Martin Chuzzlewit
smile, ‘what a very singular inquiry!’
‘Now, don’t you mind whether it’s a singular inquiry or a plural one,’
retorted Jonas, eyeing Mr Pecksniff with no great favour, ‘but answer
it, or let it alone. One or the other.’
‘Hum! The question, my dear friend,’ said Mr Pecksniff, laying his hand
tenderly upon his kinsman’s knee, ‘is involved with many considerations.
What would I give them? Eh?’
‘Ah! what would you give ‘em?’ repeated Jonas.
‘Why, that, ‘said Mr Pecksniff, ‘would naturally depend in a great
measure upon the kind of husbands they might choose, my dear young
friend.’
Mr Jonas was evidently disconcerted, and at a loss how to proceed.
It was a good answer. It seemed a deep one, but such is the wisdom of
simplicity!’
‘My standard for the merits I would require in a son-in-law,’ said Mr
Pecksniff, after a short silence, ‘is a high one. Forgive me, my dear Mr
Jonas,’ he added, greatly moved, ‘if I say that you have spoiled me, and
made it a fanciful one; an imaginative one; a prismatically tinged one,
if I may be permitted to call it so.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ growled Jonas, looking at him with increased
disfavour.
‘Indeed, my dear friend,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘you may well inquire.
The heart is not always a royal mint, with patent machinery to work its
metal into current coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange forms,
not easily recognized as coin at all. But it is sterling gold. It has at
least that merit. It is sterling gold.’
‘Is it?’ grumbled Jonas, with a doubtful shake of the head.
‘Aye!’ said Mr Pecksniff, warming with his subject ‘it is. To be plain
with you, Mr Jonas, if I could find two such sons-in-law as you will one
day make to some deserving man, capable of appreciating a nature such as
yours, I would--forgetful of myself--bestow upon my daughters portions
reaching to the very utmost limit of my means.’
This was strong language, and it was earnestly delivered. But who can
wonder that such a man as Mr Pecksniff, after all he had seen and heard
of Mr Jonas, should be strong and earnest upon such a theme; a theme
that touched even the worldly lips of undertakers with the honey of
eloquence!
Mr Jonas was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the landscape. For
they were seated on the outside of the coach, at the back, and were
travelling down into the country. He accompanied Mr Pecksniff home for a
few days’ change of air and scene after his recent trials.
‘Well,’ he said, at last, with captivating bluntness, ‘suppose you got
one such son-in-law as me, what then?’
Mr Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then
gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said:
‘Then well I know whose husband he would be!’
‘Whose?’ asked Jonas, drily.
‘My eldest girl’s, Mr Jonas,’ replied Pecksniff, with moistening eyes.
‘My dear Cherry’s; my staff, my scrip, my treasure, Mr Jonas. A hard
struggle, but it is in the nature of things! I must one day part with
her to a husband. I know it, my dear friend. I am prepared for it.’
‘Ecod! you’ve been prepared for that a pretty long time, I should
think,’ said Jonas.
‘Many have sought to bear her from me,’ said Mr Pecksniff. ‘All have
failed. “I never will give my hand, papa”--those were her words--“unless
my heart is won.” She has not been quite so happy as she used to be, of
late. I don’t know why.’
Again Mr Jonas looked at the landscape; then at the coachman; then at
the luggage on the roof; finally at Mr Pecksniff.
‘I suppose you’ll have to part with the other one, some of these days?’
he observed, as he caught that gentleman’s eye.
‘Probably,’ said the parent. ‘Years will tame down the wildness of my
foolish bird, and then it will be caged. But Cherry, Mr Jonas, Cherry--’
‘Oh, ah!’ interrupted Jonas. ‘Years have made her all right enough.
Nobody doubts that. But you haven’t answered what I asked you. Of
course, you’re not obliged to do it, you know, if you don’t like. You’re
the best judge.’
There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of this speech, which
admonished Mr Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled with
or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-forward reply
to his question, or plainly give him to understand that he declined to
enlighten him upon the subject to which it referred. Mindful in this
dilemma of the caution old Anthony had given him almost with his
latest breath, he resolved to speak to the point, and so told Mr Jonas
(enlarging upon the communication as a proof of his great attachment and
confidence), that in the case he had put; to wit, in the event of such
a man as he proposing for his daughter’s hand, he would endow her with a
fortune of four thousand pounds.
‘I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so,’ was his fatherly
remark; ‘but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me.
For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there--a
mere trifle, Mr Jonas--but I prize it as a store of value, I assure
you.’
The good man’s enemies would have divided upon this question into two
parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr Pecksniff’s
conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he must
have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of computation. The other
would have contended that it was a mere fictitious form; a perfectly
blank book; or one in which entries were only made with a peculiar kind
of invisible ink to become legible at some indefinite time; and that he
never troubled it at all.
‘It would sadly pinch and cramp me, my dear friend,’ repeated Mr
Pecksniff, ‘but Providence--perhaps I may be permitted to say a special
Providence--has blessed my endeavours, and I could guarantee to make the
sacrifice.’
A question of philosophy arises here, whether Mr Pecksniff had or had
not good reason to say that he was specially patronized and encouraged
in his undertakings. All his life long he had been walking up and down
the narrow ways and by-places, with a hook in one hand and a crook in
the other, scraping all sorts of valuable odds and ends into his pouch.
Now, there being a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, it
follows (so Mr Pecksniff, and only such admirable men, would have
reasoned), that there must also be a special Providence in the alighting
of the stone or stick, or other substance which is aimed at the sparrow.
And Mr Pecksniff’s hook, or crook, having invariably knocked the sparrow
on the head and brought him down, that gentleman may have been led to
consider himself as specially licensed to bag sparrows, and as being
specially seized and possessed of all the birds he had got together.
That many undertakings, national as well as individual--but especially
the former--are held to be specially brought to a glorious and
successful issue, which never could be so regarded on any other process
of reasoning, must be clear to all men. Therefore the precedents would
seem to show that Mr Pecksniff had (as things go) good argument for
what he said and might be permitted to say it, and did not say it
presumptuously, vainly, or arrogantly, but in a spirit of high faith and
great wisdom.
Mr Jonas, not being much accustomed to perplex his mind with theories of
this nature, expressed no opinion on the subject. Nor did he receive
his companion’s announcement with one solitary syllable, good, bad, or
indifferent. He preserved this taciturnity for a quarter of an hour at
least, and during the whole of that time appeared to be steadily engaged
in subjecting some given amount to the operation of every known rule in
figures; adding to it, taking from it, multiplying it, reducing it by
long and short division; working it by the rule-of-three direct and
inversed; exchange or barter; practice; simple interest; compound
interest; and other means of arithmetical calculation. The result
of these labours appeared to be satisfactory, for when he did break
silence, it was as one who had arrived at some specific result, and
freed himself from a state of distressing uncertainty.
‘Come, old Pecksniff!’--Such was his jocose address, as he slapped that
gentleman on the back, at the end of the stage--‘let’s have something!’
‘With all my heart,’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘Let’s treat the driver,’ cried Jonas.
‘If you think it won’t hurt the man, or render him discontented with his
station--certainly,’ faltered Mr Pecksniff.
Jonas only laughed at this, and getting down from the coach-top with
great alacrity, cut a cumbersome kind of caper in the road. After which,
he went into the public-house, and there ordered spirituous drink to
such an extent, that Mr Pecksniff had some doubts of his perfect sanity,
until Jonas set them quite at rest by saying, when the coach could wait
no longer:
‘I’ve been standing treat for a whole week and more, and letting
you have all the delicacies of the season. YOU shall pay for this
Pecksniff.’ It was not a joke either, as Mr Pecksniff at first supposed;
for he went off to the coach without further ceremony, and left his
respected victim to settle the bill.
But Mr Pecksniff was a man of meek endurance, and Mr Jonas was his
friend. Moreover, his regard for that gentleman was founded, as we know,
on pure esteem, and a knowledge of the excellence of his character. He
came out from the tavern with a smiling face, and even went so far as
to repeat the performance, on a less expensive scale, at the next
ale-house. There was a certain wildness in the spirits of Mr Jonas (not
usually a part of his character) which was far from being subdued
by these means, and, for the rest of the journey, he was so very
buoyant--it may be said, boisterous--that Mr Pecksniff had some
difficulty in keeping pace with him.
They were not expected--oh dear, no! Mr Pecksniff had proposed in London
to give the girls a surprise, and had said he wouldn’t write a word to
prepare them on any account, in order that he and Mr Jonas might take
them unawares, and just see what they were doing, when they thought
their dear papa was miles and miles away. As a consequence of this
playful device, there was nobody to meet them at the finger-post, but
that was of small consequence, for they had come down by the day
coach, and Mr Pecksniff had only a carpetbag, while Mr Jonas had only
a portmanteau. They took the portmanteau between them, put the bag upon
it, and walked off up the lane without delay; Mr Pecksniff already going
on tiptoe as if, without this precaution, his fond children, being then
at a distance of a couple of miles or so, would have some filial sense
of his approach.
It was a lovely evening in the spring-time of the year; and in the soft
stillness of the twilight, all nature was very calm and beautiful. The
day had been fine and warm; but at the coming on of night, the air grew
cool, and in the mellowing distance smoke was rising gently from the
cottage chimneys. There were a thousand pleasant scents diffused around,
from young leaves and fresh buds; the cuckoo had been singing all day
long, and was but just now hushed; the smell of earth newly-upturned,
first breath of hope to the first labourer after his garden withered,
was fragrant in the evening breeze. It was a time when most men cherish
good resolves, and sorrow for the wasted past; when most men, looking
on the shadows as they gather, think of that evening which must close on
all, and that to-morrow which has none beyond.
‘Precious dull,’ said Mr Jonas, looking about. ‘It’s enough to make a
man go melancholy mad.’
‘We shall have lights and a fire soon,’ observed Mr Pecksniff.
‘We shall need ‘em by the time we get there,’ said Jonas. ‘Why the devil
don’t you talk? What are you thinking of?’
‘To tell you the truth, Mr Jonas,’ said Pecksniff with great solemnity,