Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📕

his duty by him, and had deserved and made a good response to his fidelity and zeal. No. Short as their companionship had been, he felt in many, many instances, that there was blame against himself; and still inquiring why, the curtain slowly rose a little more, and Self, Self, Self, dilated on the scene.

It was long before he fixed the knowledge of himself so firmly in his mind that he could thoroughly discern the truth; but in the hideous solitude of that most hideous place, with Hope so far removed, Ambition quenched, and Death beside him rattling at the very door, reflection came, as in a plague-beleaguered town; and so he felt and knew the failing of his life, and saw distinctly what an ugly spot it was.

Eden was a hard school to learn so hard a lesson in; but there were teachers in the swamp and thicket, and the pestilential air, who had a searching method of their own.

He made a solemn resolution that when his strength returned he would not dispute the point or resist the conviction, but would look upon it as an established fact, that selfishness was in his breast, and must be rooted out. He was so doubtful (and with justice) of his own character, that he determined not to say one word of vain regret or good resolve to Mark, but steadily to keep his purpose before his own eyes solely; and there was not a jot of pride in this; nothing but humility and steadfastness; the best armour he could wear. So low had Eden brought him down. So high had Eden raised him up.

After a long and lingering illness (in certain forlorn stages of which, when too far gone to speak, he had feebly written ‘jolly!’ on a slate), Mark showed some symptoms of returning health. They came and went, and flickered for a time; but he began to mend at last decidedly; and after that continued to improve from day to day.

As soon as he was well enough to talk without fatigue, Martin consulted him upon a project he had in his mind, and which a few months back he would have carried into execution without troubling anybody’s head but his own.

‘Ours is a desperate case,’ said Martin. ‘Plainly. The place is deserted; its failure must have become known; and selling what we have bought to any one, for anything, is hopeless, even if it were honest. We left home on a mad enterprise, and have failed. The only hope left us, the only one end for which we have now to try, is to quit this settlement for ever, and get back to England. Anyhow! by any means! only to get back there, Mark.’

‘That’s all, sir,’ returned Mr Tapley, with a significant stress upon the words; ‘only that!’

‘Now, upon this side of the water,’ said Martin, ‘we have but one friend who can help us, and that is Mr Bevan.’

‘I thought of him when you was ill,’ said Mark.

‘But for the time that would be lost, I would even write to my grandfather,’ Martin went on to say, ‘and implore him for money to free us from this trap into which we were so cruelly decoyed. Shall I try Mr Bevan first?’

‘He’s a very pleasant sort of a gentleman,’ said Mark. ‘I think so.’

‘The few goods we brought here, and in which we spent our money, would produce something if sold,’ resumed Martin; ‘and whatever they realise shall be paid him instantly. But they can’t be sold here.’

‘There’s nobody but corpses to buy ‘em,’ said Mr Tapley, shaking his head with a rueful air, ‘and pigs.’

‘Shall I tell him so, and only ask him for money enough to enable us by the cheapest means to reach New York, or any port from which we may hope to get a passage home, by serving in any capacity? Explaining to him at the same time how I am connected, and that I will endeavour to repay him, even through my grandfather, immediately on our arrival in England?’

‘Why to be sure,’ said Mark: ‘he can only say no, and he may say yes. If you don’t mind trying him, sir—’

‘Mind!’ exclaimed Martin. ‘I am to blame for coming here, and I would do anything to get away. I grieve to think of the past. If I had taken your opinion sooner, Mark, we never should have been here, I am certain.’

Mr Tapley was very much surprised at this admission, but protested, with great vehemence, that they would have been there all the same; and that he had set his heart upon coming to Eden, from the first word he had ever heard of it.

Martin then read him a letter to Mr Bevan, which he had already prepared. It was frankly and ingenuously written, and described their situation without the least concealment; plainly stated the miseries they had undergone; and preferred their request in modest but straightforward terms. Mark highly commended it; and they determined to dispatch it by the next steamboat going the right way, that might call to take in wood at Eden—where there was plenty of wood to spare. Not knowing how to address Mr Bevan at his own place of abode, Martin superscribed it to the care of the memorable Mr Norris of New York, and wrote upon the cover an entreaty that it might be forwarded without delay.

More than a week elapsed before a boat appeared; but at length they were awakened very early one morning by the high-pressure snorting of the ‘Esau Slodge;’ named after one of the most remarkable men in the country, who had been very eminent somewhere. Hurrying down to the landing-place, they got it safe on board; and waiting anxiously to see the boat depart, stopped up the gangway; an instance of neglect which caused the ‘Capting’ of the Esau Slodge to ‘wish he might be sifted fine as flour, and whittled small as chips; that if they didn’t come off that there fixing right smart too, he’d spill ‘em in the drink;’ whereby the Capting metaphorically said he’d throw them in the river.

They were not likely to receive an answer for eight or ten weeks at the earliest. In the meantime they devoted such strength as they had to the attempted improvement of their land; to clearing some of it, and preparing it for useful purposes. Monstrously defective as their farming was, still it was better than their neighbours’; for Mark had some practical knowledge of such matters, and Martin learned of him; whereas the other settlers who remained upon the putrid swamp (a mere handful, and those withered by disease), appeared to have wandered there with the idea that husbandry was the natural gift of all mankind. They helped each other after their own manner in these struggles, and in all others; but they worked as hopelessly and sadly as a gang of convicts in a penal settlement.

Often at night when Mark and Martin were alone, and lying down to sleep, they spoke of home, familiar places, houses, roads, and people whom they knew; sometimes in the lively hope of seeing them again, and sometimes with a sorrowful tranquillity, as if that hope were dead. It was a source of great amazement to Mark Tapley to find, pervading all these conversations, a singular alteration in Martin.

‘I don’t know what to make of him,’ he thought one night, ‘he ain’t what I supposed. He don’t think of himself half as much. I’ll try him again. Asleep, sir?’

‘No, Mark.’

‘Thinking of home, sir?’

‘Yes, Mark.’

‘So was I, sir. I was wondering how Mr Pinch and Mr Pecksniff gets on now.’

‘Poor Tom!’ said Martin, thoughtfully.

‘Weak-minded man, sir,’ observed Mr Tapley. ‘Plays the organ for nothing, sir. Takes no care of himself?’

‘I wish he took a little more, indeed,’ said Martin. ‘Though I don’t know why I should. We shouldn’t like him half as well, perhaps.’

‘He gets put upon, sir,’ hinted Mark.

‘Yes!’ said Martin, after a short silence. ‘I know that, Mark.’

He spoke so regretfully that his partner abandoned the theme, and was silent for a short time until he had thought of another.

‘Ah, sir!’ said Mark, with a sigh. ‘Dear me! You’ve ventured a good deal for a young lady’s love!’

‘I tell you what. I’m not so sure of that, Mark,’ was the reply; so hastily and energetically spoken, that Martin sat up in his bed to give it. ‘I begin to be far from clear upon it. You may depend upon it she is very unhappy. She has sacrificed her peace of mind; she has endangered her interests very much; she can’t run away from those who are jealous of her, and opposed to her, as I have done. She has to endure, Mark; to endure without the possibility of action, poor girl! I begin to think that she has more to bear than ever I had. Upon my soul I do!’

Mr Tapley opened his eyes wide in the dark; but did not interrupt.

‘And I’ll tell you a secret, Mark,’ said Martin, ‘since we ARE upon this subject. That ring—’

‘Which ring, sir?’ Mark inquired, opening his eyes still wider.

‘That ring she gave me when we parted, Mark. She bought it; bought it; knowing I was poor and proud (Heaven help me! Proud!) and wanted money.’

‘Who says so, sir?’ asked Mark.

‘I say so. I know it. I thought of it, my good fellow, hundreds of times, while you were lying ill. And like a beast, I took it from her hand, and wore it on my own, and never dreamed of this even at the moment when I parted with it, when some faint glimmering of the truth might surely have possessed me! But it’s late,’ said Martin, checking himself, ‘and you are weak and tired, I know. You only talk to cheer me up. Good night! God bless you, Mark!’

‘God bless you, sir! But I’m reg’larly defrauded,’ thought Mr Tapley, turning round with a happy face. ‘It’s a swindle. I never entered for this sort of service. There’ll be no credit in being jolly with HIM!’

The time wore on, and other steamboats coming from the point on which their hopes were fixed, arrived to take in wood; but still no answer to the letter. Rain, heat, foul slime, and noxious vapour, with all the ills and filthy things they bred, prevailed. The earth, the air, the vegetation, and the water that they drank, all teemed with deadly properties. Their fellow-passenger had lost two children long before; and buried now her last. Such things are much too common to be widely known or cared for. Smart citizens grow rich, and friendless victims smart and die, and are forgotten. That is all.

At last a boat came panting up the ugly river, and stopped at Eden. Mark was waiting at the wood hut when it came, and had a letter handed to him from on board. He bore it off to Martin. They looked at one another, trembling.

‘It feels heavy,’ faltered Martin. And opening it a little roll of dollar-notes fell out upon the ground.

What either of them said, or did, or felt, at first, neither of them knew. All Mark could ever tell was, that he was at the river’s bank again out of breath, before the boat had gone, inquiring when it would retrace its track and put in there.

The answer was, in ten or twelve days; notwithstanding which they began to get their goods together and to tie them up that very night. When this stage of excitement was passed, each of them believed (they found this out, in talking of it afterwards) that he would surely die before the boat returned.

They lived, however, and it came, after