Martin Chuzzlewit
Pecksniff sat down upon a hassock, and listening more attentively than
ever, smiled.
Mary seemed to have expressed some dissent in the meanwhile, for Tom
went on to say, with honest energy:
‘Well, I don’t know how it is, but it always happens, whenever I express
myself in this way to anybody almost, that I find they won’t do justice
to Pecksniff. It is one of the most extraordinary circumstances that
ever came within my knowledge, but it is so. There’s John Westlock, who
used to be a pupil here, one of the best-hearted young men in the world,
in all other matters--I really believe John would have Pecksniff flogged
at the cart’s tail if he could. And John is not a solitary case,
for every pupil we have had in my time has gone away with the same
inveterate hatred of him. There was Mark Tapley, too, quite in another
station of life,’ said Tom; ‘the mockery he used to make of Pecksniff
when he was at the Dragon was shocking. Martin too: Martin was worse
than any of ‘em. But I forgot. He prepared you to dislike Pecksniff, of
course. So you came with a prejudice, you know, Miss Graham, and are not
a fair witness.’
Tom triumphed very much in this discovery, and rubbed his hands with
great satisfaction.
‘Mr Pinch,’ said Mary, ‘you mistake him.’
‘No, no!’ cried Tom. ‘YOU mistake him. But,’ he added, with a rapid
change in his tone, ‘what is the matter? Miss Graham, what is the
matter?’
Mr Pecksniff brought up to the top of the pew, by slow degrees, his
hair, his forehead, his eyebrow, his eye. She was sitting on a bench
beside the door with her hands before her face; and Tom was bending over
her.
‘What is the matter?’ cried Tom. ‘Have I said anything to hurt you? Has
any one said anything to hurt you? Don’t cry. Pray tell me what it is.
I cannot bear to see you so distressed. Mercy on us, I never was so
surprised and grieved in all my life!’
Mr Pecksniff kept his eye in the same place. He could have moved it now
for nothing short of a gimlet or a red-hot wire.
‘I wouldn’t have told you, Mr Pinch,’ said Mary, ‘if I could have helped
it; but your delusion is so absorbing, and it is so necessary that we
should be upon our guard; that you should not be compromised; and to
that end that you should know by whom I am beset; that no alternative
is left me. I came here purposely to tell you, but I think I should
have wanted courage if you had not chanced to lead me so directly to the
object of my coming.’
Tom gazed at her steadfastly, and seemed to say, ‘What else?’ But he
said not a word.
‘That person whom you think the best of men,’ said Mary, looking up, and
speaking with a quivering lip and flashing eye.
‘Lord bless me!’ muttered Tom, staggering back. ‘Wait a moment. That
person whom I think the best of men! You mean Pecksniff, of course.
Yes, I see you mean Pecksniff. Good gracious me, don’t speak without
authority. What has he done? If he is not the best of men, what is he?’
‘The worst. The falsest, craftiest, meanest, cruellest, most
sordid, most shameless,’ said the trembling girl--trembling with her
indignation.
Tom sat down on a seat, and clasped his hands.
‘What is he,’ said Mary, ‘who receiving me in his house as his guest;
his unwilling guest; knowing my history, and how defenceless and alone
I am, presumes before his daughters to affront me so, that if I had a
brother but a child, who saw it, he would instinctively have helped me?’
‘He is a scoundrel!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘Whoever he may be, he is a
scoundrel.’
Mr Pecksniff dived again.
‘What is he,’ said Mary, ‘who, when my only friend--a dear and kind one,
too--was in full health of mind, humbled himself before him, but was
spurned away (for he knew him then) like a dog. Who, in his forgiving
spirit, now that that friend is sunk into a failing state, can crawl
about him again, and use the influence he basely gains for every base
and wicked purpose, and not for one--not one--that’s true or good?’
‘I say he is a scoundrel!’ answered Tom.
‘But what is he--oh, Mr Pinch, what IS he--who, thinking he could
compass these designs the better if I were his wife, assails me with the
coward’s argument that if I marry him, Martin, on whom I have brought so
much misfortune, shall be restored to something of his former hopes; and
if I do not, shall be plunged in deeper ruin? What is he who makes my
very constancy to one I love with all my heart a torture to myself and
wrong to him; who makes me, do what I will, the instrument to hurt a
head I would heap blessings on! What is he who, winding all these cruel
snares about me, explains their purpose to me, with a smooth tongue and
a smiling face, in the broad light of day; dragging me on, the while, in
his embrace, and holding to his lips a hand,’ pursued the agitated girl,
extending it, ‘which I would have struck off, if with it I could lose
the shame and degradation of his touch?’
‘I say,’ cried Tom, in great excitement, ‘he is a scoundrel and a
villain! I don’t care who he is, I say he is a double-dyed and most
intolerable villain!’
Covering her face with her hands again, as if the passion which had
sustained her through these disclosures lost itself in an overwhelming
sense of shame and grief, she abandoned herself to tears.
Any sight of distress was sure to move the tenderness of Tom, but this
especially. Tears and sobs from her were arrows in his heart. He tried
to comfort her; sat down beside her; expended all his store of homely
eloquence; and spoke in words of praise and hope of Martin. Aye, though
he loved her from his soul with such a self-denying love as woman seldom
wins; he spoke from first to last of Martin. Not the wealth of the rich
Indies would have tempted Tom to shirk one mention of her lover’s name.
When she was more composed, she impressed upon Tom that this man she
had described, was Pecksniff in his real colours; and word by word and
phrase by phrase, as well as she remembered it, related what had
passed between them in the wood: which was no doubt a source of high
gratification to that gentleman himself, who in his desire to see and
his dread of being seen, was constantly diving down into the state pew,
and coming up again like the intelligent householder in Punch’s Show,
who avoids being knocked on the head with a cudgel. When she had
concluded her account, and had besought Tom to be very distant and
unconscious in his manner towards her after this explanation, and had
thanked him very much, they parted on the alarm of footsteps in the
burial-ground; and Tom was left alone in the church again.
And now the full agitation and misery of the disclosure came rushing
upon Tom indeed. The star of his whole life from boyhood had become, in
a moment, putrid vapour. It was not that Pecksniff, Tom’s Pecksniff, had
ceased to exist, but that he never had existed. In his death Tom would
have had the comfort of remembering what he used to be, but in this
discovery, he had the anguish of recollecting what he never was. For,
as Tom’s blindness in this matter had been total and not partial, so was
his restored sight. HIS Pecksniff could never have worked the wickedness
of which he had just now heard, but any other Pecksniff could; and the
Pecksniff who could do that could do anything, and no doubt had been
doing anything and everything except the right thing, all through his
career. From the lofty height on which poor Tom had placed his idol it
was tumbled down headlong, and
Not all the king’s horses, nor all the king’s men,
Could have set Mr Pecksniff up again.
Legions of Titans couldn’t have got him out of the mud; and serve him
right! But it was not he who suffered; it was Tom. His compass was
broken, his chart destroyed, his chronometer had stopped, his masts were
gone by the board; his anchor was adrift, ten thousand leagues away.
Mr Pecksniff watched him with a lively interest, for he divined the
purpose of Tom’s ruminations, and was curious to see how he conducted
himself. For some time, Tom wandered up and down the aisle like a man
demented, stopping occasionally to lean against a pew and think it over;
then he stood staring at a blank old monument bordered tastefully with
skulls and cross-bones, as if it were the finest work of Art he had ever
seen, although at other times he held it in unspeakable contempt; then
he sat down; then walked to and fro again; then went wandering up into
the organ-loft, and touched the keys. But their minstrelsy was changed,
their music gone; and sounding one long melancholy chord, Tom drooped
his head upon his hands and gave it up as hopeless.
‘I wouldn’t have cared,’ said Tom Pinch, rising from his stool and
looking down into the church as if he had been the Clergyman, ‘I
wouldn’t have cared for anything he might have done to Me, for I have
tried his patience often, and have lived upon his sufferance and have
never been the help to him that others could have been. I wouldn’t have
minded, Pecksniff,’ Tom continued, little thinking who heard him, ‘if
you had done Me any wrong; I could have found plenty of excuses for
that; and though you might have hurt me, could have still gone on
respecting you. But why did you ever fall so low as this in my esteem!
Oh Pecksniff, Pecksniff, there is nothing I would not have given, to
have had you deserve my old opinion of you; nothing!’
Mr Pecksniff sat upon the hassock pulling up his shirt-collar, while
Tom, touched to the quick, delivered this apostrophe. After a pause he
heard Tom coming down the stairs, jingling the church keys; and bringing
his eye to the top of the pew again, saw him go slowly out and lock the
door.
Mr Pecksniff durst not issue from his place of concealment; for through
the windows of the church he saw Tom passing on among the graves, and
sometimes stopping at a stone, and leaning there as if he were a
mourner who had lost a friend. Even when he had left the churchyard, Mr
Pecksniff still remained shut up; not being at all secure but that in
his restless state of mind Tom might come wandering back. At length he
issued forth, and walked with a pleasant countenance into the vestry;
where he knew there was a window near the ground, by which he could
release himself by merely stepping out.
He was in a curious frame of mind, Mr Pecksniff; being in no hurry to
go, but rather inclining to a dilatory trifling with the time, which
prompted him to open the vestry cupboard, and look at himself in the
parson’s little glass that hung within the door. Seeing that his hair
was rumpled, he took the liberty of borrowing the canonical brush and
arranging it. He also took the liberty of opening another cupboard; but
he shut it up again quickly, being rather startled by the sight of a
black and a white surplice dangling against the wall; which had very
much the appearance of two curates who had committed suicide by hanging
themselves. Remembering that he had seen in the first cupboard a
port-wine bottle and some biscuits, he peeped into it again, and helped
himself with much deliberation; cogitating all the time though, in
a very deep and weighty manner, as if his thoughts were otherwise
employed.
He soon made up his mind, if it had ever been in doubt; and putting
back the bottle and biscuits, opened the casement. He got out into the
churchyard without any difficulty; shut the window after him; and walked
straight home.
‘Is Mr Pinch indoors?’ asked Mr Pecksniff of his serving-maid.
‘Just come in, sir.’
‘Just come in, eh?’ repeated Mr Pecksniff, cheerfully. ‘And gone
upstairs, I suppose?’
‘Yes sir. Gone upstairs. Shall I call him, sir?’
‘No,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘no. You needn’t call him, Jane. Thank you,
Jane. How are your relations, Jane?’
‘Pretty well, I thank you, sir.’
‘I am glad to hear it. Let them know I asked about them, Jane. Is Mr