Martin Chuzzlewit
were not cheerful without an effort--‘but I do a little bit of Adam
still.’
He had by this time got them into the best parlour, where the portrait
by Spiller, and the bust by Spoker, were.
‘My daughters,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘will be overjoyed. If I could feel
weary upon such a theme, I should have been worn out long ago, my dear
sir, by their constant anticipation of this happiness and their repeated
allusions to our meeting at Mrs Todgers’s. Their fair young friend,
too,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘whom they so desire to know and love--indeed
to know her, is to love--I hope I see her well. I hope in saying,
“Welcome to my humble roof!” I find some echo in her own sentiments.
If features are an index to the heart, I have no fears of that. An
extremely engaging expression of countenance, Mr Chuzzlewit, my dear
sir--very much so!’
‘Mary,’ said the old man, ‘Mr Pecksniff flatters you. But flattery from
him is worth the having. He is not a dealer in it, and it comes from his
heart. We thought Mr--’
‘Pinch,’ said Mary.
‘Mr Pinch would have arrived before us, Pecksniff.’
‘He did arrive before you, my dear sir,’ retorted Pecksniff, raising his
voice for the edification of Tom upon the stairs, ‘and was about, I dare
say, to tell me of your coming, when I begged him first to knock at my
daughters’ chamber, and inquire after Charity, my dear child, who is not
so well as I could wish. No,’ said Mr Pecksniff, answering their looks,
‘I am sorry to say, she is not. It is merely an hysterical affection;
nothing more, I am not uneasy. Mr Pinch! Thomas!’ exclaimed Pecksniff,
in his kindest accents. ‘Pray come in. I shall make no stranger of you.
Thomas is a friend of mine, of rather long-standing, Mr Chuzzlewit, you
must know.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Tom. ‘You introduce me very kindly, and speak of
me in terms of which I am very proud.’
‘Old Thomas!’ cried his master, pleasantly ‘God bless you!’
Tom reported that the young ladies would appear directly, and that
the best refreshments which the house afforded were even then in
preparation, under their joint superintendence. While he was speaking,
the old man looked at him intently, though with less harshness than was
common to him; nor did the mutual embarrassment of Tom and the
young lady, to whatever cause he attributed it, seem to escape his
observation.
‘Pecksniff,’ he said after a pause, rising and taking him aside towards
the window, ‘I was much shocked on hearing of my brother’s death. We
had been strangers for many years. My only comfort is that he must
have lived the happier and better man for having associated no hopes or
schemes with me. Peace to his memory! We were play-fellows once; and it
would have been better for us both if we had died then.’
Finding him in this gentle mood, Mr Pecksniff began to see another way
out of his difficulties, besides the casting overboard of Jonas.
‘That any man, my dear sir, could possibly be the happier for not
knowing you,’ he returned, ‘you will excuse my doubting. But that Mr
Anthony, in the evening of his life, was happier in the affection of his
excellent son--a pattern, my dear sir, a pattern to all sons--and in the
care of a distant relation who, however lowly in his means of serving
him, had no bounds to his inclination; I can inform you.’
‘How’s this?’ said the old man. ‘You are not a legatee?’
‘You don’t,’ said Mr Pecksniff, with a melancholy pressure of his hand,
‘quite understand my nature yet, I find. No, sir, I am not a legatee. I
am proud to say I am not a legatee. I am proud to say that neither of my
children is a legatee. And yet, sir, I was with him at his own request.
HE understood me somewhat better, sir. He wrote and said, “I am sick. I
am sinking. Come to me!” I went to him. I sat beside his bed, sir, and
I stood beside his grave. Yes, at the risk of offending even you, I did
it, sir. Though the avowal should lead to our instant separation, and
to the severing of those tender ties between us which have recently been
formed, I make it. But I am not a legatee,’ said Mr Pecksniff, smiling
dispassionately; ‘and I never expected to be a legatee. I knew better!’
‘His son a pattern!’ cried old Martin. ‘How can you tell me that? My
brother had in his wealth the usual doom of wealth, and root of misery.
He carried his corrupting influence with him, go where he would; and
shed it round him, even on his hearth. It made of his own child a
greedy expectant, who measured every day and hour the lessening distance
between his father and the grave, and cursed his tardy progress on that
dismal road.’
‘No!’ cried Mr Pecksniff, boldly. ‘Not at all, sir!’
‘But I saw that shadow in his house,’ said Martin Chuzzlewit, ‘the last
time we met, and warned him of its presence. I know it when I see it, do
I not? I, who have lived within it all these years!’
‘I deny it,’ Mr Pecksniff answered, warmly. ‘I deny it altogether. That
bereaved young man is now in this house, sir, seeking in change of scene
the peace of mind he has lost. Shall I be backward in doing justice to
that young man, when even undertakers and coffin-makers have been moved
by the conduct he has exhibited; when even mutes have spoken in his
praise, and the medical man hasn’t known what to do with himself in
the excitement of his feelings! There is a person of the name of Gamp,
sir--Mrs Gamp--ask her. She saw Mr Jonas in a trying time. Ask HER, sir.
She is respectable, but not sentimental, and will state the fact. A line
addressed to Mrs Gamp, at the Bird Shop, Kingsgate Street, High Holborn,
London, will meet with every attention, I have no doubt. Let her be
examined, my good sir. Strike, but hear! Leap, Mr Chuzzlewit, but look!
Forgive me, my dear sir,’ said Mr Pecksniff, taking both his hands, ‘if
I am warm; but I am honest, and must state the truth.’
In proof of the character he gave himself, Mr Pecksniff suffered tears
of honesty to ooze out of his eyes.
The old man gazed at him for a moment with a look of wonder, repeating
to himself, ‘Here now! In this house!’ But he mastered his surprise, and
said, after a pause:
‘Let me see him.’
‘In a friendly spirit, I hope?’ said Mr Pecksniff. ‘Forgive me, sir but
he is in the receipt of my humble hospitality.’
‘I said,’ replied the old man, ‘let me see him. If I were disposed to
regard him in any other than a friendly spirit, I should have said keep
us apart.’
‘Certainly, my dear sir. So you would. You are frankness itself, I know.
I will break this happiness to him,’ said Mr Pecksniff, as he left the
room, ‘if you will excuse me for a minute--gently.’
He paved the way to the disclosure so very gently, that a quarter of an
hour elapsed before he returned with Mr Jonas. In the meantime the young
ladies had made their appearance, and the table had been set out for the
refreshment of the travellers.
Now, however well Mr Pecksniff, in his morality, had taught Jonas the
lesson of dutiful behaviour to his uncle, and however perfectly Jonas,
in the cunning of his nature, had learnt it, that young man’s bearing,
when presented to his father’s brother, was anything but manly or
engaging. Perhaps, indeed, so singular a mixture of defiance and
obsequiousness, of fear and hardihood, of dogged sullenness and an
attempt at enraging and propitiation, never was expressed in any one
human figure as in that of Jonas, when, having raised his downcast
eyes to Martin’s face, he let them fall again, and uneasily closing
and unclosing his hands without a moment’s intermission, stood swinging
himself from side to side, waiting to be addressed.
‘Nephew,’ said the old man. ‘You have been a dutiful son, I hear.’
‘As dutiful as sons in general, I suppose,’ returned Jonas, looking up
and down once more. ‘I don’t brag to have been any better than other
sons; but I haven’t been any worse, I dare say.’
‘A pattern to all sons, I am told,’ said the old man, glancing towards
Mr Pecksniff.
‘Ecod!’ said Jonas, looking up again for a moment, and shaking his head,
‘I’ve been as good a son as ever you were a brother. It’s the pot and
the kettle, if you come to that.’
‘You speak bitterly, in the violence of your regret,’ said Martin, after
a pause. ‘Give me your hand.’
Jonas did so, and was almost at his ease. ‘Pecksniff,’ he whispered,
as they drew their chairs about the table; ‘I gave him as good as he
brought, eh? He had better look at home, before he looks out of window,
I think?’
Mr Pecksniff only answered by a nudge of the elbow, which might either
be construed into an indignant remonstrance or a cordial assent; but
which, in any case, was an emphatic admonition to his chosen son-in-law
to be silent. He then proceeded to do the honours of the house with his
accustomed ease and amiability.
But not even Mr Pecksniff’s guileless merriment could set such a
party at their ease, or reconcile materials so utterly discordant
and conflicting as those with which he had to deal. The unspeakable
jealously and hatred which that night’s explanation had sown in
Charity’s breast, was not to be so easily kept down; and more than
once it showed itself in such intensity, as seemed to render a full
disclosure of all the circumstances then and there, impossible to be
avoided. The beauteous Merry, too, with all the glory of her conquest
fresh upon her, so probed and lanced the rankling disappointment of her
sister by her capricious airs and thousand little trials of Mr Jonas’s
obedience, that she almost goaded her into a fit of madness, and obliged
her to retire from table in a burst of passion, hardly less vehement
than that to which she had abandoned herself in the first tumult of her
wrath. The constraint imposed upon the family by the presence among
them for the first time of Mary Graham (for by that name old Martin
Chuzzlewit had introduced her) did not at all improve this state of
things; gentle and quiet though her manner was. Mr Pecksniff’s situation
was peculiarly trying; for, what with having constantly to keep the
peace between his daughters; to maintain a reasonable show of affection
and unity in his household; to curb the growing ease and gaiety of
Jonas, which vented itself in sundry insolences towards Mr Pinch, and
an indefinable coarseness of manner in reference to Mary (they being the
two dependants); to make no mention at all of his having perpetually to
conciliate his rich old relative, and to smooth down, or explain
away, some of the ten thousand bad appearances and combinations of bad
appearances, by which they were surrounded on that unlucky evening--what
with having to do this, and it would be difficult to sum up how much
more, without the least relief or assistance from anybody, it may be
easily imagined that Mr Pecksniff had in his enjoyment something more
than that usual portion of alloy which is mixed up with the best of
men’s delights. Perhaps he had never in his life felt such relief as
when old Martin, looking at his watch, announced that it was time to go.
‘We have rooms,’ he said, ‘at the Dragon, for the present. I have a
fancy for the evening walk. The nights are dark just now; perhaps Mr
Pinch would not object to light us home?’
‘My dear sir!’ cried Pecksniff, ‘I shall be delighted. Merry, my child,
the lantern.’
‘The lantern, if you please, my dear,’ said Martin; ‘but I couldn’t
think of taking your father out of doors to-night; and, to be brief, I
won’t.’
Mr Pecksniff already had his hat in his hand, but it was so emphatically
said that he paused.
‘I take Mr Pinch, or go alone,’ said Martin. ‘Which shall it be?’
‘It shall be Thomas, sir,’ cried Pecksniff, ‘since you are so resolute
upon it. Thomas, my friend, be very careful, if you please.’
Tom was in some need of this injunction, for he felt so nervous, and