Martin Chuzzlewit
Anthony Chuzzlewit and his son Mr Jonas--for they, my dear children,
are our travelling companions--will excuse me for an apparently harsh
remark. It is not MY desire to wound the feelings of any person with
whom I am connected in family bonds. I may be a Hypocrite,’ said Mr
Pecksniff, cuttingly; ‘but I am not a Brute.’
‘Pooh, pooh!’ said the old man. ‘What signifies that word, Pecksniff?
Hypocrite! why, we are all hypocrites. We were all hypocrites t’other
day. I am sure I felt that to be agreed upon among us, or I shouldn’t
have called you one. We should not have been there at all, if we had not
been hypocrites. The only difference between you and the rest was--shall
I tell you the difference between you and the rest now, Pecksniff?’
‘If you please, my good sir; if you please.’
‘Why, the annoying quality in YOU, is,’ said the old man, ‘that you
never have a confederate or partner in YOUR juggling; you would deceive
everybody, even those who practise the same art; and have a way with
you, as if you--he, he, he!--as if you really believed yourself. I’d
lay a handsome wager now,’ said the old man, ‘if I laid wagers, which
I don’t and never did, that you keep up appearances by a tacit
understanding, even before your own daughters here. Now I, when I have
a business scheme in hand, tell Jonas what it is, and we discuss it
openly. You’re not offended, Pecksniff?’
‘Offended, my good sir!’ cried that gentleman, as if he had received the
highest compliments that language could convey.
‘Are you travelling to London, Mr Pecksniff?’ asked the son.
‘Yes, Mr Jonas, we are travelling to London. We shall have the pleasure
of your company all the way, I trust?’
‘Oh! ecod, you had better ask father that,’ said Jonas. ‘I am not
a-going to commit myself.’
Mr Pecksniff was, as a matter of course, greatly entertained by this
retort. His mirth having subsided, Mr Jonas gave him to understand
that himself and parent were in fact travelling to their home in the
metropolis; and that, since the memorable day of the great family
gathering, they had been tarrying in that part of the country, watching
the sale of certain eligible investments, which they had had in their
copartnership eye when they came down; for it was their custom, Mr Jonas
said, whenever such a thing was practicable, to kill two birds with one
stone, and never to throw away sprats, but as bait for whales. When he
had communicated to Mr Pecksniff these pithy scraps of intelligence,
he said, ‘That if it was all the same to him, he would turn him over
to father, and have a chat with the gals;’ and in furtherance of
this polite scheme, he vacated his seat adjoining that gentleman, and
established himself in the opposite corner, next to the fair Miss Mercy.
The education of Mr Jonas had been conducted from his cradle on the
strictest principles of the main chance. The very first word he learnt
to spell was ‘gain,’ and the second (when he got into two syllables),
‘money.’ But for two results, which were not clearly foreseen perhaps by
his watchful parent in the beginning, his training may be said to have
been unexceptionable. One of these flaws was, that having been long
taught by his father to over-reach everybody, he had imperceptibly
acquired a love of over-reaching that venerable monitor himself.
The other, that from his early habits of considering everything as a
question of property, he had gradually come to look, with impatience,
on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate, which had no
right whatever to be going at large, but ought to be secured in that
particular description of iron safe which is commonly called a coffin,
and banked in the grave.
‘Well, cousin!’ said Mr Jonas--‘Because we ARE cousins, you know, a few
times removed--so you’re going to London?’
Miss Mercy replied in the affirmative, pinching her sister’s arm at the
same time, and giggling excessively.
‘Lots of beaux in London, cousin!’ said Mr Jonas, slightly advancing his
elbow.
‘Indeed, sir!’ cried the young lady. ‘They won’t hurt us, sir, I dare
say.’ And having given him this answer with great demureness she was so
overcome by her own humour, that she was fain to stifle her merriment in
her sister’s shawl.
‘Merry,’ cried that more prudent damsel, ‘really I am ashamed of you.
How can you go on so? You wild thing!’ At which Miss Merry only laughed
the more, of course.
‘I saw a wildness in her eye, t’other day,’ said Mr Jonas, addressing
Charity. ‘But you’re the one to sit solemn! I say--You were regularly
prim, cousin!’
‘Oh! The old-fashioned fright!’ cried Merry, in a whisper. ‘Cherry my
dear, upon my word you must sit next him. I shall die outright if he
talks to me any more; I shall, positively!’ To prevent which fatal
consequence, the buoyant creature skipped out of her seat as she spoke,
and squeezed her sister into the place from which she had risen.
‘Don’t mind crowding me,’ cried Mr Jonas. ‘I like to be crowded by gals.
Come a little closer, cousin.’
‘No, thank you, sir,’ said Charity.
‘There’s that other one a-laughing again,’ said Mr Jonas; ‘she’s
a-laughing at my father, I shouldn’t wonder. If he puts on that old
flannel nightcap of his, I don’t know what she’ll do! Is that my father
a-snoring, Pecksniff?’
‘Yes, Mr Jonas.’
‘Tread upon his foot, will you be so good?’ said the young gentleman.
‘The foot next you’s the gouty one.’
Mr Pecksniff hesitating to perform this friendly office, Mr Jonas did it
himself; at the same time crying:
‘Come, wake up, father, or you’ll be having the nightmare, and
screeching out, I know.--Do you ever have the nightmare, cousin?’ he
asked his neighbour, with characteristic gallantry, as he dropped his
voice again.
‘Sometimes,’ answered Charity. ‘Not often.’
‘The other one,’ said Mr Jonas, after a pause. ‘Does SHE ever have the
nightmare?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Charity. ‘You had better ask her.’
‘She laughs so,’ said Jonas; ‘there’s no talking to her. Only hark how
she’s a-going on now! You’re the sensible one, cousin!’
‘Tut, tut!’ cried Charity.
‘Oh! But you are! You know you are!’
‘Mercy is a little giddy,’ said Miss Charity. But she’ll sober down in
time.’
‘It’ll be a very long time, then, if she does at all,’ rejoined her
cousin. ‘Take a little more room.’
‘I am afraid of crowding you,’ said Charity. But she took it
notwithstanding; and after one or two remarks on the extreme heaviness
of the coach, and the number of places it stopped at, they fell into
a silence which remained unbroken by any member of the party until
supper-time.
Although Mr Jonas conducted Charity to the hotel and sat himself beside
her at the board, it was pretty clear that he had an eye to ‘the other
one’ also, for he often glanced across at Mercy, and seemed to draw
comparisons between the personal appearance of the two, which were not
unfavourable to the superior plumpness of the younger sister. He allowed
himself no great leisure for this kind of observation, however, being
busily engaged with the supper, which, as he whispered in his fair
companion’s ear, was a contract business, and therefore the more she
ate, the better the bargain was. His father and Mr Pecksniff, probably
acting on the same wise principle, demolished everything that came
within their reach, and by that means acquired a greasy expression of
countenance, indicating contentment, if not repletion, which it was very
pleasant to contemplate.
When they could eat no more, Mr Pecksniff and Mr Jonas subscribed for
two sixpenny-worths of hot brandy-and-water, which the latter gentleman
considered a more politic order than one shillingsworth; there being
a chance of their getting more spirit out of the innkeeper under this
arrangement than if it were all in one glass. Having swallowed his share
of the enlivening fluid, Mr Pecksniff, under pretence of going to see if
the coach were ready, went secretly to the bar, and had his own little
bottle filled, in order that he might refresh himself at leisure in the
dark coach without being observed.
These arrangements concluded, and the coach being ready, they got into
their old places and jogged on again. But before he composed himself
for a nap, Mr Pecksniff delivered a kind of grace after meat, in these
words:
‘The process of digestion, as I have been informed by anatomical
friends, is one of the most wonderful works of nature. I do not know
how it may be with others, but it is a great satisfaction to me to know,
when regaling on my humble fare, that I am putting in motion the most
beautiful machinery with which we have any acquaintance. I really feel
at such times as if I was doing a public service. When I have wound
myself up, if I may employ such a term,’ said Mr Pecksniff with
exquisite tenderness, ‘and know that I am Going, I feel that in the
lesson afforded by the works within me, I am a Benefactor to my Kind!’
As nothing could be added to this, nothing was said; and Mr Pecksniff,
exulting, it may be presumed, in his moral utility, went to sleep again.
The rest of the night wore away in the usual manner. Mr Pecksniff
and Old Anthony kept tumbling against each other and waking up much
terrified, or crushed their heads in opposite corners of the coach and
strangely tattooed the surface of their faces--Heaven knows how--in
their sleep. The coach stopped and went on, and went on and stopped,
times out of number. Passengers got up and passengers got down, and
fresh horses came and went and came again, with scarcely any interval
between each team as it seemed to those who were dozing, and with a gap
of a whole night between every one as it seemed to those who were broad
awake. At length they began to jolt and rumble over horribly uneven
stones, and Mr Pecksniff looking out of window said it was to-morrow
morning, and they were there.
Very soon afterwards the coach stopped at the office in the city; and
the street in which it was situated was already in a bustle, that fully
bore out Mr Pecksniff’s words about its being morning, though for any
signs of day yet appearing in the sky it might have been midnight. There
was a dense fog too; as if it were a city in the clouds, which they had
been travelling to all night up a magic beanstalk; and there was a thick
crust upon the pavement like oilcake; which, one of the outsides (mad,
no doubt) said to another (his keeper, of course), was Snow.
Taking a confused leave of Anthony and his son, and leaving the luggage
of himself and daughters at the office to be called for afterwards, Mr
Pecksniff, with one of the young ladies under each arm, dived across the
street, and then across other streets, and so up the queerest courts,
and down the strangest alleys and under the blindest archways, in a kind
of frenzy; now skipping over a kennel, now running for his life from a
coach and horses; now thinking he had lost his way, now thinking he had
found it; now in a state of the highest confidence, now despondent to
the last degree, but always in a great perspiration and flurry; until at
length they stopped in a kind of paved yard near the Monument. That is
to say, Mr Pecksniff told them so; for as to anything they could see
of the Monument, or anything else but the buildings close at hand, they
might as well have been playing blindman’s buff at Salisbury.
Mr Pecksniff looked about him for a moment, and then knocked at the
door of a very dingy edifice, even among the choice collection of dingy
edifices at hand; on the front of which was a little oval board like
a tea-tray, with this inscription--‘Commercial Boarding-House: M.
Todgers.’
It seemed that M. Todgers was not up yet, for Mr Pecksniff knocked twice
and rang thrice, without making any impression on anything but a dog