“You will allow me,” said Martin, after a terrible silence, “to take my leave. I feel that I am the cause of at least as much embarrassment here, as I have brought upon myself. But I am bound, before I go, to exonerate this gentleman, who, in introducing me to such society, was quite ignorant of my unworthiness, I assure you.”
With that he made his bow to the Norrises, and walked out like a man of snow; very cool externally, but pretty hot within.
“Come, come,” said Mr Norris the father, looking with a pale face on the assembled circle as Martin closed the door, “the young man has this night beheld a refinement of social manner, and an easy magnificence of social decoration, to which he is a stranger in his own country. Let us hope it may awake a moral sense within him.”
If that peculiarly transatlantic article, a moral sense—for, if native statesmen, orators, and pamphleteers, are to be believed, America quite monopolises the commodity—if that peculiarly transatlantic article be supposed to include a benevolent love of all mankind, certainly Martin's would have borne, just then, a deal of waking. As he strode along the street, with Mark at his heels, his immoral sense was in active operation; prompting him to the utterance of some rather sanguinary remarks, which it was well for his own credit that nobody overheard. He had so far cooled down, however, that he had begun to laugh at the recollection of these incidents, when he heard another step behind him, and turning round encountered his friend Bevan, quite out of breath.
He drew his arm through Martin's, and entreating him to walk slowly, was silent for some minutes. At length he said:
“I hope you exonerate me in another sense?”
“How do you mean?” asked Martin.
“I hope you acquit me of intending or foreseeing the termination of our visit. But I scarcely need ask you that.”
“Scarcely indeed,” said Martin. “I am the more beholden to you for your kindness, when I find what kind of stuff the good citizens here are made of.”
“I reckon,” his friend returned, “that they are made of pretty much the same stuff as other folks, if they would but own it, and not set up on false pretences.”
“In good faith, that's true,” said Martin.
“I dare say,” resumed his friend, “you might have such a scene as that in an English comedy, and not detect any gross improbability or anomaly in the matter of it?”
“Yes, indeed!”
“Doubtless it is more ridiculous here than anywhere else,” said his companion; “but our professions are to blame for that. So far as I myself am concerned, I may add that I was perfectly aware from the first that you came over in the steerage, for I had seen the list of passengers, and knew it did not comprise your name.”
“I feel more obliged to you than before,” said Martin.
“Norris is a very good fellow in his way,” observed Mr Bevan.
“Is he?” said Martin drily.
“Oh yes! there are a hundred good points about him. If you or anybody else addressed him as another order of being, and sued to him IN FORMA PAUPERIS, he would be all kindness and consideration.”
“I needn't have travelled three thousand miles from home to find such a character as THAT,” said Martin. Neither he nor his friend said anything more on the way back; each appearing to find sufficient occupation in his own thoughts.
The tea, or the supper, or whatever else they called the evening meal, was over when they reached the Major's; but the cloth, ornamented with a few additional smears and stains, was still upon the table. At one end of the board Mrs Jefferson Brick and two other ladies were drinking tea; out of the ordinary course, evidently, for they were bonneted and shawled, and seemed to have just come home. By the light of three flaring candles of different lengths, in as many candlesticks of different patterns, the room showed to almost as little advantage as in broad day.
These ladies were all three talking together in a very loud tone when Martin and his friend entered; but seeing those gentlemen, they stopped directly, and became excessively genteel, not to say frosty. As they went on to exchange some few remarks in whispers, the very water in the teapot might have fallen twenty degrees in temperature beneath their chilling coldness.
“Have you been to meeting, Mrs Brick?” asked Martin's friend, with something of a roguish twinkle in his eye.
“To lecture, sir.”
“I beg your pardon. I forgot. You don't go to meeting, I think?”
Here the lady on the right of Mrs Brick gave a pious cough as much as to say “I do!'—as, indeed, she did nearly every night in the week.
“A good discourse, ma'am?” asked Mr Bevan, addressing this lady.
The lady raised her eyes in a pious manner, and answered “Yes.”She had been much comforted by some good, strong, peppery doctrine, which satisfactorily disposed of all her friends and acquaintances, and quite settled their business. Her bonnet, too, had far outshone every bonnet in the congregation; so she was tranquil on all accounts.
“What course of lectures are you attending now, ma'am?” said Martin's friend, turning again to Mrs Brick.
“The Philosophy of the Soul, on Wednesdays.”
“On Mondays?”
“The Philosophy of Crime.”
“On Fridays?”
“The Philosophy of Vegetables.”
“You have forgotten Thursdays; the Philosophy of Government, my dear,” observed the third lady.
“No,” said Mrs Brick. “That's Tuesdays.”
“So it is!” cried the lady. “The Philosophy of Matter on Thursdays, of course.”
“You see, Mr Chuzzlewit, our ladies are fully employed,” said Bevan.
“Indeed you have reason to say so,” answered Martin. “Between these very grave pursuits abroad, and family duties at home, their time must be pretty well engrossed.”
Martin stopped here, for he saw that the ladies regarded him with no very great favour, though what he had done to deserve the disdainful expression which appeared in their faces he was at a loss to divine. But on their going upstairs to their bedrooms—which they very soon did—Mr Bevan informed him that domestic drudgery was far beneath the exalted range of these Philosophers, and that the chances were a hundred to one that not one of the three could perform the easiest woman's work for herself, or make the simplest article of dress for any of her children.
“Though whether they might not be better employed with such blunt instruments as knitting-needles than with these edge-tools,” he said, “is another question; but I can answer for one thing—they don't often cut themselves. Devotions and lectures are our balls and concerts. They go to these places of resort, as an escape from monotony; look at each other's clothes; and come home again.”
“When you say “home,” do you mean a house like this?”
“Very often. But I see you are tired to death, and will wish you good night. We will discuss your projects in the morning. You cannot but feel already that it is useless staying here, with any hope of advancing them. You will have to go further.”
“And to fare worse?” said Martin, pursuing the old adage.
“Well, I hope not. But sufficient for the day, you know—good night”
They shook hands heartily and separated. As soon as Martin was left alone, the excitement of novelty and change which had sustained him through all the fatigues of the day, departed; and he felt so thoroughly dejected and worn out, that he even lacked the energy to crawl upstairs to bed.
In twelve or fifteen hours, how great a change had fallen on his hopes and sanguine plans! New and strange as he was to the ground on which he stood, and to the air he breathed, he could not— recalling all that he had crowded into that one day—but entertain a strong misgiving that his enterprise was doomed. Rash and illconsidered as it had often looked on shipboard, but had never seemed on shore, it wore a dismal aspect, now, that frightened him. Whatever thoughts he called up to his aid, they came upon him in depressing and discouraging shapes, and gave him no relief. Even the diamond
s on his finger sparkled with the brightness of tears, and had no ray of hope in all their brilliant lustre.
He continued to sit in gloomy rumination by the stove, unmindful of the boarders who dropped in one by one from their stores and counting-houses, or the neighbouring bar-rooms, and, after taking long pulls from a great white waterjug upon the sideboard, and lingering with a kind of hideous fascination near the brass spittoons, lounged heavily to bed; until at length Mark Tapley came and shook him by the arm, supposing him asleep.
“Mark!” he cried, starting.
“All right, sir,” said that cheerful follower, snuffing with his fingers the candle he bore. “It ain't a very large bed, your'n, sir; and a man as wasn't thirsty might drink, afore breakfast, all the water you've got to wash in, and afterwards eat the towel. But you'll sleep without rocking to-night, sir.”
“I feel as if the house were on the sea” said Martin, staggering when he rose; “and am utterly wretched.”
“I'm as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,” said Mark. “But, Lord, I have reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that's my opinion. Take care how you go'—for they were now ascending the stairs. “You recollect the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the very small trunk, sir?”
“The valise? Yes.”
“Well, sir, there's been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash to-night, and they're put outside the bedroom doors here. If you take notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what a many fronts, you'll penetrate the mystery of his packing.”
But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so had no interest in this discovery. Mr Tapley, nothing dashed by his indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the bed-chamber prepared for his reception; which was a very little narrow room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest without a lid; two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are commonly tried upon at a ready-made establishment in England; a little looking-glass nailed against the wall; and a washing-table, with a jug and ewer, that might have been mistaken for a milk-pot and slop-basin.
“I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,” said Mark. “They've certainly got a touch of the “phoby, sir.”
“I wish you would pull off my boots for me,” said Martin, dropping into one of the chairs “I am quite knocked up—dead beat, Mark.”
“You won't say that to-morrow morning, sir,” returned Mr Tapley; “nor even to-night, sir, when you've made a trial of this.”With which he produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.
“What do you call this?” said Martin.
But Mr Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the mixture—which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice— and signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through that agency by the enraptured drinker.
Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more until the goblet was drained to the last drop.
“There, sir!” said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face; “if ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in the way, all you've got to do is to ask the nearest man to go and fetch a cobbler.”
“To go and fetch a cobbler?” repeated Martin.
“This wonderful invention, sir,” said Mark, tenderly patting the empty glass, “is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long; cobbler, when you name it short. Now you're equal to having your boots took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.”
Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the bootjack.
“Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,” said Martin; “but, good Heaven, if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or money!”
“Well, sir!” replied the imperturbable Tapley; “from what we've seen already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn't do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.”
“Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!” said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; “what would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!”
“Oh, Dragon, Dragon!” echoed Mark, cheerfully, “if there warn't any water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back, I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there's a fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn't give in on the doorsteps, or you'll never get up to the top!”
“Wisely said, Mark,” cried Martin. “We must look forward.”
“In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked backward was turned into stones,” replied Mark; “and my opinion always was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served “em right. I wish you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!”
“They must be of home, then,” said Martin, as he lay down in bed.
“So I say, too,” whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and in his own room; “for if there don't come a time afore we're well out of this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping up one's jollity, I'm a United Statesman!”
Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle—a dream within a dream—as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the ocean to the English shore.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOES BUSINESS WITH THE HOUSE OF ANTHONY CHUZZLEWIT AND SON, FROM WHICH ONE OF THE PARTNERS RETIRES UNEXPECTEDLY
Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.
Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be faithfully set down in these pages.
“What a cold spring it is!” whimpered old Anthony, drawing near the evening fire, “It was a warmer season, sure, when I was young!”
“You needn't go scorching your clothes into holes, whether it was or not,” observed the amiable Jonas, raising his eyes from yesterday's newspaper, “Broadcloth ain't so cheap as that comes to.”
“A good lad!” cried the father, breathing on his cold hands, and feebly chafing them against each other. “A prudent lad! He never delivered himself up to the vanities of dress. No, no!”
“I don't know but I would, though, mind you, if I could do it for nothing,” said his son, as he resumed the paper.
“Ah!” chuckled the old man. “IF, indeed!—But it's very cold.”
“Let the fire be!” cried Mr Jonas, stopping his honoured parent's hand in the use of the poker. “Do you mean to come to want in your old age, that you take to wasting now?”
“There's not time for that, Jonas,” said the old man.
“Not time for what?” bawled his heir.
“For me to come to want. I wish there was!”
“You always were as selfish an old blade as need be,” said Jonas in a voice too low for him to hear, and looking at
him with an angry frown. “You act up to your character. You wouldn't mind coming to want, wouldn't you! I dare say you wouldn't. And your own flesh and blood might come to want too, might they, for anything you cared? Oh you precious old flint!”
After this dutiful address he took his tea-cup in his hand—for that meal was in progress, and the father and son and Chuffey were partakers of it. Then, looking steadfastly at his father, and stopping now and then to carry a spoonful of tea to his lips, he proceeded in the same tone, thus:
“Want, indeed! You're a nice old man to be talking of want at this time of day. Beginning to talk of want, are you? Well, I declare! There isn't time? No, I should hope not. But you'd live to be a couple of hundred if you could; and after all be discontented. I know you!”
The old man sighed, and still sat cowering before the fire. Mr Jonas shook his Britannia-metal teaspoon at him, and taking a loftier position, went on to argue the point on high moral grounds.
“If you're in such a state of mind as that,” he grumbled, but in the same subdued key, “why don't you make over your property? Buy an annuity cheap, and make your life interesting to yourself and everybody else that watches the speculation. But no, that wouldn't suit YOU. That would be natural conduct to your own son, and you like to be unnatural, and to keep him out of his rights. Why, I should be ashamed of myself if I was you, and glad to hide my head in the what you may call it.”
Possibly this general phrase supplied the place of grave, or tomb, or sepulchre, or cemetery, or mausoleum, or other such word which the filial tenderness of Mr Jonas made him delicate of pronouncing. He pursued the theme no further; for Chuffey, somehow discovering, from his old corner by the fireside, that Anthony was in the attitude of a listener, and that Jonas appeared to be speaking, suddenly cried out, like one inspired:
Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit Page 37
