Martin Chuzzlewit
Do you think a blow could make him a more abject creature than he is? Do
you think that if I spat upon him, I could degrade him to a lower level
than his own? Look at him. Look at him, Pinch!’
Mr Pinch involuntarily did so. Mr Pecksniff sitting, as has been
already mentioned, on the carpet, with his head in an acute angle of the
wainscot, and all the damage and detriment of an uncomfortable journey
about him, was not exactly a model of all that is prepossessing and
dignified in man, certainly. Still he WAS Pecksniff; it was impossible
to deprive him of that unique and paramount appeal to Tom. And he
returned Tom’s glance, as if he would have said, ‘Aye, Mr Pinch, look at
me! Here I am! You know what the Poet says about an honest man; and an
honest man is one of the few great works that can be seen for nothing!
Look at me!’
‘I tell you,’ said Martin, ‘that as he lies there, disgraced, bought,
used; a cloth for dirty hands, a mat for dirty feet, a lying, fawning,
servile hound, he is the very last and worst among the vermin of the
world. And mark me, Pinch! The day will come--he knows it; see it
written on his face, while I speak!--when even you will find him out,
and will know him as I do, and as he knows I do. HE renounce ME!
Cast your eyes on the Renouncer, Pinch, and be the wiser for the
recollection!’
He pointed at him as he spoke, with unutterable contempt, and flinging
his hat upon his head, walked from the room and from the house. He went
so rapidly that he was already clear of the village, when he heard Tom
Pinch calling breathlessly after him in the distance.
‘Well! what now?’ he said, when Tom came up.
‘Dear, dear!’ cried Tom, ‘are you going?’
‘Going!’ he echoed. ‘Going!’
‘I didn’t so much mean that, as were you going now at once--in this bad
weather--on foot--without your clothes--with no money?’ cried Tom.
‘Yes,’ he answered sternly, ‘I am.’
‘And where?’ cried Tom. ‘Oh where will you go?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Yes, I do. I’ll go to America!’
‘No, no,’ cried Tom, in a kind of agony. ‘Don’t go there. Pray don’t.
Think better of it. Don’t be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don’t
go to America!’
‘My mind is made up,’ he said. ‘Your friend was right. I’ll go to
America. God bless you, Pinch!’
‘Take this!’ cried Tom, pressing a book upon him in great agitation.
‘I must make haste back, and can’t say anything I would. Heaven be with
you. Look at the leaf I have turned down. Good-bye, good-bye!’
The simple fellow wrung him by the hand, with tears stealing down his
cheeks; and they parted hurriedly upon their separate ways.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF MARTIN AND HIS DESPARATE RESOLVE, AFTER HE LEFT
MR PECKSNIFF’S HOUSE; WHAT PERSONS HE ENCOUNTERED; WHAT ANXIETIES HE
SUFFERED; AND WHAT NEWS HE HEARD
Carrying Tom Pinch’s book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not
even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain, Martin
went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had passed the
finger-post, and was on the high road to London. He slackened very
little in his speed even then, but he began to think, and look about
him, and to disengage his senses from the coil of angry passions which
hitherto had held them prisoner.
It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable
employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was
dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds
came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet
mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little
gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and
punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It
fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel
of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature was anywhere
to be seen. The prospect could hardly have been more desolate if
animated nature had been dissolved in water, and poured down upon the
earth again in that form.
The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite as cheerless
as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed to the last
degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full of independent
schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of realizing them; his
most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied with the extent of his
troubles. To add to his other miseries, he was by this time sensible of
being wet to the skin, and cold at his very heart.
In this deplorable condition he remembered Mr Pinch’s book; more
because it was rather troublesome to carry, than from any hope of being
comforted by that parting gift. He looked at the dingy lettering on the
back, and finding it to be an odd volume of the ‘Bachelor of Salamanca,’
in the French tongue, cursed Tom Pinch’s folly twenty times. He was on
the point of throwing it away, in his ill-humour and vexation, when he
bethought himself that Tom had referred him to a leaf, turned down;
and opening it at that place, that he might have additional cause
of complaint against him for supposing that any cold scrap of the
Bachelor’s wisdom could cheer him in such circumstances, found!--
Well, well! not much, but Tom’s all. The half-sovereign. He had wrapped
it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf. These words
were scrawled in pencil on the inside: ‘I don’t want it indeed. I should
not know what to do with it if I had it.’
There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings,
towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths,
wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men
down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not rather have to fan him,
in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine,
than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine,
reproachful truth, since time began!
Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom’s
keenly. After a few minutes it had the effect of raising his spirits,
and reminding him that he was not altogether destitute, as he had left
a fair stock of clothes behind him, and wore a gold hunting-watch in
his pocket. He found a curious gratification, too, in thinking what a
winning fellow he must be to have made such an impression on Tom; and in
reflecting how superior he was to Tom; and how much more likely to make
his way in the world. Animated by these thoughts, and strengthened in
his design of endeavouring to push his fortune in another country, he
resolved to get to London as a rallying-point, in the best way he could;
and to lose no time about it.
He was ten good miles from the village made illustrious by being the
abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a little
roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle before the
fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the cheerful blaze to
dry. It was a very different place from the last tavern in which he
had regaled; boasting no greater extent of accommodation than the
brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind so soon accommodates itself
to the necessities of the body, that this poor waggoner’s house-of-call,
which he would have despised yesterday, became now quite a choice hotel;
while his dish of eggs and bacon, and his mug of beer, were not by
any means the coarse fare he had supposed, but fully bore out the
inscription on the window-shutter, which proclaimed those viands to be
‘Good entertainment for Travellers.’
He pushed away his empty plate; and with a second mug upon the hearth
before him, looked thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes ached. Then
he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in
little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise
Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink
manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple
father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he
glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon
the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough;
and then he looked at the fire again, and seemed to descry a double
distant London, retreating among the fragments of the burning wood.
He had repeated this process in just the same order, many times, as
if it were a matter of necessity, when the sound of wheels called his
attention to the window out of its regular turn; and there he beheld a
kind of light van drawn by four horses, and laden, as well as he could
see (for it was covered in), with corn and straw. The driver, who
was alone, stopped at the door to water his team, and presently came
stamping and shaking the wet off his hat and coat, into the room where
Martin sat.
He was a red-faced burly young fellow; smart in his way, and with a
good-humoured countenance. As he advanced towards the fire he touched
his shining forehead with the forefinger of his stiff leather glove,
by way of salutation; and said (rather unnecessarily) that it was an
uncommon wet day.
‘Very wet,’ said Martin.
‘I don’t know as ever I see a wetter.’
‘I never felt one,’ said Martin.
The driver glanced at Martin’s soiled dress, and his damp shirt-sleeves,
and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he warmed his
hands:
‘You have been caught in it, sir?’
‘Yes,’ was the short reply.
‘Out riding, maybe?’ said the driver
‘I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don’t,’ returned Martin.
‘That’s bad,’ said the driver.
‘And may be worse,’ said Martin.
Now the driver said ‘That’s bad,’ not so much because Martin didn’t own
a horse, as because he said he didn’t with all the reckless desperation
of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal to be inferred.
Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled when he had retorted on
the driver; thus giving him to understand that he didn’t care a pin for
Fortune; that he was above pretending to be her favourite when he was
not; and that he snapped his fingers at her, the driver, and everybody
else.
The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the
pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he pointed
his thumb towards the road.
‘Up or down?’
‘Which IS up?’ said Martin.
‘London, of course,’ said the driver.
‘Up then,’ said Martin. He tossed his head in a careless manner
afterwards, as if he would have added, ‘Now you know all about it.’
put his hands deeper into his pockets; changed his tune, and whistled a
little louder.
‘I’m going up,’ observed the driver; ‘Hounslow, ten miles this side
London.’
‘Are you?’ cried Martin, stopping short and looking at him.
The driver sprinkled the fire with his wet hat until it hissed again and
answered, ‘Aye, to be sure he was.’
‘Why, then,’ said Martin, ‘I’ll be plain with you. You may suppose from
my dress that I have money to spare. I have not. All I can afford for
coach-hire is a crown, for I have but two. If you can take me for that,
and my waistcoat, or this silk handkerchief, do. If you can’t, leave it
alone.’
‘Short and sweet,’ remarked the driver.
‘You want more?’ said Martin. ‘Then I haven’t got more, and I can’t get
it, so there’s an end of that.’ Whereupon he began to whistle again.
‘I didn’t say I wanted more, did I?’ asked the driver, with something
like indignation.
‘You didn’t say my offer was enough,’ rejoined Martin.
‘Why, how could I, when you wouldn’t let me? In regard to the waistcoat,
I wouldn’t have a man’s waistcoat, much less a gentleman’s waistcoat,
on my mind, for no consideration; but the silk handkerchief’s another
thing; and if you was satisfied when we got to Hounslow, I shouldn’t
object to that as a gift.’