Martin Chuzzlewit
conclude with an urgent entreaty, stood in need of any answer; for Mrs
Hominy, untying her bonnet-strings, observed that she would withdraw to
lay that article of dress aside, and would return immediately.
‘Mark!’ said Martin. ‘Touch me, will you. Am I awake?’
‘Hominy is, sir,’ returned his partner--‘Broad awake! Just the sort of
woman, sir, as would be discovered with her eyes wide open, and her mind
a-working for her country’s good, at any hour of the day or night.’
They had no opportunity of saying more, for Mrs Hominy stalked in
again--very erect, in proof of her aristocratic blood; and holding in
her clasped hands a red cotton pocket-handkerchief, perhaps a parting
gift from that choice spirit, the Major. She had laid aside her bonnet,
and now appeared in a highly aristocratic and classical cap, meeting
beneath her chin: a style of headdress so admirably adapted to her
countenance, that if the late Mr Grimaldi had appeared in the lappets of
Mrs Siddons, a more complete effect could not have been produced.
Martin handed her to a chair. Her first words arrested him before he
could get back to his own seat.
‘Pray, sir!’ said Mrs Hominy, ‘where do you hail from?’
‘I am afraid I am dull of comprehension,’ answered Martin, ‘being
extremely tired; but upon my word I don’t understand you.’
Mrs Hominy shook her head with a melancholy smile that said, not
inexpressively, ‘They corrupt even the language in that old country!’
and added then, as coming down a step or two to meet his low capacity,
‘Where was you rose?’
‘Oh!’ said Martin ‘I was born in Kent.’
‘And how do you like our country, sir?’ asked Mrs Hominy.
‘Very much indeed,’ said Martin, half asleep. ‘At least--that is--pretty
well, ma’am.’
‘Most strangers--and partick’larly Britishers--are much surprised by
what they see in the U-nited States,’ remarked Mrs Hominy.
‘They have excellent reason to be so, ma’am,’ said Martin. ‘I never was
so much surprised in all my life.’
‘Our institutions make our people smart much, sir,’ Mrs Hominy remarked.
‘The most short-sighted man could see that at a glance, with his naked
eye,’ said Martin.
Mrs Hominy was a philosopher and an authoress, and consequently had a
pretty strong digestion; but this coarse, this indecorous phrase,
was almost too much for her. For a gentleman sitting alone with a
lady--although the door WAS open--to talk about a naked eye!
A long interval elapsed before even she--woman of masculine and towering
intellect though she was--could call up fortitude enough to resume the
conversation. But Mrs Hominy was a traveller. Mrs Hominy was a writer
of reviews and analytical disquisitions. Mrs Hominy had had her letters
from abroad, beginning ‘My ever dearest blank,’ and signed ‘The Mother
of the Modern Gracchi’ (meaning the married Miss Hominy), regularly
printed in a public journal, with all the indignation in capitals, and
all the sarcasm in italics. Mrs Hominy had looked on foreign countries
with the eye of a perfect republican hot from the model oven; and Mrs
Hominy could talk (or write) about them by the hour together. So Mrs
Hominy at last came down on Martin heavily, and as he was fast asleep,
she had it all her own way, and bruised him to her heart’s content.
It is no great matter what Mrs Hominy said, save that she had learnt it
from the cant of a class, and a large class, of her fellow countrymen,
who in their every word, avow themselves to be as senseless to the high
principles on which America sprang, a nation, into life, as any Orson in
her legislative halls. Who are no more capable of feeling, or of caring
if they did feel, that by reducing their own country to the ebb of
honest men’s contempt, they put in hazard the rights of nations yet
unborn, and very progress of the human race, than are the swine who
wallow in their streets. Who think that crying out to other nations,
old in their iniquity, ‘We are no worse than you!’ (No worse!) is high
defence and ‘vantage-ground enough for that Republic, but yesterday let
loose upon her noble course, and but to-day so maimed and lame, so full
of sores and ulcers, foul to the eye and almost hopeless to the sense,
that her best friends turn from the loathsome creature with disgust.
Who, having by their ancestors declared and won their Independence,
because they would not bend the knee to certain Public vices and
corruptions, and would not abrogate the truth, run riot in the Bad,
and turn their backs upon the Good; and lying down contented with the
wretched boast that other Temples also are of glass, and stones which
batter theirs may be flung back; show themselves, in that alone, as
immeasurably behind the import of the trust they hold, and as unworthy
to possess it as if the sordid hucksterings of all their little
governments--each one a kingdom in its small depravity--were brought
into a heap for evidence against them.
Martin by degrees became so far awake, that he had a sense of a terrible
oppression on his mind; an imperfect dream that he had murdered a
particular friend, and couldn’t get rid of the body. When his eyes
opened it was staring him full in the face. There was the horrible
Hominy talking deep truths in a melodious snuffle, and pouring forth her
mental endowments to such an extent that the Major’s bitterest enemy,
hearing her, would have forgiven him from the bottom of his heart.
Martin might have done something desperate if the gong had not sounded
for supper; but sound it did most opportunely; and having stationed Mrs
Hominy at the upper end of the table he took refuge at the lower end
himself; whence, after a hasty meal he stole away, while the lady was
yet busied with dried beef and a saucer-full of pickled fixings.
It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of Mrs Hominy’s freshness
next day, or of the avidity with which she went headlong into moral
philosophy at breakfast. Some little additional degree of asperity,
perhaps, was visible in her features, but not more than the pickles
would have naturally produced. All that day she clung to Martin. She
sat beside him while he received his friends (for there was another
Reception, yet more numerous than the former), propounded theories, and
answered imaginary objections, so that Martin really began to think he
must be dreaming, and speaking for two; she quoted interminable passages
from certain essays on government, written by herself; used the Major’s
pocket-handkerchief as if the snuffle were a temporary malady, of which
she was determined to rid herself by some means or other; and, in short,
was such a remarkable companion, that Martin quite settled it between
himself and his conscience, that in any new settlement it would be
absolutely necessary to have such a person knocked on the head for the
general peace of society.
In the meantime Mark was busy, from early in the morning until late
at night, in getting on board the steamboat such provisions, tools and
other necessaries, as they had been forewarned it would be wise to take.
The purchase of these things, and the settlement of their bill at the
National, reduced their finances to so low an ebb, that if the captain
had delayed his departure any longer, they would have been in almost as
bad a plight as the unfortunate poorer emigrants, who (seduced on board
by solemn advertisement) had been living on the lower deck a whole week,
and exhausting their miserable stock of provisions before the voyage
commenced. There they were, all huddled together with the engine and the
fires. Farmers who had never seen a plough; woodmen who had never used
an axe; builders who couldn’t make a box; cast out of their own land,
with not a hand to aid them: newly come into an unknown world, children
in helplessness, but men in wants--with younger children at their backs,
to live or die as it might happen!
The morning came, and they would start at noon. Noon came, and they
would start at night. But nothing is eternal in this world; not even the
procrastination of an American skipper; and at night all was ready.
Dispirited and weary to the last degree, but a greater lion than
ever (he had done nothing all the afternoon but answer letters from
strangers; half of them about nothing; half about borrowing money, and
all requiring an instantaneous reply), Martin walked down to the wharf,
through a concourse of people, with Mrs Hominy upon his arm; and went on
board. But Mark was bent on solving the riddle of this lionship, if he
could; and so, not without the risk of being left behind, ran back to
the hotel.
Captain Kedgick was sitting in the colonnade, with a julep on his knee,
and a cigar in his mouth. He caught Mark’s eye, and said:
‘Why, what the ‘Tarnal brings you here?’
‘I’ll tell you plainly what it is, Captain,’ said Mark. ‘I want to ask
you a question.’
‘A man may ASK a question, so he may,’ returned Kedgick; strongly
implying that another man might not answer a question, so he mightn’t.
‘What have they been making so much of him for, now?’ said Mark, slyly.
‘Come!’
‘Our people like ex-citement,’ answered Kedgick, sucking his cigar.
‘But how has he excited ‘em?’ asked Mark.
The Captain looked at him as if he were half inclined to unburden his
mind of a capital joke.
‘You air a-going?’ he said.
‘Going!’ cried Mark. ‘Ain’t every moment precious?’
‘Our people like ex-citement,’ said the Captain, whispering. ‘He ain’t
like emigrants in gin’ral; and he excited ‘em along of this;’ he winked
and burst into a smothered laugh; ‘along of this. Scadder is a smart
man, and--and--nobody as goes to Eden ever comes back alive!’
The wharf was close at hand, and at that instant Mark could hear them
shouting out his name; could even hear Martin calling to him to make
haste, or they would be separated. It was too late to mend the matter,
or put any face upon it but the best. He gave the Captain a parting
benediction, and ran off like a race-horse.
‘Mark! Mark!’ cried Martin.
‘Here am I, sir!’ shouted Mark, suddenly replying from the edge of the
quay, and leaping at a bound on board. ‘Never was half so jolly, sir.
All right. Haul in! Go ahead!’
The sparks from the wood fire streamed upward from the two chimneys, as
if the vessel were a great firework just lighted; and they roared away
upon the dark water.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
MARTIN AND HIS PARTNER TAKE POSSESSION OF THEIR ESTATE. THE JOYFUL
OCCASION INVOLVES SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF EDEN
There happened to be on board the steamboat several gentlemen
passengers, of the same stamp as Martin’s New York friend Mr Bevan; and
in their society he was cheerful and happy. They released him as well
as they could from the intellectual entanglements of Mrs Hominy;
and exhibited, in all they said and did, so much good sense and high
feeling, that he could not like them too well. ‘If this were a republic
of Intellect and Worth,’ he said, ‘instead of vapouring and jobbing,
they would not want the levers to keep it in motion.’
‘Having good tools, and using bad ones,’ returned Mr Tapley, ‘would look
as if they was rather a poor sort of carpenters, sir, wouldn’t it?’
Martin nodded. ‘As if their work were infinitely above their powers and
purpose, Mark; and they botched it in consequence.’
‘The best on it is,’ said Mark, ‘that when they do happen to make a
decent stroke; such as better workmen, with no such opportunities, make
every day of their lives and think nothing of--they begin to sing out
so surprising loud. Take notice of my words, sir. If ever the defaulting
part of this here country pays its debts--along of finding that not
paying ‘em won’t do in a commercial point of view, you see, and is
inconvenient in its consequences--they’ll take such a shine out of it,