and crowding round, and looking over one another's
shoulders, read, in the words and dashes following, this communication:
'OFF GRAVESEND.
'CLIPPER SCHOONER, CUPID
'Wednesday night
'EVER INJURED MISS PECKSNIFF--Ere this reaches you, the undersigned
will be--if not a corpse--on the way to Van Dieman's Land. Send not in
pursuit. I never will be taken alive!
'The burden--300 tons per register--forgive, if in my distraction,
I allude to the ship--on my mind--has been truly dreadful.
Frequently--when you have sought to soothe my brow with kisses--has
self-destruction flashed across me. Frequently--incredible as it may
seem--have I abandoned the idea.
'I love another. She is Another's. Everything appears to be somebody
else's. Nothing in the world is mine--not even my Situation--which I
have forfeited--by my rash conduct--in running away.
'If you ever loved me, hear my last appeal! The last appeal of a
miserable and blighted exile. Forward the inclosed--it is the key of my
desk--to the office--by hand. Please address to Bobbs and Cholberry--I
mean to Chobbs and Bolberry--but my mind is totally unhinged. I left a
penknife--with a buckhorn handle--in your work-box. It will repay the
messenger. May it make him happier than ever it did me!
'Oh, Miss Pecksniff, why didn't you leave me alone! Was it not cruel,
CRUEL! Oh, my goodness, have you not been a witness of my feelings--have
you not seen them flowing from my eyes--did you not, yourself, reproach
me with weeping more than usual on that dreadful night when last we
met--in that house--where I once was peaceful--though blighted--in the
society of Mrs Todgers!
'But it was written--in the Talmud--that you should involve yourself in
the inscrutable and gloomy Fate which it is my mission to accomplish,
and which wreathes itself--e'en now--about in temples. I will not
reproach, for I have wronged you. May the Furniture make some amends!
'Farewell! Be the proud bride of a ducal coronet, and forget me!
Long may it be before you know the anguish with which I now subscribe
myself--amid the tempestuous howlings of the--sailors,
'Unalterably,
'Never yours,
'AUGUSTUS.'
They thought as little of Miss Pecksniff, while they greedily perused
this letter, as if she were the very last person on earth whom it
concerned. But Miss Pecksniff really had fainted away. The bitterness of
her mortification; the bitterness of having summoned witnesses, and
such witnesses, to behold it; the bitterness of knowing that the
strong-minded women and the red-nosed daughters towered triumphant in
this hour of their anticipated overthrow; was too much to be borne. Miss
Pecksniff had fainted away in earnest.
What sounds are these that fall so grandly on the ear! What darkening
room is this!
And that mild figure seated at an organ, who is he! Ah Tom, dear Tom,
old friend!
Thy head is prematurely grey, though Time has passed thee and our old
association, Tom. But, in those sounds with which it is thy wont to bear
the twilight company, the music of thy heart speaks out--the story of
thy life relates itself.
Thy life is tranquil, calm, and happy, Tom. In the soft strain which
ever and again comes stealing back upon the ear, the memory of thine
old love may find a voice perhaps; but it is a pleasant, softened,
whispering memory, like that in which we sometimes hold the dead, and
does not pain or grieve thee, God be thanked.
Touch the notes lightly, Tom, as lightly as thou wilt, but never will
thine hand fall half so lightly on that Instrument as on the head of
thine old tyrant brought down very, very low; and never will it make as
hollow a response to any touch of thine, as he does always.
For a drunken, begging, squalid, letter-writing man, called Pecksniff,
with a shrewish daughter, haunts thee, Tom; and when he makes appeals to
thee for cash, reminds thee that he built thy fortunes better than his
own; and when he spends it, entertains the alehouse company with tales
of thine ingratitude and his munificence towards thee once upon a time;
and then he shows his elbows worn in holes, and puts his soleless
shoes up on a bench, and begs his auditors look there, while thou art
comfortably housed and clothed. All known to thee, and yet all borne
with, Tom!
So, with a smile upon thy face, thou passest gently to another
measure--to a quicker and more joyful one--and little feet are used to
dance about thee at the sound, and bright young eyes to glance up
into thine. And there is one slight creature, Tom--her child; not
Ruth's--whom thine eyes follow in the romp and dance; who, wondering
sometimes to see thee look so thoughtful, runs to climb up on thy knee,
and put her cheek to thine; who loves thee, Tom, above the rest, if that
can be; and falling sick once, chose thee for her nurse, and never knew
impatience, Tom, when thou wert by her side.
Thou glidest, now, into a graver air; an air devoted to old friends and
bygone times; and in thy lingering touch upon the keys, and the rich
swelling of the mellow harmony, they rise before thee. The spirit of
that old man dead, who delighted to anticipate thy wants, and never
ceased to honour thee, is there, among the rest; repeating, with a face
composed and calm, the words he said to thee upon his bed, and blessing
thee!
And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn with flowers by children's
hands, thy sister, little Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old
days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, and the Past, with which
she is so tenderly entwined in all thy thoughts, thy strain soars onward
to the Future. As it resounds within thee and without, the noble music,
rolling round ye both, shuts out the grosser prospect of an earthly
parting, and uplifts ye both to Heaven!