Martin Chuzzlewit
and make such bragging speeches, that a man might suppose no borrowed
money had ever been paid afore, since the world was first begun. That’s
the way they gammon each other, sir. Bless you, I know ‘em. Take notice
of my words, now!’
‘You seem to be growing profoundly sagacious!’ cried Martin, laughing.
‘Whether that is,’ thought Mark, ‘because I’m a day’s journey nearer
Eden, and am brightening up afore I die, I can’t say. P’rhaps by the
time I get there I shall have growed into a prophet.’
He gave no utterance to these sentiments; but the excessive joviality
they inspired within him, and the merriment they brought upon his
shining face, were quite enough for Martin. Although he might sometimes
profess to make light of his partner’s inexhaustible cheerfulness,
and might sometimes, as in the case of Zephaniah Scadder, find him
too jocose a commentator, he was always sensible of the effect of his
example in rousing him to hopefulness and courage. Whether he were in
the humour to profit by it, mattered not a jot. It was contagious, and
he could not choose but be affected.
At first they parted with some of their passengers once or twice a day,
and took in others to replace them. But by degrees, the towns upon their
route became more thinly scattered; and for many hours together they
would see no other habitations than the huts of the wood-cutters, where
the vessel stopped for fuel. Sky, wood, and water all the livelong day;
and heat that blistered everything it touched.
On they toiled through great solitudes, where the trees upon the banks
grew thick and close; and floated in the stream; and held up shrivelled
arms from out the river’s depths; and slid down from the margin of the
land, half growing, half decaying, in the miry water. On through the
weary day and melancholy night; beneath the burning sun, and in the mist
and vapour of the evening; on, until return appeared impossible, and
restoration to their home a miserable dream.
They had now but few people on board, and these few were as flat, as
dull, and stagnant, as the vegetation that oppressed their eyes. No
sound of cheerfulness or hope was heard; no pleasant talk beguiled
the tardy time; no little group made common cause against the full
depression of the scene. But that, at certain periods, they swallowed
food together from a common trough, it might have been old Charon’s
boat, conveying melancholy shades to judgment.
At length they drew near New Thermopylae; where, that same evening, Mrs
Hominy would disembark. A gleam of comfort sunk into Martin’s bosom when
she told him this. Mark needed none; but he was not displeased.
It was almost night when they came alongside the landing-place. A steep
bank with an hotel like a barn on the top of it; a wooden store or two;
and a few scattered sheds.
‘You sleep here to-night, and go on in the morning, I suppose, ma’am?’
said Martin.
‘Where should I go on to?’ cried the mother of the modern Gracchi.
‘To New Thermopylae.’
‘My! ain’t I there?’ said Mrs Hominy.
Martin looked for it all round the darkening panorama; but he couldn’t
see it, and was obliged to say so.
‘Why that’s it!’ cried Mrs Hominy, pointing to the sheds just mentioned.
‘THAT!’ exclaimed Martin.
‘Ah! that; and work it which way you will, it whips Eden,’ said Mrs
Hominy, nodding her head with great expression.
The married Miss Hominy, who had come on board with her husband, gave to
this statement her most unqualified support, as did that gentleman also.
Martin gratefully declined their invitation to regale himself at their
house during the half hour of the vessel’s stay; and having escorted
Mrs Hominy and the red pocket-handkerchief (which was still on active
service) safely across the gangway, returned in a thoughtful mood to
watch the emigrants as they removed their goods ashore.
Mark, as he stood beside him, glanced in his face from time to time;
anxious to discover what effect this dialogue had had upon him, and
not unwilling that his hopes should be dashed before they reached their
destination, so that the blow he feared might be broken in its fall. But
saving that he sometimes looked up quickly at the poor erections on the
hill, he gave him no clue to what was passing in his mind, until they
were again upon their way.
‘Mark,’ he said then, ‘are there really none but ourselves on board this
boat who are bound for Eden?’
‘None at all, sir. Most of ‘em, as you know, have stopped short; and
the few that are left are going further on. What matters that! More room
there for us, sir.’
‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Martin. ‘But I was thinking--’ and there he
paused.
‘Yes, sir?’ observed Mark.
‘How odd it was that the people should have arranged to try their
fortune at a wretched hole like that, for instance, when there is such
a much better, and such a very different kind of place, near at hand, as
one may say.’
He spoke in a tone so very different from his usual confidence, and with
such an obvious dread of Mark’s reply, that the good-natured fellow was
full of pity.
‘Why, you know, sir,’ said Mark, as gently as he could by any means
insinuate the observation, ‘we must guard against being too sanguine.
There’s no occasion for it, either, because we’re determined to make the
best of everything, after we know the worst of it. Ain’t we, sir?’
Martin looked at him, but answered not a word.
‘Even Eden, you know, ain’t all built,’ said Mark.
‘In the name of Heaven, man,’ cried Martin angrily, ‘don’t talk of Eden
in the same breath with that place. Are you mad? There--God forgive
me!--don’t think harshly of me for my temper!’
After that, he turned away, and walked to and fro upon the deck full two
hours. Nor did he speak again, except to say ‘Good night,’ until next
day; nor even then upon this subject, but on other topics quite foreign
to the purpose.
As they proceeded further on their track, and came more and more towards
their journey’s end, the monotonous desolation of the scene increased to
that degree, that for any redeeming feature it presented to their eyes,
they might have entered, in the body, on the grim domains of Giant
Despair. A flat morass, bestrewn with fallen timber; a marsh on which
the good growth of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and cast away,
that from its decomposing ashes vile and ugly things might rise; where
the very trees took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the slime
from which they sprung, by the hot sun that burnt them up; where fatal
maladies, seeking whom they might infect, came forth at night in misty
shapes, and creeping out upon the water, hunted them like spectres until
day; where even the blessed sun, shining down on festering elements
of corruption and disease, became a horror; this was the realm of Hope
through which they moved.
At last they stopped. At Eden too. The waters of the Deluge might have
left it but a week before; so choked with slime and matted growth was
the hideous swamp which bore that name.
There being no depth of water close in shore, they landed from the
vessel’s boat, with all their goods beside them. There were a few
log-houses visible among the dark trees; the best, a cow-shed or a rude
stable; but for the wharves, the market-place, the public buildings--
‘Here comes an Edener,’ said Mark. ‘He’ll get us help to carry these
things up. Keep a good heart, sir. Hallo there!’
The man advanced toward them through the thickening gloom, very slowly;
leaning on a stick. As he drew nearer, they observed that he was pale
and worn, and that his anxious eyes were deeply sunken in his head. His
dress of homespun blue hung about him in rags; his feet and head were
bare. He sat down on a stump half-way, and beckoned them to come to him.
When they complied, he put his hand upon his side as if in pain, and
while he fetched his breath stared at them, wondering.
‘Strangers!’ he exclaimed, as soon as he could speak.
‘The very same,’ said Mark. ‘How are you, sir?’
‘I’ve had the fever very bad,’ he answered faintly. ‘I haven’t stood
upright these many weeks. Those are your notions I see,’ pointing to
their property.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mark, ‘they are. You couldn’t recommend us some one as
would lend a hand to help carry ‘em up to the--to the town, could you,
sir?’
‘My eldest son would do it if he could,’ replied the man; ‘but today
he has his chill upon him, and is lying wrapped up in the blankets. My
youngest died last week.’
‘I’m sorry for it, governor, with all my heart,’ said Mark, shaking him
by the hand. ‘Don’t mind us. Come along with me, and I’ll give you an
arm back. The goods is safe enough, sir’--to Martin--‘there ain’t many
people about, to make away with ‘em. What a comfort that is!’
‘No,’ cried the man. ‘You must look for such folk here,’ knocking his
stick upon the ground, ‘or yonder in the bush, towards the north. We’ve
buried most of ‘em. The rest have gone away. Them that we have here,
don’t come out at night.’
‘The night air ain’t quite wholesome, I suppose?’ said Mark.
‘It’s deadly poison,’ was the settler’s answer.
Mark showed no more uneasiness than if it had been commended to him as
ambrosia; but he gave the man his arm, and as they went along explained
to him the nature of their purchase, and inquired where it lay. Close to
his own log-house, he said; so close that he had used their dwelling
as a store-house for some corn; they must excuse it that night, but he
would endeavour to get it taken out upon the morrow. He then gave them
to understand, as an additional scrap of local chit-chat, that he had
buried the last proprietor with his own hands; a piece of information
which Mark also received without the least abatement of his equanimity.
In a word, he conducted them to a miserable cabin, rudely constructed
of the trunks of trees; the door of which had either fallen down or
been carried away long ago; and which was consequently open to the
wild landscape and the dark night. Saving for the little store he had
mentioned, it was perfectly bare of all furniture; but they had left a
chest upon the landing-place, and he gave them a rude torch in lieu
of candle. This latter acquisition Mark planted in the earth, and then
declaring that the mansion ‘looked quite comfortable,’ hurried
Martin off again to help bring up the chest. And all the way to the
landing-place and back, Mark talked incessantly; as if he would infuse
into his partner’s breast some faint belief that they had arrived under
the most auspicious and cheerful of all imaginable circumstances.
But many a man who would have stood within a home dismantled, strong in
his passion and design of vengeance, has had the firmness of his
nature conquered by the razing of an air-built castle. When the log-hut
received them for the second time, Martin laid down upon the ground, and
wept aloud.
‘Lord love you, sir!’ cried Mr Tapley, in great terror; ‘Don’t do that!
Don’t do that, sir! Anything but that! It never helped man, woman, or
child, over the lowest fence yet, sir, and it never will. Besides its
being of no use to you, it’s worse than of no use to me, for the least
sound of it will knock me flat down. I can’t stand up agin it, sir.
Anything but that!’
There is no doubt he spoke the truth, for the extraordinary alarm with
which he looked at Martin as he paused upon his knees before the chest,
in the act of unlocking it, to say these words, sufficiently confirmed
him.
‘I ask your forgiveness a thousand times, my dear fellow,’ said Martin.
‘I couldn’t have helped it, if death had been the penalty.’
‘Ask my forgiveness!’ said Mark, with his accustomed cheerfulness, as he
proceeded to unpack the chest. ‘The head partner a-asking forgiveness of
Co., eh? There must be something wrong in the firm when that happens. I