Martin Chuzzlewit
other’s clothes; and come home again.’
‘When you say “home,” do you mean a house like this?’
‘Very often. But I see you are tired to death, and will wish you good
night. We will discuss your projects in the morning. You cannot but
feel already that it is useless staying here, with any hope of advancing
them. You will have to go further.’
‘And to fare worse?’ said Martin, pursuing the old adage.
‘Well, I hope not. But sufficient for the day, you know--good night’
They shook hands heartily and separated. As soon as Martin was left
alone, the excitement of novelty and change which had sustained him
through all the fatigues of the day, departed; and he felt so thoroughly
dejected and worn out, that he even lacked the energy to crawl upstairs
to bed.
In twelve or fifteen hours, how great a change had fallen on his hopes
and sanguine plans! New and strange as he was to the ground on which he
stood, and to the air he breathed, he could not--recalling all that he
had crowded into that one day--but entertain a strong misgiving that his
enterprise was doomed. Rash and ill-considered as it had often looked on
shipboard, but had never seemed on shore, it wore a dismal aspect, now,
that frightened him. Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid, they
came upon him in depressing and discouraging shapes, and gave him no
relief. Even the diamonds on his finger sparkled with the brightness of
tears, and had no ray of hope in all their brilliant lustre.
He continued to sit in gloomy rumination by the stove, unmindful of
the boarders who dropped in one by one from their stores and
counting-houses, or the neighbouring bar-rooms, and, after taking long
pulls from a great white waterjug upon the sideboard, and lingering with
a kind of hideous fascination near the brass spittoons, lounged heavily
to bed; until at length Mark Tapley came and shook him by the arm,
supposing him asleep.
‘Mark!’ he cried, starting.
‘All right, sir,’ said that cheerful follower, snuffing with his fingers
the candle he bore. ‘It ain’t a very large bed, your’n, sir; and a man
as wasn’t thirsty might drink, afore breakfast, all the water you’ve
got to wash in, and afterwards eat the towel. But you’ll sleep without
rocking to-night, sir.’
‘I feel as if the house were on the sea’ said Martin, staggering when he
rose; ‘and am utterly wretched.’
‘I’m as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,’ said Mark. ‘But, Lord, I have
reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that’s my opinion. Take
care how you go’--for they were now ascending the stairs. ‘You recollect
the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the very small trunk, sir?’
‘The valise? Yes.’
‘Well, sir, there’s been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash
to-night, and they’re put outside the bedroom doors here. If you take
notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what a many
fronts, you’ll penetrate the mystery of his packing.’
But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so
had no interest in this discovery. Mr Tapley, nothing dashed by his
indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the
bed-chamber prepared for his reception; which was a very little narrow
room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest without a lid;
two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are commonly tried upon
at a ready-made establishment in England; a little looking-glass nailed
against the wall; and a washing-table, with a jug and ewer, that might
have been mistaken for a milk-pot and slop-basin.
‘I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,’
said Mark. ‘They’ve certainly got a touch of the ‘phoby, sir.’
‘I wish you would pull off my boots for me,’ said Martin, dropping into
one of the chairs ‘I am quite knocked up--dead beat, Mark.’
‘You won’t say that to-morrow morning, sir,’ returned Mr Tapley; ‘nor
even to-night, sir, when you’ve made a trial of this.’ With which he
produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks
of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon,
and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still
depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.
‘What do you call this?’ said Martin.
But Mr Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the
mixture--which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice--and
signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through
that agency by the enraptured drinker.
Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the
reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more until the
goblet was drained to the last drop.
‘There, sir!’ said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face; ‘if
ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain’t in the
way, all you’ve got to do is to ask the nearest man to go and fetch a
cobbler.’
‘To go and fetch a cobbler?’ repeated Martin.
‘This wonderful invention, sir,’ said Mark, tenderly patting the empty
glass, ‘is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long;
cobbler, when you name it short. Now you’re equal to having your boots
took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.’
Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the
bootjack.
‘Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,’ said Martin; ‘but, good Heaven,
if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or
money!’
‘Well, sir!’ replied the imperturbable Tapley; ‘from what we’ve seen
already, I don’t know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn’t
do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.’
‘Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!’ said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; ‘what
would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though
it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff’s!’
‘Oh, Dragon, Dragon!’ echoed Mark, cheerfully, ‘if there warn’t any
water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back,
I don’t know that I mightn’t say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in
New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there’s a
fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and
whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn’t give in on the
doorsteps, or you’ll never get up to the top!’
‘Wisely said, Mark,’ cried Martin. ‘We must look forward.’
‘In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked
backward was turned into stones,’ replied Mark; ‘and my opinion always
was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served ‘em right. I wish
you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!’
‘They must be of home, then,’ said Martin, as he lay down in bed.
‘So I say, too,’ whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and
in his own room; ‘for if there don’t come a time afore we’re well out of
this, when there’ll be a little more credit in keeping up one’s jollity,
I’m a United Statesman!’
Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects
afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light
of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle--a
dream within a dream--as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the
ocean to the English shore.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOES BUSINESS WITH THE HOUSE OF ANTHONY CHUZZLEWIT AND SON, FROM WHICH
ONE OF THE PARTNERS RETIRES UNEXPECTEDLY
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to
a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels,
step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from
the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would
seem to be the signal for instant confusion. As if, in the gap he had
left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a
solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages
of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly
dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock
before, becomes but sand and dust.
Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The
extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy
in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be
faithfully set down in these pages.
‘What a cold spring it is!’ whimpered old Anthony, drawing near the
evening fire, ‘It was a warmer season, sure, when I was young!’
‘You needn’t go scorching your clothes into holes, whether it was or
not,’ observed the amiable Jonas, raising his eyes from yesterday’s
newspaper, ‘Broadcloth ain’t so cheap as that comes to.’
‘A good lad!’ cried the father, breathing on his cold hands, and feebly
chafing them against each other. ‘A prudent lad! He never delivered
himself up to the vanities of dress. No, no!’
‘I don’t know but I would, though, mind you, if I could do it for
nothing,’ said his son, as he resumed the paper.
‘Ah!’ chuckled the old man. ‘IF, indeed!--But it’s very cold.’
‘Let the fire be!’ cried Mr Jonas, stopping his honoured parent’s hand
in the use of the poker. ‘Do you mean to come to want in your old age,
that you take to wasting now?’
‘There’s not time for that, Jonas,’ said the old man.
‘Not time for what?’ bawled his heir.
‘For me to come to want. I wish there was!’
‘You always were as selfish an old blade as need be,’ said Jonas in a
voice too low for him to hear, and looking at him with an angry frown.
‘You act up to your character. You wouldn’t mind coming to want,
wouldn’t you! I dare say you wouldn’t. And your own flesh and blood
might come to want too, might they, for anything you cared? Oh you
precious old flint!’
After this dutiful address he took his tea-cup in his hand--for that
meal was in progress, and the father and son and Chuffey were partakers
of it. Then, looking steadfastly at his father, and stopping now and
then to carry a spoonful of tea to his lips, he proceeded in the same
tone, thus:
‘Want, indeed! You’re a nice old man to be talking of want at this time
of day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare! There isn’t
time? No, I should hope not. But you’d live to be a couple of hundred if
you could; and after all be discontented. I know you!’
The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr Jonas
shook his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a loftier
position, went on to argue the point on high moral grounds.
‘If you’re in such a state of mind as that,’ he grumbled, but in the
same subdued key, ‘why don’t you make over your property? Buy an annuity
cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else
that watches the speculation. But no, that wouldn’t suit YOU. That would
be natural conduct to your own son, and you like to be unnatural, and to
keep him out of his rights. Why, I should be ashamed of myself if I was
you, and glad to hide my head in the what you may call it.’
Possibly this general phrase supplied the place of grave, or tomb,
or sepulchre, or cemetery, or mausoleum, or other such word which the
filial tenderness of Mr Jonas made him delicate of pronouncing. He
pursued the theme no further; for Chuffey, somehow discovering, from
his old corner by the fireside, that Anthony was in the attitude of a
listener, and that Jonas appeared to be speaking, suddenly cried out,
like one inspired:
‘He is your own son, Mr Chuzzlewit. Your own son, sir!’
Old Chuffey little suspected what depth of application these words had,
or that, in the bitter satire which they bore, they might have sunk into
the old man’s very soul, could he have known what words here hanging on
his own son’s lips, or what was passing in his thoughts. But the voice
diverted the current of Anthony’s reflections, and roused him.