Martin Chuzzlewit
have ‘em ready for his son against he’s old enough to wear ‘em; but
don’t try ‘em on yourselves, for they won’t fit you. We knew him,’ said
Mould, in the same biting vein, as he pocketed his note-book; ‘we
knew him, and are not to be caught with chaff. Mr Pecksniff, sir, good
morning.’
Mr Pecksniff returned the compliment; and Mould, sensible of having
distinguished himself, was going away with a brisk smile, when he
fortunately remembered the occasion. Quickly becoming depressed again,
he sighed; looked into the crown of his hat, as if for comfort; put it
on without finding any; and slowly departed.
Mrs Gamp and Mr Pecksniff then ascended the staircase; and the former,
having been shown to the chamber in which all that remained of Anthony
Chuzzlewit lay covered up, with but one loving heart, and that a halting
one, to mourn it, left the latter free to enter the darkened room below,
and rejoin Mr Jonas, from whom he had now been absent nearly two hours.
He found that example to bereaved sons, and pattern in the eyes of all
performers of funerals, musing over a fragment of writing-paper on the
desk, and scratching figures on it with a pen. The old man’s chair, and
hat, and walking-stick, were removed from their accustomed places, and
put out of sight; the window-blinds as yellow as November fogs, were
drawn down close; Jonas himself was so subdued, that he could scarcely
be heard to speak, and only seen to walk across the room.
‘Pecksniff,’ he said, in a whisper, ‘you shall have the regulation of
it all, mind! You shall be able to tell anybody who talks about it that
everything was correctly and nicely done. There isn’t any one you’d like
to ask to the funeral, is there?’
‘No, Mr Jonas, I think not.’
‘Because if there is, you know,’ said Jonas, ‘ask him. We don’t want to
make a secret of it.’
‘No,’ repeated Mr Pecksniff, after a little reflection. ‘I am not
the less obliged to you on that account, Mr Jonas, for your liberal
hospitality; but there really is no one.’
‘Very well,’ said Jonas; ‘then you, and I, and Chuffey, and the doctor,
will be just a coachful. We’ll have the doctor, Pecksniff, because he
knows what was the matter with him, and that it couldn’t be helped.’
‘Where is our dear friend, Mr Chuffey?’ asked Pecksniff, looking round
the chamber, and winking both his eyes at once--for he was overcome by
his feelings.
But here he was interrupted by Mrs Gamp, who, divested of her bonnet and
shawl, came sidling and bridling into the room; and with some sharpness
demanded a conference outside the door with Mr Pecksniff.
‘You may say whatever you wish to say here, Mrs Gamp,’ said that
gentleman, shaking his head with a melancholy expression.
‘It is not much as I have to say when people is a-mourning for the dead
and gone,’ said Mrs Gamp; ‘but what I have to say is TO the pint and
purpose, and no offence intended, must be so considered. I have been at
a many places in my time, gentlemen, and I hope I knows what my duties
is, and how the same should be performed; in course, if I did not, it
would be very strange, and very wrong in sich a gentleman as Mr Mould,
which has undertook the highest families in this land, and given every
satisfaction, so to recommend me as he does. I have seen a deal of
trouble my own self,’ said Mrs Gamp, laying greater and greater stress
upon her words, ‘and I can feel for them as has their feelings tried,
but I am not a Rooshan or a Prooshan, and consequently cannot suffer
Spies to be set over me.’
Before it was possible that an answer could be returned, Mrs Gamp,
growing redder in the face, went on to say:
‘It is not a easy matter, gentlemen, to live when you are left a widder
woman; particular when your feelings works upon you to that extent that
you often find yourself a-going out on terms which is a certain loss,
and never can repay. But in whatever way you earns your bread, you may
have rules and regulations of your own which cannot be broke through.
Some people,’ said Mrs Gamp, again entrenching herself behind her
strong point, as if it were not assailable by human ingenuity, ‘may be
Rooshans, and others may be Prooshans; they are born so, and will please
themselves. Them which is of other naturs thinks different.’
‘If I understand this good lady,’ said Mr Pecksniff, turning to Jonas,
‘Mr Chuffey is troublesome to her. Shall I fetch him down?’
‘Do,’ said Jonas. ‘I was going to tell you he was up there, when she
came in. I’d go myself and bring him down, only--only I’d rather you
went, if you don’t mind.’
Mr Pecksniff promptly departed, followed by Mrs Gamp, who, seeing that
he took a bottle and glass from the cupboard, and carried it in his
hand, was much softened.
‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘that if it wasn’t for his own happiness, I
should no more mind him being there, poor dear, than if he was a
fly. But them as isn’t used to these things, thinks so much of ‘em
afterwards, that it’s a kindness to ‘em not to let ‘em have their wish.
And even,’ said Mrs Gamp, probably in reference to some flowers of
speech she had already strewn on Mr Chuffey, ‘even if one calls ‘em
names, it’s only done to rouse ‘em.’
Whatever epithets she had bestowed on the old clerk, they had not
roused HIM. He sat beside the bed, in the chair he had occupied all the
previous night, with his hands folded before him, and his head bowed
down; and neither looked up, on their entrance, nor gave any sign of
consciousness, until Mr Pecksniff took him by the arm, when he meekly
rose.
‘Three score and ten,’ said Chuffey, ‘ought and carry seven. Some men
are so strong that they live to four score--four times ought’s an ought,
four times two’s an eight--eighty. Oh! why--why--why didn’t he live to
four times ought’s an ought, and four times two’s an eight, eighty?’
‘Ah! what a wale of grief!’ cried Mrs Gamp, possessing herself of the
bottle and glass.
‘Why did he die before his poor old crazy servant?’ said Chuffey,
clasping his hands and looking up in anguish. ‘Take him from me, and
what remains?’
‘Mr Jonas,’ returned Pecksniff, ‘Mr Jonas, my good friend.’
‘I loved him,’ cried the old man, weeping. ‘He was good to me. We learnt
Tare and Tret together at school. I took him down once, six boys in the
arithmetic class. God forgive me! Had I the heart to take him down!’
‘Come, Mr Chuffey,’ said Pecksniff. ‘Come with me. Summon up your
fortitude, Mr Chuffey.’
‘Yes, I will,’ returned the old clerk. ‘Yes. I’ll sum up my forty--How
many times forty--Oh, Chuzzlewit and Son--Your own son Mr Chuzzlewit;
your own son, sir!’
He yielded to the hand that guided him, as he lapsed into this familiar
expression, and submitted to be led away. Mrs Gamp, with the bottle on
one knee, and the glass on the other, sat upon a stool, shaking her head
for a long time, until, in a moment of abstraction, she poured out
a dram of spirits, and raised it to her lips. It was succeeded by a
second, and by a third, and then her eyes--either in the sadness of
her reflections upon life and death, or in her admiration of the
liquor--were so turned up, as to be quite invisible. But she shook her
head still.
Poor Chuffey was conducted to his accustomed corner, and there he
remained, silent and quiet, save at long intervals, when he would rise,
and walk about the room, and wring his hands, or raise some strange and
sudden cry. For a whole week they all three sat about the hearth and
never stirred abroad. Mr Pecksniff would have walked out in the evening
time, but Mr Jonas was so averse to his being absent for a minute, that
he abandoned the idea, and so, from morning until night, they brooded
together in the dark room, without relief or occupation.
The weight of that which was stretched out, stiff and stark, in the
awful chamber above-stairs, so crushed and bore down Jonas, that he bent
beneath the load. During the whole long seven days and nights, he was
always oppressed and haunted by a dreadful sense of its presence in the
house. Did the door move, he looked towards it with a livid face and
starting eye, as if he fully believed that ghostly fingers clutched the
handle. Did the fire flicker in a draught of air, he glanced over his
shoulder, as almost dreading to behold some shrouded figure fanning and
flapping at it with its fearful dress. The lightest noise disturbed him;
and once, in the night, at the sound of a footstep overhead, he cried
out that the dead man was walking--tramp, tramp, tramp--about his
coffin.
He lay at night upon a mattress on the floor of the sitting-room; his
own chamber having been assigned to Mrs Gamp; and Mr Pecksniff was
similarly accommodated. The howling of a dog before the house, filled
him with a terror he could not disguise. He avoided the reflection in
the opposite windows of the light that burned above, as though it had
been an angry eye. He often, in every night, rose up from his fitful
sleep, and looked and longed for dawn; all directions and arrangements,
even to the ordering of their daily meals, he abandoned to Mr Pecksniff.
That excellent gentleman, deeming that the mourner wanted comfort, and
that high feeding was likely to do him infinite service, availed himself
of these opportunities to such good purpose, that they kept quite a
dainty table during this melancholy season; with sweetbreads, stewed
kidneys, oysters, and other such light viands for supper every night;
over which, and sundry jorums of hot punch, Mr Pecksniff delivered such
moral reflections and spiritual consolation as might have converted a
Heathen--especially if he had had but an imperfect acquaintance with the
English tongue.
Nor did Mr Pecksniff alone indulge in the creature comforts during
this sad time. Mrs Gamp proved to be very choice in her eating, and
repudiated hashed mutton with scorn. In her drinking too, she was very
punctual and particular, requiring a pint of mild porter at lunch, a
pint at dinner, half-a-pint as a species of stay or holdfast between
dinner and tea, and a pint of the celebrated staggering ale, or Real Old
Brighton Tipper, at supper; besides the bottle on the chimney-piece,
and such casual invitations to refresh herself with wine as the good
breeding of her employers might prompt them to offer. In like manner, Mr
Mould’s men found it necessary to drown their grief, like a young kitten
in the morning of its existence, for which reason they generally fuddled
themselves before they began to do anything, lest it should make head
and get the better of them. In short, the whole of that strange week was
a round of dismal joviality and grim enjoyment; and every one, except
poor Chuffey, who came within the shadow of Anthony Chuzzlewit’s grave,
feasted like a Ghoul.
At length the day of the funeral, pious and truthful ceremony that it
was, arrived. Mr Mould, with a glass of generous port between his eye
and the light, leaned against the desk in the little glass office with
his gold watch in his unoccupied hand, and conversed with Mrs Gamp; two
mutes were at the house-door, looking as mournful as could be reasonably
expected of men with such a thriving job in hand; the whole of Mr
Mould’s establishment were on duty within the house or without; feathers
waved, horses snorted, silk and velvets fluttered; in a word, as Mr
Mould emphatically said, ‘Everything that money could do was done.’
‘And what can do more, Mrs Gamp?’ exclaimed the undertaker as he emptied
his glass and smacked his lips.
‘Nothing in the world, sir.’
‘Nothing in the world,’ repeated Mr Mould. ‘You are right, Mrs Gamp.
Why do people spend more money’--here he filled his glass again--‘upon a
death, Mrs Gamp, than upon a birth? Come, that’s in your way; you ought
to know. How do you account for that now?’
‘Perhaps it is because an undertaker’s charges comes dearer than a