Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📕
- Author: Charles Dickens
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Uttering this apostrophe in a tone full of grief and lamentation, Mr Pecksniff left the room (taking care to shut the door behind him), and walked downstairs into the parlour. There he found his intended son-in-law, whom he seized by both hands.
‘Jonas!’ cried Mr Pecksniff. ‘Jonas! the dearest wish of my heart is now fulfilled!’
‘Very well; I’m glad to hear it,’ said Jonas. ‘That’ll do. I say! As it ain’t the one you’re so fond of, you must come down with another thousand, Pecksniff. You must make it up five. It’s worth that, to keep your treasure to yourself, you know. You get off very cheap that way, and haven’t a sacrifice to make.’
The grin with which he accompanied this, set off his other attractions to such unspeakable advantage, that even Mr Pecksniff lost his presence of mind for a moment, and looked at the young man as if he were quite stupefied with wonder and admiration. But he quickly regained his composure, and was in the very act of changing the subject, when a hasty step was heard without, and Tom Pinch, in a state of great excitement, came darting into the room.
On seeing a stranger there, apparently engaged with Mr Pecksniff in private conversation, Tom was very much abashed, though he still looked as if he had something of great importance to communicate, which would be a sufficient apology for his intrusion.
‘Mr Pinch,’ said Pecksniff, ‘this is hardly decent. You will excuse my saying that I think your conduct scarcely decent, Mr Pinch.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ replied Tom, ‘for not knocking at the door.’
‘Rather beg this gentleman’s pardon, Mr Pinch,’ said Pecksniff. ‘I know you; he does not.—My young man, Mr Jonas.’
The son-in-law that was to be gave him a slight nod—not actively disdainful or contemptuous, only passively; for he was in a good humour.
‘Could I speak a word with you, sir, if you please?’ said Tom. ‘It’s rather pressing.’
‘It should be very pressing to justify this strange behaviour, Mr Pinch,’ returned his master. ‘Excuse me for one moment, my dear friend. Now, sir, what is the reason of this rough intrusion?’
‘I am very sorry, sir, I am sure,’ said Tom, standing, cap in hand, before his patron in the passage; ‘and I know it must have a very rude appearance—’
‘It HAS a very rude appearance, Mr Pinch.’
‘Yes, I feel that, sir; but the truth is, I was so surprised to see them, and knew you would be too, that I ran home very fast indeed, and really hadn’t enough command over myself to know what I was doing very well. I was in the church just now, sir, touching the organ for my own amusement, when I happened to look round, and saw a gentleman and lady standing in the aisle listening. They seemed to be strangers, sir, as well as I could make out in the dusk; and I thought I didn’t know them; so presently I left off, and said, would they walk up into the organ-loft, or take a seat? No, they said, they wouldn’t do that; but they thanked me for the music they had heard. In fact,’ observed Tom, blushing, ‘they said, “Delicious music!” at least, SHE did; and I am sure that was a greater pleasure and honour to me than any compliment I could have had. I—I—beg your pardon sir;’ he was all in a tremble, and dropped his hat for the second time ‘but I—I’m rather flurried, and I fear I’ve wandered from the point.’
‘If you will come back to it, Thomas,’ said Mr Pecksniff, with an icy look, ‘I shall feel obliged.’
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Tom, ‘certainly. They had a posting carriage at the porch, sir, and had stopped to hear the organ, they said. And then they said—SHE said, I mean, “I believe you live with Mr Pecksniff, sir?” I said I had that honour, and I took the liberty, sir,’ added Tom, raising his eyes to his benefactor’s face, ‘of saying, as I always will and must, with your permission, that I was under great obligations to you, and never could express my sense of them sufficiently.’
‘That,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘was very, very wrong. Take your time, Mr Pinch.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ cried Tom. ‘On that they asked me—she asked, I mean—“Wasn’t there a bridle road to Mr Pecksniff’s house?”’
Mr Pecksniff suddenly became full of interest.
‘“Without going by the Dragon?” When I said there was, and said how happy I should be to show it ‘em, they sent the carriage on by the road, and came with me across the meadows. I left ‘em at the turnstile to run forward and tell you they were coming, and they’ll be here, sir, in—in less than a minute’s time, I should say,’ added Tom, fetching his breath with difficulty.
‘Now, who,’ said Mr Pecksniff, pondering, ‘who may these people be?’
‘Bless my soul, sir!’ cried Tom, ‘I meant to mention that at first, I thought I had. I knew them—her, I mean—directly. The gentleman who was ill at the Dragon, sir, last winter; and the young lady who attended him.’
Tom’s teeth chattered in his head, and he positively staggered with amazement, at witnessing the extraordinary effect produced on Mr Pecksniff by these simple words. The dread of losing the old man’s favour almost as soon as they were reconciled, through the mere fact of having Jonas in the house; the impossibility of dismissing Jonas, or shutting him up, or tying him hand and foot and putting him in the coal-cellar, without offending him beyond recall; the horrible discordance prevailing in the establishment, and the impossibility of reducing it to decent harmony with Charity in loud hysterics, Mercy in the utmost disorder, Jonas in the parlour, and Martin Chuzzlewit and his young charge upon the very doorsteps; the total hopelessness of being able to disguise or feasibly explain this state of rampant confusion; the sudden accumulation over his devoted head of every complicated perplexity and entanglement for his extrication from which he had trusted to time, good fortune, chance, and his own plotting, so filled the entrapped architect with dismay, that if Tom could have been a Gorgon staring at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff could have been a Gorgon staring at Tom, they could not have horrified each other half so much as in their own bewildered persons.
‘Dear, dear!’ cried Tom, ‘what have I done? I hoped it would be a pleasant surprise, sir. I thought you would like to know.’
But at that moment a loud knocking was heard at the hall door.
MORE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES, MARTIN TAKES A PARTNER, AND MAKES A PURCHASE. SOME ACCOUNT OF EDEN, AS IT APPEARED ON PAPER. ALSO OF THE BRITISH LION. ALSO OF THE KIND OF SYMPATHY PROFESSED AND ENTERTAINED BY THE WATERTOAST ASSOCIATION OF UNITED SYMPATHISERS
The knocking at Mr Pecksniff’s door, though loud enough, bore no resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at full speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this frank admission, lest the reader should imagine that the sounds now deafening this history’s ears have any connection with the knocker on Mr Pecksniff’s door, or with the great amount of agitation pretty equally divided between that worthy man and Mr Pinch, of which its strong performance was the cause.
Mr Pecksniff’s house is more than a thousand leagues away; and again this happy chronicle has Liberty and Moral Sensibility for its high companions. Again it breathes the blessed air of Independence; again it contemplates with pious awe that moral sense which renders unto Ceasar nothing that is his; again inhales that sacred atmosphere which was the life of him—oh noble patriot, with many followers!—who dreamed of Freedom in a slave’s embrace, and waking sold her offspring and his own in public markets.
How the wheels clank and rattle, and the tram-road shakes, as the train rushes on! And now the engine yells, as it were lashed and tortured like a living labourer, and writhed in agony. A poor fancy; for steel and iron are of infinitely greater account, in this commonwealth, than flesh and blood. If the cunning work of man be urged beyond its power of endurance, it has within it the elements of its own revenge; whereas the wretched mechanism of the Divine Hand is dangerous with no such property, but may be tampered with, and crushed, and broken, at the driver’s pleasure. Look at that engine! It shall cost a man more dollars in the way of penalty and fine, and satisfaction of the outraged law, to deface in wantonness that senseless mass of metal, than to take the lives of twenty human creatures! Thus the stars wink upon the bloody stripes; and Liberty pulls down her cap upon her eyes, and owns Oppression in its vilest aspect, for her sister.
The engine-driver of the train whose noise awoke us to the present chapter was certainly troubled with no such reflections as these; nor is it very probable that his mind was disturbed by any reflections at all. He leaned with folded arms and crossed legs against the side of the carriage, smoking; and, except when he expressed, by a grunt as short as his pipe, his approval of some particularly dexterous aim on the part of his colleague, the fireman, who beguiled his leisure by throwing logs of wood from the tender at the numerous stray cattle on the line, he preserved a composure so immovable, and an indifference so complete, that if the locomotive had been a sucking-pig, he could not have been more perfectly indifferent to its doings. Notwithstanding the tranquil state of this officer, and his unbroken peace of mind, the train was proceeding with tolerable rapidity; and the rails being but poorly laid, the jolts and bumps it met with in its progress were neither slight nor few.
There were three great caravans or cars attached. The ladies’ car, the gentlemen’s car, and the car for negroes; the latter painted black, as an appropriate compliment to its company. Martin and Mark Tapley were in the first, as it was the most comfortable; and, being far from full, received other gentlemen who, like them, were unblessed by the society of ladies of their own. They were seated side by side, and were engaged in earnest conversation.
‘And so, Mark,’ said Martin, looking at him with an anxious expression, ‘and so you are glad we have left New York far behind us, are you?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mark. ‘I am. Precious glad.’
‘Were you not “jolly” there?’ asked Martin.
‘On the contrairy, sir,’ returned Mark. ‘The jolliest week as ever I spent in my life, was that there week at Pawkins’s.’
‘What do you think of our prospects?’ inquired Martin, with an air that plainly said he had avoided the question for some time.
‘Uncommon bright, sir,’ returned Mark. ‘Impossible for a place to have a better name, sir, than the Walley of Eden. No man couldn’t think of settling in a better place than the Walley of Eden. And I’m told,’ added Mark, after a pause, ‘as there’s lots of serpents there, so we shall come out, quite complete and reg’lar.’
So far from dwelling upon this agreeable piece of information with the least dismay, Mark’s face grew radiant as he called it to mind; so very radiant, that a stranger might have supposed he had all his life been yearning for the society of serpents, and now hailed with delight the approaching consummation of his fondest wishes.
‘Who told you that?’ asked Martin, sternly.
‘A military officer,’
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