Martin Chuzzlewit
‘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