Martin Chuzzlewit
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.