Martin Chuzzlewit
‘Yes, yes, Chuffey, Jonas is a chip of the old block. It is a very
old block, now, Chuffey,’ said the old man, with a strange look of
discomposure.
‘Precious old,’ assented Jonas
‘No, no, no,’ said Chuffey. ‘No, Mr Chuzzlewit. Not old at all, sir.’
‘Oh! He’s worse than ever, you know!’ cried Jonas, quite disgusted.
‘Upon my soul, father, he’s getting too bad. Hold your tongue, will
you?’
‘He says you’re wrong!’ cried Anthony to the old clerk.
‘Tut, tut!’ was Chuffey’s answer. ‘I know better. I say HE’S wrong.
I say HE’S wrong. He’s a boy. That’s what he is. So are you, Mr
Chuzzlewit--a kind of boy. Ha! ha! ha! You’re quite a boy to many I have
known; you’re a boy to me; you’re a boy to hundreds of us. Don’t mind
him!’
With which extraordinary speech--for in the case of Chuffey this was a
burst of eloquence without a parallel--the poor old shadow drew through
his palsied arm his master’s hand, and held it there, with his own
folded upon it, as if he would defend him.
‘I grow deafer every day, Chuff,’ said Anthony, with as much softness of
manner, or, to describe it more correctly, with as little hardness as he
was capable of expressing.
‘No, no,’ cried Chuffey. ‘No, you don’t. What if you did? I’ve been deaf
this twenty year.’
‘I grow blinder, too,’ said the old man, shaking his head.
‘That’s a good sign!’ cried Chuffey. ‘Ha! ha! The best sign in the
world! You saw too well before.’
He patted Anthony upon the hand as one might comfort a child, and
drawing the old man’s arm still further through his own, shook his
trembling fingers towards the spot where Jonas sat, as though he would
wave him off. But, Anthony remaining quite still and silent, he relaxed
his hold by slow degrees and lapsed into his usual niche in the corner;
merely putting forth his hand at intervals and touching his old employer
gently on the coat, as with the design of assuring himself that he was
yet beside him.
Mr Jonas was so very much amazed by these proceedings that he could do
nothing but stare at the two old men, until Chuffey had fallen into his
usual state, and Anthony had sunk into a doze; when he gave some vent
to his emotions by going close up to the former personage, and making as
though he would, in vulgar parlance, ‘punch his head.’
‘They’ve been carrying on this game,’ thought Jonas in a brown study,
‘for the last two or three weeks. I never saw my father take so much
notice of him as he has in that time. What! You’re legacy hunting, are
you, Mister Chuff? Eh?’
But Chuffey was as little conscious of the thought as of the bodily
advance of Mr Jonas’s clenched fist, which hovered fondly about his ear.
When he had scowled at him to his heart’s content, Jonas took the candle
from the table, and walking into the glass office, produced a bunch of
keys from his pocket. With one of these he opened a secret drawer in the
desk; peeping stealthily out, as he did so, to be certain that the two
old men were still before the fire.
‘All as right as ever,’ said Jonas, propping the lid of the desk open
with his forehead, and unfolding a paper. ‘Here’s the will, Mister
Chuff. Thirty pound a year for your maintenance, old boy, and all the
rest to his only son, Jonas. You needn’t trouble yourself to be too
affectionate. You won’t get anything by it. What’s that?’
It WAS startling, certainly. A face on the other side of the glass
partition looking curiously in; and not at him but at the paper in his
hand. For the eyes were attentively cast down upon the writing, and were
swiftly raised when he cried out. Then they met his own, and were as the
eyes of Mr Pecksniff.
Suffering the lid of the desk to fall with a loud noise, but not
forgetting even then to lock it, Jonas, pale and breathless, gazed upon
this phantom. It moved, opened the door, and walked in.
‘What’s the matter?’ cried Jonas, falling back. ‘Who is it? Where do you
come from? What do you want?’
‘Matter!’ cried the voice of Mr Pecksniff, as Pecksniff in the flesh
smiled amiably upon him. ‘The matter, Mr Jonas!’
‘What are you prying and peering about here for?’ said Jonas, angrily.
‘What do you mean by coming up to town in this way, and taking one
unawares? It’s precious odd a man can’t read the--the newspaper--in his
own office without being startled out of his wits by people coming in
without notice. Why didn’t you knock at the door?’
‘So I did, Mr Jonas,’ answered Pecksniff, ‘but no one heard me. I was
curious,’ he added in his gentle way as he laid his hand upon the young
man’s shoulder, ‘to find out what part of the newspaper interested you
so much; but the glass was too dim and dirty.’
Jonas glanced in haste at the partition. Well. It wasn’t very clean. So
far he spoke the truth.
‘Was it poetry now?’ said Mr Pecksniff, shaking the forefinger of his
right hand with an air of cheerful banter. ‘Or was it politics? Or was
it the price of stock? The main chance, Mr Jonas, the main chance, I
suspect.’
‘You ain’t far from the truth,’ answered Jonas, recovering himself and
snuffing the candle; ‘but how the deuce do you come to be in London
again? Ecod! it’s enough to make a man stare, to see a fellow looking at
him all of a sudden, who he thought was sixty or seventy mile away.’
‘So it is,’ said Mr Pecksniff. ‘No doubt of it, my dear Mr Jonas. For
while the human mind is constituted as it is--’
‘Oh, bother the human mind,’ interrupted Jonas with impatience ‘what
have you come up for?’
‘A little matter of business,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘which has arisen
quite unexpectedly.’
‘Oh!’ cried Jonas, ‘is that all? Well. Here’s father in the next room.
Hallo father, here’s Pecksniff! He gets more addle-pated every day
he lives, I do believe,’ muttered Jonas, shaking his honoured parent
roundly. ‘Don’t I tell you Pecksniff’s here, stupid-head?’
The combined effects of the shaking and this loving remonstrance soon
awoke the old man, who gave Mr Pecksniff a chuckling welcome which was
attributable in part to his being glad to see that gentleman, and in
part to his unfading delight in the recollection of having called him a
hypocrite. As Mr Pecksniff had not yet taken tea (indeed he had, but an
hour before, arrived in London) the remains of the late collation, with
a rasher of bacon, were served up for his entertainment; and as Mr Jonas
had a business appointment in the next street, he stepped out to keep
it; promising to return before Mr Pecksniff could finish his repast.
‘And now, my good sir,’ said Mr Pecksniff to Anthony; ‘now that we
are alone, pray tell me what I can do for you. I say alone, because I
believe that our dear friend Mr Chuffey is, metaphysically speaking,
a--shall I say a dummy?’ asked Mr Pecksniff with his sweetest smile, and
his head very much on one side.
‘He neither hears us,’ replied Anthony, ‘nor sees us.’
‘Why, then,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘I will be bold to say, with the utmost
sympathy for his afflictions, and the greatest admiration of those
excellent qualities which do equal honour to his head and to his heart,
that he is what is playfully termed a dummy. You were going to observe,
my dear sir--?’
‘I was not going to make any observation that I know of,’ replied the
old man.
‘I was,’ said Mr Pecksniff, mildly.
‘Oh! YOU were? What was it?’
‘That I never,’ said Mr Pecksniff, previously rising to see that the
door was shut, and arranging his chair when he came back, so that it
could not be opened in the least without his immediately becoming aware
of the circumstance; ‘that I never in my life was so astonished as by
the receipt of your letter yesterday. That you should do me the honour
to wish to take counsel with me on any matter, amazed me; but that you
should desire to do so, to the exclusion even of Mr Jonas, showed an
amount of confidence in one to whom you had done a verbal injury--merely
a verbal injury, you were anxious to repair--which gratified, which
moved, which overcame me.’
He was always a glib speaker, but he delivered this short address very
glibly; having been at some pains to compose it outside the coach.
Although he paused for a reply, and truly said that he was there at
Anthony’s request, the old man sat gazing at him in profound silence and
with a perfectly blank face. Nor did he seem to have the least desire or
impulse to pursue the conversation, though Mr Pecksniff looked towards
the door, and pulled out his watch, and gave him many other hints that
their time was short, and Jonas, if he kept his word, would soon return.
But the strangest incident in all this strange behaviour was, that of a
sudden, in a moment, so swiftly that it was impossible to trace how,
or to observe any process of change, his features fell into their old
expression, and he cried, striking his hand passionately upon the table
as if no interval at all had taken place:
‘Will you hold your tongue, sir, and let me speak?’
Mr Pecksniff deferred to him with a submissive bow; and said within
himself, ‘I knew his hand was changed, and that his writing staggered. I
said so yesterday. Ahem! Dear me!’
‘Jonas is sweet upon your daughter, Pecksniff,’ said the old man, in his
usual tone.
‘We spoke of that, if you remember, sir, at Mrs Todgers’s,’ replied the
courteous architect.
‘You needn’t speak so loud,’ retorted Anthony. ‘I’m not so deaf as
that.’
Mr Pecksniff had certainly raised his voice pretty high; not so much
because he thought Anthony was deaf, as because he felt convinced that
his perceptive faculties were waxing dim; but this quick resentment of
his considerate behaviour greatly disconcerted him, and, not knowing
what tack to shape his course upon, he made another inclination of the
head, yet more submissive that the last.
‘I have said,’ repeated the old man, ‘that Jonas is sweet upon your
daughter.’
‘A charming girl, sir,’ murmured Mr Pecksniff, seeing that he waited
for an answer. ‘A dear girl, Mr Chuzzlewit, though I say it, who should
not.’
‘You know better,’ cried the old man, advancing his weazen face at least
a yard, and starting forward in his chair to do it. ‘You lie! What, you
WILL be a hypocrite, will you?’
‘My good sir,’ Mr Pecksniff began.
‘Don’t call me a good sir,’ retorted Anthony, ‘and don’t claim to be
one yourself. If your daughter was what you would have me believe, she
wouldn’t do for Jonas. Being what she is, I think she will. He might be
deceived in a wife. She might run riot, contract debts, and waste his
substance. Now when I am dead--’
His face altered so horribly as he said the word, that Mr Pecksniff
really was fain to look another way.
‘--It will be worse for me to know of such doings, than if I was alive;
for to be tormented for getting that together, which even while I suffer
for its acquisition, is flung into the very kennels of the streets,
would be insupportable torture. No,’ said the old man, hoarsely, ‘let
that be saved at least; let there be something gained, and kept fast
hold of, when so much is lost.’
‘My dear Mr Chuzzlewit,’ said Pecksniff, ‘these are unwholesome fancies;
quite unnecessary, sir, quite uncalled for, I am sure. The truth is, my
dear sir, that you are not well!’
‘Not dying though!’ cried Anthony, with something like the snarl of a
wild animal. ‘Not yet! There are years of life in me. Why, look at him,’
pointing to his feeble clerk. ‘Death has no right to leave him standing,
and to mow me down!’
Mr Pecksniff was so much afraid of the old man, and so completely taken
aback by the state in which he found him, that he had not even presence
of mind enough to call up a scrap of morality from the great storehouse
within his own breast. Therefore he stammered out that no doubt it was,
in fairness and decency, Mr Chuffey’s turn to expire; and that from