Martin Chuzzlewit
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