“Take some tea, Mr Pinch—take some tea,” said Pecksniff, stirring the fire. “You must be very cold and damp. Pray take some tea, and come into a warm place, Mr Pinch.”
Tom saw that Martin looked at Mr Pecksniff as though he could have easily found it in his heart to give HIM an invitation to a very warm place; but he was quite silent, and standing opposite that gentleman at the table, regarded him attentively.
“Take a chair, Pinch,” said Pecksniff. “Take a chair, if you please. How have things gone on in our absence, Mr Pinch?”
“You—you will be very much pleased with the grammar-school, sir,” said Tom. “It's nearly finished.”
“If you will have the goodness, Mr Pinch,” said Pecksniff, waving his hand and smiling, “we will not discuss anything connected with that question at present. What have YOU been doing, Thomas, humph?”
Mr Pinch looked from master to pupil, and from pupil to master, and was so perplexed and dismayed that he wanted presence of mind to answer the question. In this awkward interval, Mr Pecksniff (who was perfectly conscious of Martin's gaze, though he had never once glanced towards him) poked the fire very much, and when he couldn't do that any more, drank tea assiduously.
“Now, Mr Pecksniff,” said Martin at last, in a very quiet voice, “if you have sufficiently refreshed and recovered yourself, I shall be glad to hear what you mean by this treatment of me.”
“And what,” said Mr Pecksniff, turning his eyes on Tom Pinch, even more placidly and gently than before, “what have YOU been doing, Thomas, humph?”
When he had repeated this inquiry, he looked round the walls of the room as if he were curious to see whether any nails had been left there by accident in former times.
Tom was almost at his wit's end what to say between the two, and had already made a gesture as if he would call Mr Pecksniff's attention to the gentleman who had last addressed him, when Martin saved him further trouble, by doing so himself.
“Mr Pecksniff,” he said, softly rapping the table twice or thrice, and moving a step or two nearer, so that he could have touched him with his hand; “you heard what I said just now. Do me the favour to reply, if you please. I ask you'—he raised his voice a little here—'what you mean by this?”
“I will talk to you, sir,” said Mr Pecksniff in a severe voice, as he looked at him for the first time, “presently.”
“You are very obliging,” returned Martin; “presently will not do. I must trouble you to talk to me at once.”
Mr Pecksniff made a feint of being deeply interested in his pocketbook, but it shook in his hands; he trembled so.
“Now,” retorted Martin, rapping the table again. “Now. Presently will not do. Now!”
“Do you threaten me, sir?” cried Mr Pecksniff.
Martin looked at him, and made no answer; but a curious observer might have detected an ominous twitching at his mouth, and perhaps an involuntary attraction of his right hand in the direction of Mr Pecksniff's cravat.
“I lament to be obliged to say, sir,” resumed Mr Pecksniff, “that it would be quite in keeping with your character if you did threaten me. You have deceived me. You have imposed upon a nature which you knew to be confiding and unsuspicious. You have obtained admission, sir,” said Mr Pecksniff, rising, “to this house, on perverted statements and on false pretences.”
“Go on,” said Martin, with a scornful smile. “I understand you now. What more?”
“Thus much more, sir,” cried Mr Pecksniff, trembling from head to foot, and trying to rub his hands, as though he were only cold. “Thus much more, if you force me to publish your shame before a third party, which I was unwilling and indisposed to do. This lowly roof, sir, must not be contaminated by the presence of one who has deceived, and cruelly deceived, an honourable, beloved, venerated, and venerable gentleman; and who wisely suppressed that deceit from me when he sought my protection and favour, knowing that, humble as I am, I am an honest man, seeking to do my duty in this carnal universe, and setting my face against all vice and treachery. I weep for your depravity, sir,” said Mr Pecksniff; “I mourn over your corruption, I pity your voluntary withdrawal of yourself from the flowery paths of purity and peace;” here he struck himself upon his breast, or moral garden; “but I cannot have a leper and a serpent for an inmate. Go forth,” said Mr Pecksniff, stretching out his hand: “go forth, young man! Like all who know you, I renounce you!”
With what intention Martin made a stride forward at these words, it is impossible to say. It is enough to know that Tom Pinch caught him in his arms, and that, at the same moment, Mr Pecksniff stepped back so hastily, that he missed his footing, tumbled over a chair, and fell in a sitting posture on the ground; where he remained without an effort to get up again, with his head in a corner, perhaps considering it the safest place.
“Let me go, Pinch!” cried Martin, shaking him away. “Why do you hold me? Do you think a blow could make him a more abject creature than he is? Do you think that if I spat upon him, I could degrade him to a lower level than his own? Look at him. Look at him, Pinch!”
Mr Pinch involuntarily did so. Mr Pecksniff sitting, as has been already mentioned, on the carpet, with his head in an acute angle of the wainscot, and all the damage and detriment of an uncomfortable journey about him, was not exactly a model of all that is prepossessing and dignified in man, certainly. Still he WAS Pecksniff; it was impossible to deprive him of that unique and paramount appeal to Tom. And he returned Tom's glance, as if he would have said, “Aye, Mr Pinch, look at me! Here I am! You know what the Poet says about an honest man; and an honest man is one of the few great works that can be seen for nothing! Look at me!”
“I tell you,” said Martin, “that as he lies there, disgraced, bought, used; a cloth for dirty hands, a mat for dirty feet, a lying, fawning, servile hound, he is the very last and worst among the vermin of the world. And mark me, Pinch! The day will come—he knows it; see it written on his face, while I speak!—when even you will find him out, and will know him as I do, and as he knows I do. HE renounce ME! Cast your eyes on the Renouncer, Pinch, and be the wiser for the recollection!”
He pointed at him as he spoke, with unutterable contempt, and flinging his hat upon his head, walked from the room and from the house. He went so rapidly that he was already clear of the village, when he heard Tom Pinch calling breathlessly after him in the distance.
“Well! what now?” he said, when Tom came up.
“Dear, dear!” cried Tom, “are you going?”
“Going!” he echoed. “Going!”
“I didn't so much mean that, as were you going now at once—in this bad weather—on foot—without your clothes—with no money?” cried Tom.
“Yes,” he answered sternly, “I am.”
“And where?” cried Tom. “Oh where will you go?”
“I don't know,” he said. “Yes, I do. I'll go to America!”
“No, no,” cried Tom, in a kind of agony. “Don't go there. Pray don't. Think better of it. Don't be so dreadfully regardless of yourself. Don't go to America!”
“My mind is made up,” he said. “Your friend was right. I'll go to America. God bless you, Pinch!”
“Take this!” cried Tom, pressing a book upon him in great agitation. “I must make haste back, and can't say anything I would. Heaven be with you. Look at the leaf I have turned down. Good-bye, good-bye!”
The simple fellow wrung him by the hand, with tears stealing down his cheeks; and they parted hurriedly upon their separate ways.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SHOWING WHAT BECAME OF MARTIN AND HIS DESPARATE RESOLVE, AFTER HE LEFT MR PECKSNIFF'S HOUSE; WHAT PERSONS HE ENCOUNTERED; WHAT ANXIETIES HE SUFFERED; AND WHAT NEWS HE HEARD
Carrying Tom Pinch's book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain, Martin went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had passed the finger-post, and was on the high road to London. He slackened very little in his speed ev
en then, but he began to think, and look about him, and to disengage his senses from the coil of angry passions which hitherto had held them prisoner.
It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature was anywhere to be seen. The prospect could hardly have been more desolate if animated nature had been dissolved in water, and poured down upon the earth again in that form.
The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite as cheerless as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed to the last degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full of independent schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of realizing them; his most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied with the extent of his troubles. To add to his other miseries, he was by this time sensible of being wet to the skin, and cold at his very heart.
In this deplorable condition he remembered Mr Pinch's book; more because it was rather troublesome to carry, than from any hope of being comforted by that parting gift. He looked at the dingy lettering on the back, and finding it to be an odd volume of the “Bachelor of Salamanca,” in the French tongue, cursed Tom Pinch's folly twenty times. He was on the point of throwing it away, in his ill-humour and vexation, when he bethought himself that Tom had referred him to a leaf, turned down; and opening it at that place, that he might have additional cause of complaint against him for supposing that any cold scrap of the Bachelor's wisdom could cheer him in such circumstances, found!—
Well, well! not much, but Tom's all. The half-sovereign. He had wrapped it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf. These words were scrawled in pencil on the inside: “I don't want it indeed. I should not know what to do with it if I had it.”
There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings, towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine, than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth, since time began!
Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom's keenly. After a few minutes it had the effect of raising his spirits, and reminding him that he was not altogether destitute, as he had left a fair stock of clothes behind him, and wore a gold hunting-watch in his pocket. He found a curious gratification, too, in thinking what a winning fellow he must be to have made such an impression on Tom; and in reflecting how superior he was to Tom; and how much more likely to make his way in the world. Animated by these thoughts, and strengthened in his design of endeavouring to push his fortune in another country, he resolved to get to London as a rallying-point, in the best way he could; and to lose no time about it.
He was ten good miles from the village made illustrious by being the abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a little roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle before the fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the cheerful blaze to dry. It was a very different place from the last tavern in which he had regaled; boasting no greater extent of accommodation than the brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind so soon accommodates itself to the necessities of the body, that this poor waggoner's house-of-call, which he would have despised yesterday, became now quite a choice hotel; while his dish of eggs and bacon, and his mug of beer, were not by any means the coarse fare he had supposed, but fully bore out the inscription on the window-shutter, which proclaimed those viands to be “Good entertainment for Travellers.”
He pushed away his empty plate; and with a second mug upon the hearth before him, looked thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough; and then he looked at the fire again, and seemed to descry a double distant London, retreating among the fragments of the burning wood.
He had repeated this process in just the same order, many times, as if it were a matter of necessity, when the sound of wheels called his attention to the window out of its regular turn; and there he beheld a kind of light van drawn by four horses, and laden, as well as he could see (for it was covered in), with corn and straw. The driver, who was alone, stopped at the door to water his team, and presently came stamping and shaking the wet off his hat and coat, into the room where Martin sat.
He was a red-faced burly young fellow; smart in his way, and with a good-humoured countenance. As he advanced towards the fire he touched his shining forehead with the forefinger of his stiff leather glove, by way of salutation; and said (rather unnecessarily) that it was an uncommon wet day.
“Very wet,” said Martin.
“I don't know as ever I see a wetter.”
“I never felt one,” said Martin.
The driver glanced at Martin's soiled dress, and his damp shirtsleeves, and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he warmed his hands:
“You have been caught in it, sir?”
“Yes,” was the short reply.
“Out riding, maybe?” said the driver
“I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don't,” returned Martin.
“That's bad,” said the driver.
“And may be worse,” said Martin.
Now the driver said “That's bad,” not so much because Martin didn't own a horse, as because he said he didn't with all the reckless desperation of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal to be inferred. Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled when he had retorted on the driver; thus giving him to understand that he didn't care a pin for Fortune; that he was above pretending to be her favourite when he was not; and that he snapped his fingers at her, the driver, and everybody else.
The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he pointed his thumb towards the road.
“Up or down?”
“Which IS up?” said Martin.
“ London, of course,” said the driver.
“Up then,” said Martin. He tossed his head in a careless manner afterwards, as if he would have added, “Now you know all about it.”put his hands deeper into his pockets; changed his tune, and whistled a little louder.
“I'm going up,” observed the driver; “Hounslow, ten miles this side London.”
“Are you?” cried Martin, stopping short and looking at him.
The driver sprinkled the fire with his wet hat until it hissed again and answered, “Aye, to be sure he was.”
“Why, then,” said Martin, “I'll be plain with you. You may suppose from my dress that I have money to spare. I have not. All I can afford for coach-hire is a crown, for I have but two. If you can take me for that, and my waistcoat, or this silk handkerchief, do. If you can't, leave it alone.”
“Short and sweet,” remarked the driver.
“You want more?” said Martin. “Then I haven't got more, and I can't get it, so there's an end of that.”Whereupon he began to whistle again.
“I didn't say I wanted more, did I?” asked the driver, with something like indignation.
“You didn't say my offer was enough,” rejoined Martin.
“Why, how could I, when you wouldn't let me? In regard to the waistcoat, I wouldn't have a man's waistcoat, much less a gentleman's waistcoat, on my mind, for no consideration; but the silk handkerchief's another thing; and if you was satisfied when we got to Hounslow, I shouldn't object to that as a gift.”
“Is it a bargain, then?” said Martin.
“Yes, it is,” returned the other.
“Then finish this beer,” said Martin, handing him the mug, and pulling on his coat with great alacrity; “and let us be off as soon as you like.”
In two minutes more he had paid his bill, which amounted to a shilling; was lying at full length on a truss of straw, high and dry at the top of the van, with the tilt a little open in front for the convenience of talking to his new friend; and was moving along in the right direction with a most satisfactory and encouraging briskness.
The driver's name, as he soon informed Martin, was William Simmons, better known as Bill; and his spruce appearance was sufficiently explained by his connection with a large stage-coaching establishment at Hounslow, whither he was conveying his load from a farm belonging to the concern in Wiltshire. He was frequently up and down the road on such errands, he said, and to look after the sick and rest horses, of which animals he had much to relate that occupied a long time in the telling. He aspired to the dignity of the regular box, and expected an appointment on the first vacancy. He was musical besides, and had a little key-bugle in his pocket, on which, whenever the conversation flagged, he played the first part of a great many tunes, and regularly broke down in the second.
Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit Page 27