Martin Chuzzlewit
nurse’s charges, sir,’ said Mrs Gamp, tittering, and smoothing down her
new black dress with her hands.
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr Mould. ‘You have been breakfasting at somebody’s
expense this morning, Mrs Gamp.’ But seeing, by the aid of a little
shaving-glass which hung opposite, that he looked merry, he composed his
features and became sorrowful.
‘Many’s the time that I’ve not breakfasted at my own expense along of
your recommending, sir; and many’s the time I hope to do the same in
time to come,’ said Mrs Gamp, with an apologetic curtsey.
‘So be it,’ replied Mr Mould, ‘please Providence. No, Mrs Gamp;
I’ll tell you why it is. It’s because the laying out of money with a
well-conducted establishment, where the thing is performed upon the
very best scale, binds the broken heart, and sheds balm upon the wounded
spirit. Hearts want binding, and spirits want balming when people die;
not when people are born. Look at this gentleman to-day; look at him.’
‘An open-handed gentleman?’ cried Mrs Gamp, with enthusiasm.
‘No, no,’ said the undertaker; ‘not an open-handed gentleman in general,
by any means. There you mistake him; but an afflicted gentleman, an
affectionate gentleman, who knows what it is in the power of money to
do, in giving him relief, and in testifying his love and veneration for
the departed. It can give him,’ said Mr Mould, waving his watch-chain
slowly round and round, so that he described one circle after every
item; ‘it can give him four horses to each vehicle; it can give him
velvet trappings; it can give him drivers in cloth cloaks and top-boots;
it can give him the plumage of the ostrich, dyed black; it can give him
any number of walking attendants, dressed in the first style of funeral
fashion, and carrying batons tipped with brass; it can give him a
handsome tomb; it can give him a place in Westminster Abbey itself, if
he choose to invest it in such a purchase. Oh! do not let us say that
gold is dross, when it can buy such things as these, Mrs Gamp.’
‘But what a blessing, sir,’ said Mrs Gamp, ‘that there are such as you,
to sell or let ‘em out on hire!’
‘Aye, Mrs Gamp, you are right,’ rejoined the undertaker. ‘We should
be an honoured calling. We do good by stealth, and blush to have it
mentioned in our little bills. How much consolation may I--even I,’
cried Mr Mould, ‘have diffused among my fellow-creatures by means of my
four long-tailed prancers, never harnessed under ten pund ten!’
Mrs Gamp had begun to make a suitable reply, when she was interrupted
by the appearance of one of Mr Mould’s assistants--his chief mourner in
fact--an obese person, with his waistcoat in closer connection with his
legs than is quite reconcilable with the established ideas of grace;
with that cast of feature which is figuratively called a bottle nose;
and with a face covered all over with pimples. He had been a tender
plant once upon a time, but from constant blowing in the fat atmosphere
of funerals, had run to seed.
‘Well, Tacker,’ said Mr Mould, ‘is all ready below?’
‘A beautiful show, sir,’ rejoined Tacker. ‘The horses are prouder and
fresher than ever I see ‘em; and toss their heads, they do, as if they
knowed how much their plumes cost. One, two, three, four,’ said Mr
Tacker, heaping that number of black cloaks upon his left arm.
‘Is Tom there, with the cake and wine?’ asked Mr Mould.
‘Ready to come in at a moment’s notice, sir,’ said Tacker.
‘Then,’ rejoined Mr Mould, putting up his watch, and glancing at himself
in the little shaving-glass, that he might be sure his face had the
right expression on it; ‘then I think we may proceed to business. Give
me the paper of gloves, Tacker. Ah, what a man he was! Ah, Tacker,
Tacker, what a man he was!’
Mr Tacker, who from his great experience in the performance of funerals,
would have made an excellent pantomime actor, winked at Mrs Gamp without
at all disturbing the gravity of his countenance, and followed his
master into the next room.
It was a great point with Mr Mould, and a part of his professional
tact, not to seem to know the doctor; though in reality they were near
neighbours, and very often, as in the present instance, worked together.
So he advanced to fit on his black kid gloves as if he had never seen
him in all his life; while the doctor, on his part, looked as distant
and unconscious as if he had heard and read of undertakers, and had
passed their shops, but had never before been brought into communication
with one.
‘Gloves, eh?’ said the doctor. ‘Mr Pecksniff after you.’
‘I couldn’t think of it,’ returned Mr Pecksniff.
‘You are very good,’ said the doctor, taking a pair. ‘Well, sir, as I
was saying--I was called up to attend that case at about half-past one
o’clock. Cake and wine, eh? Which is port? Thank you.’
Mr Pecksniff took some also.
‘At about half-past one o’clock in the morning, sir,’ resumed the
doctor, ‘I was called up to attend that case. At the first pull of
the night-bell I turned out, threw up the window, and put out my head.
Cloak, eh? Don’t tie it too tight. That’ll do.’
Mr Pecksniff having been likewise inducted into a similar garment, the
doctor resumed.
‘And put out my head--hat, eh? My good friend, that is not mine. Mr
Pecksniff, I beg your pardon, but I think we have unintentionally made
an exchange. Thank you. Well, sir, I was going to tell you--’
‘We are quite ready,’ interrupted Mould in a low voice.
‘Ready, eh?’ said the doctor. ‘Very good, Mr Pecksniff, I’ll take an
opportunity of relating the rest in the coach. It’s rather curious.
Ready, eh? No rain, I hope?’
‘Quite fair, sir,’ returned Mould.
‘I was afraid the ground would have been wet,’ said the doctor, ‘for
my glass fell yesterday. We may congratulate ourselves upon our good
fortune.’ But seeing by this time that Mr Jonas and Chuffey were going
out at the door, he put a white pocket-handkerchief to his face as if a
violent burst of grief had suddenly come upon him, and walked down side
by side with Mr Pecksniff.
Mr Mould and his men had not exaggerated the grandeur of the
arrangements. They were splendid. The four hearse-horses, especially,
reared and pranced, and showed their highest action, as if they knew a
man was dead, and triumphed in it. ‘They break us, drive us, ride us;
ill-treat, abuse, and maim us for their pleasure--But they die; Hurrah,
they die!’
So through the narrow streets and winding city ways, went Anthony
Chuzzlewit’s funeral; Mr Jonas glancing stealthily out of the
coach-window now and then, to observe its effect upon the crowd;
Mr Mould as he walked along, listening with a sober pride to the
exclamations of the bystanders; the doctor whispering his story to Mr
Pecksniff, without appearing to come any nearer the end of it; and
poor old Chuffey sobbing unregarded in a corner. But he had greatly
scandalized Mr Mould at an early stage of the ceremony by carrying his
handkerchief in his hat in a perfectly informal manner, and wiping his
eyes with his knuckles. And as Mr Mould himself had said already, his
behaviour was indecent, and quite unworthy of such an occasion; and he
never ought to have been there.
There he was, however; and in the churchyard there he was, also,
conducting himself in a no less unbecoming manner, and leaning for
support on Tacker, who plainly told him that he was fit for nothing
better than a walking funeral. But Chuffey, Heaven help him! heard no
sound but the echoes, lingering in his own heart, of a voice for ever
silent.
‘I loved him,’ cried the old man, sinking down upon the grave when all
was done. ‘He was very good to me. Oh, my dear old friend and master!’
‘Come, come, Mr Chuffey,’ said the doctor, ‘this won’t do; it’s a clayey
soil, Mr Chuffey. You mustn’t, really.’
‘If it had been the commonest thing we do, and Mr Chuffey had been a
Bearer, gentlemen,’ said Mould, casting an imploring glance upon them,
as he helped to raise him, ‘he couldn’t have gone on worse than this.’
‘Be a man, Mr Chuffey,’ said Pecksniff.
‘Be a gentleman, Mr Chuffey,’ said Mould.
‘Upon my word, my good friend,’ murmured the doctor, in a tone of
stately reproof, as he stepped up to the old man’s side, ‘this is worse
than weakness. This is bad, selfish, very wrong, Mr Chuffey. You should
take example from others, my good sir. You forget that you were not
connected by ties of blood with our deceased friend; and that he had a
very near and very dear relation, Mr Chuffey.’
‘Aye, his own son!’ cried the old man, clasping his hands with
remarkable passion. ‘His own, own, only son!’
‘He’s not right in his head, you know,’ said Jonas, turning pale.
‘You’re not to mind anything he says. I shouldn’t wonder if he was
to talk some precious nonsense. But don’t you mind him, any of you. I
don’t. My father left him to my charge; and whatever he says or does,
that’s enough. I’ll take care of him.’
A hum of admiration rose from the mourners (including Mr Mould and his
merry men) at this new instance of magnanimity and kind feeling on the
part of Jonas. But Chuffey put it to the test no farther. He said not
a word more, and being left to himself for a little while, crept back
again to the coach.
It has been said that Mr Jonas turned pale when the behaviour of the old
clerk attracted general attention; his discomposure, however, was but
momentary, and he soon recovered. But these were not the only changes
he had exhibited that day. The curious eyes of Mr Pecksniff had observed
that as soon as they left the house upon their mournful errand, he began
to mend; that as the ceremonies proceeded he gradually, by little and
little, recovered his old condition, his old looks, his old bearing, his
old agreeable characteristics of speech and manner, and became, in all
respects, his old pleasant self. And now that they were seated in the
coach on their return home; and more when they got there, and found the
windows open, the light and air admitted, and all traces of the late
event removed; he felt so well convinced that Jonas was again the Jonas
he had known a week ago, and not the Jonas of the intervening time, that
he voluntarily gave up his recently-acquired power without one faint
attempt to exercise it, and at once fell back into his former position
of mild and deferential guest.
Mrs Gamp went home to the bird-fancier’s, and was knocked up again that
very night for a birth of twins; Mr Mould dined gayly in the bosom of
his family, and passed the evening facetiously at his club; the hearse,
after standing for a long time at the door of a roistering public-house,
repaired to its stables with the feathers inside and twelve red-nosed
undertakers on the roof, each holding on by a dingy peg, to which, in
times of state, a waving plume was fitted; the various trappings of
sorrow were carefully laid by in presses for the next hirer; the fiery
steeds were quenched and quiet in their stalls; the doctor got merry
with wine at a wedding-dinner, and forgot the middle of the story which
had no end to it; the pageant of a few short hours ago was written
nowhere half so legibly as in the undertaker’s books.
Not in the churchyard? Not even there. The gates were closed; the night
was dark and wet; the rain fell silently, among the stagnant weeds and
nettles. One new mound was there which had not been there last night.
Time, burrowing like a mole below the ground, had marked his track by
throwing up another heap of earth. And that was all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IS A CHAPTER OF LOVE
‘Pecksniff,’ said Jonas, taking off his hat, to see that the black
crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on again,
complacently; ‘what do you mean to give your daughters when they marry?’
‘My dear Mr Jonas,’ cried the affectionate parent, with an ingenuous