Martin Chuzzlewit
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