Martin Chuzzlewit
round the corner. A useful habit in his present calling.
‘Where is he?’ asked the man.
Slyme looked into the room for an instant and gave his head a jerk as
much as to say, ‘Close at hand. I see him.’
‘He’s booked,’ observed the man.
‘Through,’ said Slyme.
They looked at each other, and up and down the street. The man on
the coach-steps took his hat off, and put it on again, and whistled a
little.
‘I say! He’s taking his time!’ he remonstrated.
‘I allowed him five minutes,’ said Slyme. ‘Time’s more than up, though.
I’ll bring him down.’
He withdrew from the window accordingly, and walked on tiptoe to the
door in the partition. He listened. There was not a sound within. He set
the candles near it, that they might shine through the glass.
It was not easy, he found, to make up his mind to the opening of
the door. But he flung it wide open suddenly, and with a noise; then
retreated. After peeping in and listening again, he entered.
He started back as his eyes met those of Jonas, standing in an angle of
the wall, and staring at him. His neckerchief was off; his face was ashy
pale.
‘You’re too soon,’ said Jonas, with an abject whimper. ‘I’ve not had
time. I have not been able to do it. I--five minutes more--two minutes
more!--only one!’
Slyme gave him no reply, but thrusting the purse upon him and forcing it
back into his pocket, called up his men.
He whined, and cried, and cursed, and entreated them, and struggled, and
submitted, in the same breath, and had no power to stand. They got him
away and into the coach, where they put him on a seat; but he soon fell
moaning down among the straw at the bottom, and lay there.
The two men were with him. Slyme being on the box with the driver; and
they let him lie. Happening to pass a fruiterer’s on their way; the door
of which was open, though the shop was by this time shut; one of them
remarked how faint the peaches smelled.
The other assented at the moment, but presently stooped down in quick
alarm, and looked at the prisoner.
‘Stop the coach! He has poisoned himself! The smell comes from this
bottle in his hand!’
The hand had shut upon it tight. With that rigidity of grasp with which
no living man, in the full strength and energy of life, can clutch a
prize he has won.
They dragged him out into the dark street; but jury, judge, and hangman,
could have done no more, and could do nothing now. Dead, dead, dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
IN WHICH THE TABLES ARE TURNED, COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN
Old Martin’s cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so
frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth
of the indignation he had hoarded up during his residence with Mr
Pecksniff, were retarded, but not beyond a few hours, by the occurrences
just now related. Stunned, as he had been at first by the intelligence
conveyed to him through Tom Pinch and John Westlock, of the supposed
manner of his brother’s death; overwhelmed as he was by the subsequent
narratives of Chuffey and Nadgett, and the forging of that chain of
circumstances ending in the death of Jonas, of which catastrophe he was
immediately informed; scattered as his purposes and hopes were for the
moment, by the crowding in of all these incidents between him and his
end; still their very intensity and the tumult of their assemblage
nerved him to the rapid and unyielding execution of his scheme. In every
single circumstance, whether it were cruel, cowardly, or false, he
saw the flowering of the same pregnant seed. Self; grasping, eager,
narrow-ranging, overreaching self; with its long train of suspicions,
lusts, deceits, and all their growing consequences; was the root of the
vile tree. Mr Pecksniff had so presented his character before the old
man’s eyes, that he--the good, the tolerant, enduring Pecksniff--had
become the incarnation of all selfishness and treachery; and the more
odious the shapes in which those vices ranged themselves before him now,
the sterner consolation he had in his design of setting Mr Pecksniff
right and Mr Pecksniff’s victims too.
To this work he brought, not only the energy and determination natural
to his character (which, as the reader may have observed in the
beginning of his or her acquaintance with this gentleman, was remarkable
for the strong development of those qualities), but all the forced and
unnaturally nurtured energy consequent upon their long suppression. And
these two tides of resolution setting into one and sweeping on, became
so strong and vigorous, that, to prevent themselves from being carried
away before it, Heaven knows where, was as much as John Westlock and
Mark Tapley together (though they were tolerably energetic too) could
manage to effect.
He had sent for John Westlock immediately on his arrival; and John,
under the conduct of Tom Pinch, had waited on him. Having a lively
recollection of Mr Tapley, he had caused that gentleman’s attendance to
be secured, through John’s means, without delay; and thus, as we have
seen, they had all repaired together to the City. But his grandson he
had refused to see until to-morrow, when Mr Tapley was instructed to
summon him to the Temple at ten o’clock in the forenoon. Tom he would
not allow to be employed in anything, lest he should be wrongfully
suspected; but he was a party to all their proceedings, and was with
them until late at night--until after they knew of the death of Jonas;
when he went home to tell all these wonders to little Ruth, and to
prepare her for accompanying him to the Temple in the morning, agreeably
to Mr Chuzzlewit’s particular injunction.
It was characteristic of old Martin, and his looking on to something
which he had distinctly before him, that he communicated to them nothing
of his intentions, beyond such hints of reprisal on Mr Pecksniff as they
gathered from the game he had played in that gentleman’s house, and the
brightening of his eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Even to John
Westlock, in whom he was evidently disposed to place great confidence
(which may indeed be said of every one of them), he gave no explanation
whatever. He merely requested him to return in the morning; and with
this for their utmost satisfaction, they left him, when the night was
far advanced, alone.
The events of such a day might have worn out the body and spirit of
a much younger man than he, but he sat in deep and painful meditation
until the morning was bright. Nor did he even then seek any prolonged
repose, but merely slumbered in his chair, until seven o’clock, when Mr
Tapley had appointed to come to him by his desire; and came--as fresh
and clean and cheerful as the morning itself.
‘You are punctual,’ said Mr Chuzzlewit, opening the door to him in reply
to his light knock, which had roused him instantly.
‘My wishes, sir,’ replied Mr Tapley, whose mind would appear from the
context to have been running on the matrimonial service, ‘is to love,
honour, and obey. The clock’s a-striking now, sir.’
‘Come in!’
‘Thank’ee, sir,’ rejoined Mr Tapley, ‘what could I do for you first,
sir?’
‘You gave my message to Martin?’ said the old man, bending his eyes upon
him.
‘I did, sir,’ returned Mark; ‘and you never see a gentleman more
surprised in all your born days than he was.’
‘What more did you tell him?’ Mr Chuzzlewit inquired.
‘Why, sir,’ said Mr Tapley, smiling, ‘I should have liked to tell him a
deal more, but not being able, sir, I didn’t tell it him.’
‘You told him all you knew?’
‘But it was precious little, sir,’ retorted Mr Tapley. ‘There was very
little respectin’ you that I was able to tell him, sir. I only mentioned
my opinion that Mr Pecksniff would find himself deceived, sir, and
that you would find yourself deceived, and that he would find himself
deceived, sir.’
‘In what?’ asked Mr Chuzzlewit.
‘Meaning him, sir?’
‘Meaning both him and me.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr Tapley. ‘In your old opinions of each other. As
to him, sir, and his opinions, I know he’s a altered man. I know it.
I know’d it long afore he spoke to you t’other day, and I must say it.
Nobody don’t know half as much of him as I do. Nobody can’t. There
was always a deal of good in him, but a little of it got crusted over,
somehow. I can’t say who rolled the paste of that ‘ere crust myself,
but--’
‘Go on,’ said Martin. ‘Why do you stop?’
‘But it--well! I beg your pardon, but I think it may have been you, sir.
Unintentional I think it may have been you. I don’t believe that neither
of you gave the other quite a fair chance. There! Now I’ve got rid on
it,’ said Mr Tapley in a fit of desperation: ‘I can’t go a-carryin’ it
about in my own mind, bustin’ myself with it; yesterday was quite long
enough. It’s out now. I can’t help it. I’m sorry for it. Don’t wisit on
him, sir, that’s all.’
It was clear that Mark expected to be ordered out immediately, and was
quite prepared to go.
‘So you think,’ said Martin, ‘that his old faults are, in some degree,
of my creation, do you?’
‘Well, sir,’ retorted Mr Tapley, ‘I’m werry sorry, but I can’t unsay it.
It’s hardly fair of you, sir, to make a ignorant man conwict himself in
this way, but I DO think so. I am as respectful disposed to you, sir, as
a man can be; but I DO think so.’
The light of a faint smile seemed to break through the dull steadiness
of Martin’s face, as he looked attentively at him, without replying.
‘Yet you are an ignorant man, you say,’ he observed after a long pause.
‘Werry much so,’ Mr Tapley replied.
‘And I a learned, well-instructed man, you think?’
‘Likewise wery much so,’ Mr Tapley answered.
The old man, with his chin resting on his hand, paced the room twice or
thrice before he added:
‘You have left him this morning?’
‘Come straight from him now, sir.’
‘For what does he suppose?’
‘He don’t know what to suppose, sir, no more than myself. I told him
jest wot passed yesterday, sir, and that you had said to me, “Can you be
here by seven in the morning?” and that you had said to him, through me,
“Can you be here by ten in the morning?” and that I had said “Yes” to
both. That’s all, sir.’
His frankness was so genuine that it plainly WAS all.
‘Perhaps,’ said Martin, ‘he may think you are going to desert him, and
to serve me?’
‘I have served him in that sort of way, sir,’ replied Mark, without the
loss of any atom of his self-possession; ‘and we have been that sort of
companions in misfortune, that my opinion is, he don’t believe a word on
it. No more than you do, sir.’
‘Will you help me to dress, and get me some breakfast from the hotel?’
asked Martin.
‘With pleasure, sir,’ said Mark.
‘And by-and-bye,’ said Martin, ‘remaining in the room, as I wish you to
do, will you attend to the door yonder--give admission to visitors, I
mean, when they knock?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said Mr Tapley.
‘You will not find it necessary to express surprise at their
appearance,’ Martin suggested.
‘Oh dear no, sir!’ said Mr Tapley, ‘not at all.’
Although he pledged himself to this with perfect confidence, he was in a
state of unbounded astonishment even now. Martin appeared to observe it,
and to have some sense of the ludicrous bearing of Mr Tapley under these
perplexing circumstances; for, in spite of the composure of his voice
and the gravity of his face, the same indistinct light flickered on the
latter several times. Mark bestirred himself, however, to execute the
offices with which he was entrusted; and soon lost all tendency to any
outward expression of his surprise, in the occupation of being brisk and
busy.
But when he had put Mr Chuzzlewit’s clothes in good order for dressing,
and when that gentleman was dressed and sitting at his breakfast,
Mr Tapley’s feelings of wonder began to return upon him with great