Martin looked as steadily at his grandfather as if there had been a dead silence all this time. The old man looked no less steadily at Mr Pecksniff.
“When I ordered you to leave this house upon the last occasion of your being dismissed from it with disgrace,” said Mr Pecksniff; “when, stung and stimulated beyond endurance by your shameless conduct to this extraordinarily noble-minded individual, I exclaimed “Go forth!” I told you that I wept for your depravity. Do not suppose that the tear which stands in my eye at this moment, is shed for you. It is shed for him, sir. It is shed for him.”
Here Mr Pecksniff, accidentally dropping the tear in question on a bald part of Mr Chuzzlewit's head, wiped the place with his pockethandkerchief, and begged pardon.
“It is shed for him, sir, whom you seek to make the victim of your arts,” said Mr Pecksniff; “whom you seek to plunder, to deceive, and to mislead. It is shed in sympathy with him, and admiration of him; not in pity for him, for happily he knows what you are. You shall not wrong him further, sir, in any way,” said Mr Pecksniff, quite transported with enthusiasm, “while I have life. You may bestride my senseless corse, sir. That is very likely. I can imagine a mind like yours deriving great satisfaction from any measure of that kind. But while I continue to be called upon to exist, sir, you must strike at him through me. Awe!” said Mr Pecksniff, shaking his head at Martin with indignant jocularity; “and in such a cause you will find me, my young sir, an Ugly Customer!”
Still Martin looked steadily and mildly at his grandfather. “Will you give me no answer,” he said, at length, “not a word?”
“You hear what has been said,” replied the old man, without averting his eyes from the face of Mr Pecksniff; who nodded encouragingly.
“I have not heard your voice. I have not heard your spirit,” returned Martin.
“Tell him again,” said the old man, still gazing up in Mr Pecksniff's face.
“I only hear,” replied Martin, strong in his purpose from the first, and stronger in it as he felt how Pecksniff winced and shrunk beneath his contempt; “I only hear what you say to me, grandfather.”
Perhaps it was well for Mr Pecksniff that his venerable friend found in his (Mr Pecksniff's) features an exclusive and engrossing object of contemplation, for if his eyes had gone astray, and he had compared young Martin's bearing with that of his zealous defender, the latter disinterested gentleman would scarcely have shown to greater advantage than on the memorable afternoon when he took Tom Pinch's last receipt in full of all demands. One really might have thought there was some quality in Mr Pecksniff—an emanation from the brightness and purity within him perhaps—which set off and adorned his foes; they looked so gallant and so manly beside him.
“Not a word?” said Martin, for the second time.
“I remember that I have a word to say, Pecksniff,” observed the old man. “But a word. You spoke of being indebted to the charitable help of some stranger for the means of returning to England. Who is he? And what help in money did he render you?”
Although he asked this question of Martin, he did not look towards him, but kept his eyes on Mr Pecksniff as before. It appeared to have become a habit with him, both in a literal and figurative sense, to look to Mr Pecksniff alone.
Martin took out his pencil, tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and hastily wrote down the particulars of his debt to Mr Bevan. The old man stretched out his hand for the paper, and took it; but his eyes did not wander from Mr Pecksniff's face.
“It would be a poor pride and a false humility,” said Martin, in a low voice, “to say, I do not wish that to be paid, or that I have any present hope of being able to pay it. But I never felt my poverty so deeply as I feel it now.”
“Read it to me, Pecksniff,” said the old man.
Mr Pecksniff, after approaching the perusal of the paper as if it were a manuscript confession of a murder, complied.
“I think, Pecksniff,” said old Martin, “I could wish that to be discharged. I should not like the lender, who was abroad, who had no opportunity of making inquiry, and who did (as he thought) a kind action, to suffer.”
“An honourable sentiment, my dear sir. Your own entirely. But a dangerous precedent,” said Mr Pecksniff, “permit me to suggest.”
“It shall not be a precedent,” returned the old man. “It is the only recognition of him. But we will talk of it again. You shall advise me. There is nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” said Mr Pecksniff buoyantly, “but for you to recover this intrusion—this cowardly and indefensible outrage on your feelings—with all possible dispatch, and smile again.”
“You have nothing more to say?” inquired the old man, laying his hand with unusual earnestness on Mr Pecksniff's sleeve.
Mr Pecksniff would not say what rose to his lips. For reproaches he observed, were useless.
“You have nothing at all to urge? You are sure of that! If you have, no matter what it is, speak freely. I will oppose nothing that you ask of me,” said the old man.
The tears rose in such abundance to Mr Pecksniff's eyes at this proof of unlimited confidence on the part of his friend, that he was fain to clasp the bridge of his nose convulsively before he could at all compose himself. When he had the power of utterance again, he said with great emotion, that he hoped he should live to deserve this; and added, that he had no other observation whatever to make.
For a few moments the old man sat looking at him, with that blank and motionless expression which is not uncommon in the faces of those whose faculties are on the wane, in age. But he rose up firmly too, and walked towards the door, from which Mark withdrew to make way for him.
The obsequious Mr Pecksniff proffered his arm. The old man took it. Turning at the door, he said to Martin, waving him off with his hand,
“You have heard him. Go away. It is all over. Go!”
Mr Pecksniff murmured certain cheering expressions of sympathy and encouragement as they retired; and Martin, awakening from the stupor into which the closing portion of this scene had plunged him, to the opportunity afforded by their departure, caught the innocent cause of all in his embrace, and pressed her to his heart.
“Dear girl!” said Martin. “He has not changed you. Why, what an impotent and harmless knave the fellow is!”
“You have restrained yourself so nobly! You have borne so much!”
“Restrained myself!” cried Martin, cheerfully. “You were by, and were unchanged, I knew. What more advantage did I want? The sight of me was such a bitterness to the dog, that I had my triumph in his being forced to endure it. But tell me, love—for the few hasty words we can exchange now are precious—what is this which has been rumoured to me? Is it true that you are persecuted by this knave's addresses?”
“I was, dear Martin, and to some extent am now; but my chief source of unhappiness has been anxiety for you. Why did you leave us in such terrible suspense?”
“Sickness, distance; the dread of hinting at our real condition, the impossibility of concealing it except in perfect silence; the knowledge that the truth would have pained you infinitely more than uncertainty and doubt,” said Martin, hurriedly; as indeed everything else was done and said, in those few hurried moments, “were the causes of my writing only once. But Pecksniff? You needn't fear to tell me the whole tale; for you saw me with him face to face, hearing him speak, and not taking him by the throat; what is the history of his pursuit of you? Is it known to my grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“And he assists him in it?”
“No,” she answered eagerly.
“Thank Heaven!” cried Martin, “that it leaves his mind unclouded in that one respect!”
“I do not think,” said Mary, “it was known to him at first. When this man had sufficiently prepared his mind, he revealed it to him by degrees. I think so, but I only know it from my own impression: now from anything they told me. Then he spoke to me alone.”
“My grandfather did?” said Martin.
&nb
sp; “Yes—spoke to me alone, and told me—”
“What the hound had said,” cried Martin. “Don't repeat it.”
“And said I knew well what qualities he possessed; that he was moderately rich; in good repute; and high in his favour and confidence. But seeing me very much distressed, he said that he would not control or force my inclinations, but would content himself with telling me the fact. He would not pain me by dwelling on it, or reverting to it; nor has he ever done so since, but has truly kept his word.”
“The man himself?—” asked Martin.
“He has had few opportunities of pursuing his suit. I have never walked out alone, or remained alone an instant in his presence. Dear Martin, I must tell you,” she continued, “that the kindness of your grandfather to me remains unchanged. I am his companion still. An indescribable tenderness and compassion seem to have mingled themselves with his old regard; and if I were his only child, I could not have a gentler father. What former fancy or old habit survives in this, when his heart has turned so cold to you, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but it has been, and it is, a happiness to me, that I remained true to him; that if he should wake from his delusion, even at the point of death, I am here, love, to recall you to his thoughts.”
Martin looked with admiration on her glowing face, and pressed his lips to hers.
“I have sometimes heard, and read,” she said, “that those whose powers had been enfeebled long ago, and whose lives had faded, as it were, into a dream, have been known to rouse themselves before death, and inquire for familiar faces once very dear to them; but forgotten, unrecognized, hated even, in the meantime. Think, if with his old impressions of this man, he should suddenly resume his former self, and find in him his only friend!”
“I would not urge you to abandon him, dearest,” said Martin, “though I could count the years we are to wear out asunder. But the influence this fellow exercises over him has steadily increased, I fear.”
She could not help admitting that. Steadily, imperceptibly, and surely, until it was paramount and supreme. She herself had none; and yet he treated her with more affection than at any previous time. Martin thought the inconsistency a part of his weakness and decay.
“Does the influence extend to fear?” said Martin. “Is he timid of asserting his own opinion in the presence of this infatuation? I fancied so just now.”
“I have thought so, often. Often when we are sitting alone, almost as we used to do, and I have been reading a favourite book to him or he has been talking quite cheerfully, I have observed that the entrance of Mr Pecksniff has changed his whole demeanour. He has broken off immediately, and become what you have seen to-day. When we first came here he had his impetuous outbreaks, in which it was not easy for Mr Pecksniff with his utmost plausibility to appease him. But these have long since dwindled away. He defers to him in everything, and has no opinion upon any question, but that which is forced upon him by this treacherous man.”
Such was the account, rapidly furnished in whispers, and interrupted, brief as it was, by many false alarms of Mr Pecksniff's return; which Martin received of his grandfather's decline, and of that good gentleman's ascendancy. He heard of Tom Pinch too, and Jonas too, with not a little about himself into the bargain; for though lovers are remarkable for leaving a great deal unsaid on all occasions, and very properly desiring to come back and say it, they are remarkable also for a wonderful power of condensation, and can, in one way or other, give utterance to more language—eloquent language—in any given short space of time, than all the six hundred and fifty-eight members in the Commons House of Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; who are strong lovers no doubt, but of their country only, which makes all the difference; for in a passion of that kind (which is not always returned), it is the custom to use as many words as possible, and express nothing whatever.
A caution from Mr Tapley; a hasty interchange of farewells, and of something else which the proverb says must not be told of afterwards; a white hand held out to Mr Tapley himself, which he kissed with the devotion of a knight-errant; more farewells, more something else's; a parting word from Martin that he would write from London and would do great things there yet (Heaven knows what, but he quite believed it); and Mark and he stood on the outside of the Pecksniffian halls.
“A short interview after such an absence!” said Martin, sorrowfully. “But we are well out of the house. We might have placed ourselves in a false position by remaining there, even so long, Mark.”
“I don't know about ourselves, sir,” he returned; “but somebody else would have got into a false position, if he had happened to come back again, while we was there. I had the door all ready, sir. If Pecksniff had showed his head, or had only so much as listened behind it, I would have caught him like a walnut. He's the sort of man,” added Mr Tapley, musing, “as would squeeze soft, I know.”
A person who was evidently going to Mr Pecksniff's house, passed them at this moment. He raised his eyes at the mention of the architect's name; and when he had gone on a few yards, stopped and gazed at them. Mr Tapley, also, looked over his shoulder, and so did Martin; for the stranger, as he passed, had looked very sharply at them.
“Who may that be, I wonder!” said Martin. “The face seems familiar to me, but I don't know the man.”
“He seems to have a amiable desire that his face should be tolerable familiar to us,” said Mr Tapley, “for he's a-staring pretty hard. He'd better not waste his beauty, for he ain't got much to spare.”
Coming in sight of the Dragon, they saw a travelling carriage at the door.
“And a Salisbury carriage, eh?” said Mr Tapley. “That's what he came in depend upon it. What's in the wind now? A new pupil, I shouldn't wonder. P'raps it's a order for another grammar-school, of the same pattern as the last.”
Before they could enter at the door, Mrs Lupin came running out; and beckoning them to the carriage showed them a portmanteau with the name of CHUZZLEWIT upon it.
“Miss Pecksniff's husband that was,” said the good woman to Martin. “I didn't know what terms you might be on, and was quite in a worry till you came back.”
“He and I have never interchanged a word yet,” observed Martin; “and as I have no wish to be better or worse acquainted with him, I will not put myself in his way. We passed him on the road, I have no doubt. I am glad he timed his coming as he did. Upon my word! Miss Pecksniff's husband travels gayly!”
“A very fine-looking gentleman with him—in the best room now,” whispered Mrs Lupin, glancing up at the window as they went into the house. “He has ordered everything that can be got for dinner; and has the glossiest moustaches and whiskers ever you saw.”
“Has he?” cried Martin, “why then we'll endeavour to avoid him too, in the hope that our self-denial may be strong enough for the sacrifice. It is only for a few hours,” said Martin, dropping wearily into a chair behind the little screen in the bar. “Our visit has met with no success, my dear Mrs Lupin, and I must go to London.”
“Dear, dear!” cried the hostess.
“Yes, one foul wind no more makes a winter, than one swallow makes a summer. I'll try it again. Tom Pinch has succeeded. With his advice to guide me, I may do the same. I took Tom under my protection once, God save the mark!” said Martin, with a melancholy smile; “and promised I would make his fortune. Perhaps Tom will take me under HIS protection now, and teach me how to earn my bread.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
FURTHER CONTINUATION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
It was a special quality, among the many admirable qualities possessed by Mr Pecksniff, that the more he was found out, the more hypocrisy he practised. Let him be discomfited in one quarter, and he refreshed and recompensed himself by carrying the war into another. If his workings and windings were detected by A, so much the greater reason was there for practicing without loss of time on B, if it were only to keep his hand in. He had never been such a saintly and improving spectacl
e to all about him, as after his detection by Thomas Pinch. He had scarcely ever been at once so tender in his humanity, and so dignified and exalted in his virtue, as when young Martin's scorn was fresh and hot upon him.
Having this large stock of superfluous sentiment and morality on hand which must positively be cleared off at any sacrifice, Mr Pecksniff no sooner heard his son-in-law announced, than he regarded him as a kind of wholesale or general order, to be immediately executed. Descending, therefore, swiftly to the parlour, and clasping the young man in his arms, he exclaimed, with looks and gestures that denoted the perturbation of his spirit:
“Jonas. My child—she is well! There is nothing the matter?”
“What, you're at it again, are you?” replied his son-in-law. “Even with me? Get away with you, will you?”
“Tell me she is well then,” said Mr Pecksniff. “Tell me she is well my boy!”
“She's well enough,” retorted Jonas, disengaging himself. “There's nothing the matter with HER.”
“There is nothing the matter with her!” cried Mr Pecksniff, sitting down in the nearest chair, and rubbing up his hair. “Fie upon my weakness! I cannot help it, Jonas. Thank you. I am better now. How is my other child; my eldest; my Cherrywerrychigo?” said Mr Pecksniff, inventing a playful little name for her, in the restored lightness of his heart.
“She's much about the same as usual,” returned Jonas. “She sticks pretty close to the vinegar-bottle. You know she's got a sweetheart, I suppose?”
“I have heard of it,” said Mr Pecksniff, “from headquarters; from my child herself I will not deny that it moved me to contemplate the loss of my remaining daughter, Jonas—I am afraid we parents are selfish, I am afraid we are—but it has ever been the study of my life to qualify them for the domestic hearth; and it is a sphere which Cherry will adorn.”
Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit Page 82
