Martin Chuzzlewit
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.’