Martin Chuzzlewit
‘Observe!’ said Martin, looking round. ‘I put myself in that man’s
hands on terms as mean and base, and as degrading to himself, as I could
render them in words. I stated them at length to him, before his own
children, syllable by syllable, as coarsely as I could, and with as much
offence, and with as plain an exposition of my contempt, as words--not
looks and manner merely--could convey. If I had only called the angry
blood into his face, I would have wavered in my purpose. If I had only
stung him into being a man for a minute I would have abandoned it. If he
had offered me one word of remonstrance, in favour of the grandson whom
he supposed I had disinherited; if he had pleaded with me, though never
so faintly, against my appeal to him to abandon him to misery and
cast him from his house; I think I could have borne with him for ever
afterwards. But not a word, not a word. Pandering to the worst of human
passions was the office of his nature; and faithfully he did his work!’
‘I am not angry,’ observed Mr Pecksniff. ‘I am hurt, Mr Chuzzlewit;
wounded in my feelings; but I am not angry, my good sir.’
Mr Chuzzlewit resumed.
‘Once resolved to try him, I was resolute to pursue the trial to the
end; but while I was bent on fathoming the depth of his duplicity, I
made a sacred compact with myself that I would give him credit on the
other side for any latent spark of goodness, honour, forbearance--any
virtue--that might glimmer in him. For first to last there has been no
such thing. Not once. He cannot say I have not given him opportunity.
He cannot say I have ever led him on. He cannot say I have not left
him freely to himself in all things; or that I have not been a passive
instrument in his hands, which he might have used for good as easily as
evil. Or if he can, he Lies! And that’s his nature, too.’
‘Mr Chuzzlewit,’ interrupted Pecksniff, shedding tears. ‘I am not angry,
sir. I cannot be angry with you. But did you never, my dear sir,
express a desire that the unnatural young man who by his wicked arts has
estranged your good opinion from me, for the time being; only for the
time being; that your grandson, Mr Chuzzlewit, should be dismissed my
house? Recollect yourself, my Christian friend.’
‘I have said so, have I not?’ retorted the old man, sternly. ‘I could
not tell how far your specious hypocrisy had deceived him, knave; and
knew no better way of opening his eyes than by presenting you before him
in your own servile character. Yes. I did express that desire. And you
leaped to meet it; and you met it; and turning in an instant on the
hand you had licked and beslavered, as only such hounds can, you
strengthened, and confirmed, and justified me in my scheme.’
Mr Pecksniff made a bow; a submissive, not to say a grovelling and an
abject bow. If he had been complimented on his practice of the loftiest
virtues, he never could have bowed as he bowed then.
‘The wretched man who has been murdered,’ Mr Chuzzlewit went on to say;
‘then passing by the name of--’
‘Tigg,’ suggested Mark.
‘Of Tigg; brought begging messages to me on behalf of a friend of his,
and an unworthy relative of mine; and finding him a man well enough
suited to my purpose, I employed him to glean some news of you, Martin,
for me. It was from him I learned that you had taken up your abode with
yonder fellow. It was he, who meeting you here in town, one evening--you
remember where?’
‘At the pawnbroker’s shop,’ said Martin.
‘Yes; watched you to your lodging, and enabled me to send you a
bank-note.’
‘I little thought,’ said Martin, greatly moved, ‘that it had come from
you; I little thought that you were interested in my fate. If I had--’
‘If you had,’ returned the old man, sorrowfully, ‘you would have shown
less knowledge of me as I seemed to be, and as I really was. I hoped to
bring you back, Martin, penitent and humbled. I hoped to distress you
into coming back to me. Much as I loved you, I had that to acknowledge
which I could not reconcile it to myself to avow, then, unless you
made submission to me first. Thus it was I lost you. If I have had,
indirectly, any act or part in the fate of that unhappy man, by putting
means, however small, within his reach, Heaven forgive me! I might have
known, perhaps, that he would misuse money; that it was ill-bestowed
upon him; and that sown by his hands it could engender mischief only.
But I never thought of him at that time as having the disposition or
ability to be a serious impostor, or otherwise than as a thoughtless,
idle-humoured, dissipated spendthrift, sinning more against himself than
others, and frequenting low haunts and indulging vicious tastes, to his
own ruin only.’
‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir,’ said Mr Tapley, who had Mrs Lupin on his
arm by this time, quite agreeably; ‘if I may make so bold as say so, my
opinion is, as you was quite correct, and that he turned out perfectly
nat’ral for all that. There’s surprisin’ number of men sir, who as long
as they’ve only got their own shoes and stockings to depend upon, will
walk down hill, along the gutters quiet enough and by themselves, and
not do much harm. But set any on ‘em up with a coach and horses, sir;
and it’s wonderful what a knowledge of drivin’ he’ll show, and how he’ll
fill his wehicle with passengers, and start off in the middle of the
road, neck or nothing, to the Devil! Bless your heart, sir, there’s ever
so many Tiggs a-passin’ this here Temple-gate any hour in the day, that
only want a chance to turn out full-blown Montagues every one!’
‘Your ignorance, as you call it, Mark,’ said Mr Chuzzlewit, ‘is wiser
than some men’s enlightenment, and mine among them. You are right; not
for the first time to-day. Now hear me out, my dears. And hear me, you,
who, if what I have been told be accurately stated, are Bankrupt in
pocket no less than in good name! And when you have heard me, leave this
place, and poison my sight no more!’
Mr Pecksniff laid his hand upon his breast, and bowed again.
‘The penance I have done in this house,’ said Mr Chuzzlewit, ‘has earned
this reflection with it constantly, above all others. That if it had
pleased Heaven to visit such infirmity on my old age as really had
reduced me to the state in which I feigned to be, I should have brought
its misery upon myself. Oh, you whose wealth, like mine, has been a
source of continual unhappiness, leading you to distrust the nearest and
dearest, and to dig yourself a living grave of suspicion and reserve;
take heed that, having cast off all whom you might have bound to you,
and tenderly, you do not become in your decay the instrument of such a
man as this, and waken in another world to the knowledge of such wrong
as would embitter Heaven itself, if wrong or you could ever reach it!’
And then he told them how he had sometimes thought, in the beginning,
that love might grow up between Mary and Martin; and how he had pleased
his fancy with the picture of observing it when it was new, and taking
them to task, apart, in counterfeited doubt, and then confessing to them
that it had been an object dear to his heart; and by his sympathy with
them, and generous provision for their young fortunes, establishing a
claim on their affection and regard which nothing should wither, and
which should surround his old age with means of happiness. How in the
first dawn of this design, and when the pleasure of such a scheme for
the happiness of others was new and indistinct within him, Martin had
come to tell him that he had already chosen for himself; knowing that
he, the old man, had some faint project on that head, but ignorant whom
it concerned. How it was little comfort to him to know that Martin
had chosen Her, because the grace of his design was lost, and because
finding that she had returned his love, he tortured himself with
the reflection that they, so young, to whom he had been so kind a
benefactor, were already like the world, and bent on their own selfish,
stealthy ends. How in the bitterness of this impression, and of his past
experience, he had reproached Martin so harshly (forgetting that he had
never invited his confidence on such a point, and confounding what
he had meant to do with what he had done), that high words sprung up
between them, and they separated in wrath. How he loved him still, and
hoped he would return. How on the night of his illness at the Dragon,
he had secretly written tenderly of him, and made him his heir, and
sanctioned his marriage with Mary; and how, after his interview with Mr
Pecksniff, he had distrusted him again, and burnt the paper to ashes,
and had lain down in his bed distracted by suspicions, doubts, and
regrets.
And then he told them how, resolved to probe this Pecksniff, and to
prove the constancy and truth of Mary (to himself no less than
Martin), he had conceived and entered on his plan; and how, beneath her
gentleness and patience, he had softened more and more; still more and
more beneath the goodness and simplicity, the honour and the manly faith
of Tom. And when he spoke of Tom, he said God bless him; and the tears
were in his eyes; for he said that Tom, mistrusted and disliked by him
at first, had come like summer rain upon his heart; and had disposed it
to believe in better things. And Martin took him by the hand, and Mary
too, and John, his old friend, stoutly too; and Mark, and Mrs Lupin,
and his sister, little Ruth. And peace of mind, deep, tranquil peace of
mind, was in Tom’s heart.
The old man then related how nobly Mr Pecksniff had performed the duty
in which he stood indebted to society, in the matter of Tom’s
dismissal; and how, having often heard disparagement of Mr Westlock from
Pecksniffian lips, and knowing him to be a friend to Tom, he had used,
through his confidential agent and solicitor, that little artifice which
had kept him in readiness to receive his unknown friend in London. And
he called on Mr Pecksniff (by the name of Scoundrel) to remember that
there again he had not trapped him to do evil, but that he had done it
of his own free will and agency; nay, that he had cautioned him against
it. And once again he called on Mr Pecksniff (by the name of Hang-dog)
to remember that when Martin coming home at last, an altered man, had
sued for the forgiveness which awaited him, he, Pecksniff, had rejected
him in language of his own, and had remorsely stepped in between him and
the least touch of natural tenderness. ‘For which,’ said the old man,
‘if the bending of my finger would remove a halter from your neck, I
wouldn’t bend it!’
‘Martin,’ he added, ‘your rival has not been a dangerous one, but Mrs
Lupin here has played duenna for some weeks; not so much to watch your
love as to watch her lover. For that Ghoul’--his fertility in finding
names for Mr Pecksniff was astonishing--‘would have crawled into her
daily walks otherwise, and polluted the fresh air. What’s this? Her hand
is trembling strangely. See if you can hold it.’
Hold it! If he clasped it half as tightly as he did her waist. Well,
well!
But it was good in him that even then, in his high fortune and
happiness, with her lips nearly printed on his own, and her proud young
beauty in his close embrace, he had a hand still left to stretch out to
Tom Pinch.
‘Oh, Tom! Dear Tom! I saw you, accidentally, coming here. Forgive me!’
‘Forgive!’ cried Tom. ‘I’ll never forgive you as long as I live, Martin,
if you say another syllable about it. Joy to you both! Joy, my dear
fellow, fifty thousand times.’
Joy! There is not a blessing on earth that Tom did not wish them. There
is not a blessing on earth that Tom would not have bestowed upon them,
if he could.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Mr Tapley, stepping forward, ‘but yow was
mentionin’, just now, a lady of the name of Lupin, sir.’
‘I was,’ returned old Martin