“Yes, sir. I've been a-turnin” of it over.”
“And who is the lady, Mark?”
“The which, sir?” said Mr Tapley.
“The lady. Come! You know what I said,” replied Tom, laughing, “as well as I do!”
Mr Tapley suppressed his own inclination to laugh; and with one of his most whimsically-twisted looks, replied:
“You couldn't guess, I suppose, Mr Pinch?”
“How is it possible?” said Tom. “I don't know any of your flames, Mark. Except Mrs Lupin, indeed.”
“Well, sir!” retorted Mr Tapley. “And supposing it was her!”
Tom stopping in the street to look at him, Mr Tapley for a moment presented to his view an utterly stolid and expressionless face; a perfect dead wall of countenance. But opening window after window in it with astonishing rapidity, and lighting them all up as for a general illumination, he repeated:
“Supposin”, for the sake of argument, as it was her, sir!”
“Why I thought such a connection wouldn't suit you, Mark, on any terms!” cried Tom.
“Well, sir! I used to think so myself, once,” said Mark. “But I ain't so clear about it now. A dear, sweet creetur, sir!”
“A dear, sweet creature? To be sure she is,” cried Tom. “But she always was a dear, sweet creature, was she not?”
“WAS she not!” assented Mr Tapley.
“Then why on earth didn't you marry her at first, Mark, instead of wandering abroad, and losing all this time, and leaving her alone by herself, liable to be courted by other people?”
“Why, sir,” retorted Mr Tapley, in a spirit of unbounded confidence, “I'll tell you how it come about. You know me, Mr Pinch, sir; there ain't a gentleman alive as knows me better. You're acquainted with my constitution, and you're acquainted with my weakness. My constitution is, to be jolly; and my weakness is, to wish to find a credit in it. Wery good, sir. In this state of mind, I gets a notion in my head that she looks on me with a eye of—with what you may call a favourable sort of a eye in fact,” said Mr Tapley, with modest hesitation.
“No doubt,” replied Tom. “We knew that perfectly well when we spoke on this subject long ago; before you left the Dragon.”
Mr Tapley nodded assent. “Well, sir! But bein” at that time full of hopeful wisions, I arrives at the conclusion that no credit is to be got out of such a way of life as that, where everything agreeable would be ready to one's hand. Lookin” on the bright side of human life in short, one of my hopeful wisions is, that there's a deal of misery awaitin” for me; in the midst of which I may come out tolerable strong, and be jolly under circumstances as reflects some credit. I goes into the world, sir, wery boyant, and I tries this. I goes aboard ship first, and wery soon discovers (by the ease with which I'm jolly, mind you) as there's no credit to be got THERE. I might have took warning by this, and gave it up; but I didn't. I gets to the U-nited States; and then I DO begin, I won't deny it, to feel some little credit in sustaining my spirits. What follows? Jest as I'm a-beginning to come out, and am a-treadin” on the werge, my master deceives me.”
“Deceives you!” cried Tom.
“Swindles me,” retorted Mr Tapley with a beaming face. “Turns his back on everything as made his service a creditable one, and leaves me high and dry, without a leg to stand upon. In which state I returns home. Wery good. Then all my hopeful wisions bein” crushed; and findin” that there ain't no credit for me nowhere; I abandons myself to despair, and says, “Let me do that as has the least credit in it of all; marry a dear, sweet creetur, as is wery fond of me; me bein”, at the same time, wery fond of her; lead a happy life, and struggle no more again” the blight which settles on my prospects.”
“If your philosophy, Mark,” said Tom, who laughed heartily at this speech, “be the oddest I ever heard of, it is not the least wise. Mrs Lupin has said “yes,” of course?”
“Why, no, sir,” replied Mr Tapley; “she hasn't gone so far as that yet. Which I attribute principally to my not havin” asked her. But we was wery agreeable together—comfortable, I may say—the night I come home. It's all right, sir.”
“Well!” said Tom, stopping at the Temple Gate. “I wish you joy, Mark, with all my heart. I shall see you again to-day, I dare say. Good-bye for the present.”
“Good-bye, sir! Good-bye, Mr Pinch!” he added by way of soliloquy, as he stood looking after him. “Although you ARE a damper to a honourable ambition. You little think it, but you was the first to dash my hopes. Pecksniff would have built me up for life, but your sweet temper pulled me down. Good-bye, Mr Pinch!”
While these confidences were interchanged between Tom Pinch and Mark, Martin and John Westlock were very differently engaged. They were no sooner left alone together than Martin said, with an effort he could not disguise:
“Mr Westlock, we have met only once before, but you have known Tom a long while, and that seems to render you familiar to me. I cannot talk freely with you on any subject unless I relieve my mind of what oppresses it just now. I see with pain that you so far mistrust me that you think me likely to impose on Tom's regardlessness of himself, or on his kind nature, or some of his good qualities.”
“I had no intention,” replied John, “of conveying any such impression to you, and am exceedingly sorry to have done so.”
“But you entertain it?” said Martin.
“You ask me so pointedly and directly,” returned the other, “that I cannot deny the having accustomed myself to regard you as one who, not in wantonness but in mere thoughtlessness of character, did not sufficiently consider his nature and did not quite treat it as it deserves to be treated. It is much easier to slight than to appreciate Tom Pinch.”
This was not said warmly, but was energetically spoken too; for there was no subject in the world (but one) on which the speaker felt so strongly.
“I grew into the knowledge of Tom,” he pursued, “as I grew towards manhood; and I have learned to love him as something, infinitely better than myself. I did not think that you understood him when we met before. I did not think that you greatly cared to understand him. The instances of this which I observed in you were, like my opportunities for observation, very trivial—and were very harmless, I dare say. But they were not agreeable to me, and they forced themselves upon me; for I was not upon the watch for them, believe me. You will say,” added John, with a smile, as he subsided into more of his accustomed manner, “that I am not by any means agreeable to you. I can only assure you, in reply, that I would not have originated this topic on any account.”
“I originated it,” said Martin; “and so far from having any complaint to make against you, highly esteem the friendship you entertain for Tom, and the very many proofs you have given him of it. Why should I endeavour to conceal from you'—he coloured deeply though—'that I neither understood him nor cared to understand him when I was his companion; and that I am very truly sorry for it now!”
It was so sincerely said, at once so modestly and manfully, that John offered him his hand as if he had not done so before; and Martin giving his in the same open spirit, all constraint between the young men vanished.
“Now pray,” said John, “when I tire your patience very much in what I am going to say, recollect that it has an end to it, and that the end is the point of the story.”
With this preface, he related all the circumstances connected with his having presided over the illness and slow recovery of the patient at the Bull; and tacked on to the skirts of that narrative Tom's own account of the business on the wharf. Martin was not a little puzzled when he came to an end, for the two stories seemed to have no connection with each other, and to leave him, as the phrase is, all abroad.
“If you will excuse me for one moment,” said John, rising, “I will beg you almost immediately to come into the next room.”
Upon that, he left Martin to himself, in a state of considerable astonishment; and soon came back again to fulfil his promise. Accompanying him into the next room, Mar
tin found there a third person; no doubt the stranger of whom his host had spoken when Tom Pinch introduced him.
He was a young man; with deep black hair and eyes. He was gaunt and pale; and evidently had not long recovered from a severe illness. He stood as Martin entered, but sat again at John's desire. His eyes were cast downward; and but for one glance at them both, half in humiliation and half in entreaty, he kept them so, and sat quite still and silent.
“This person's name is Lewsome,” said John Westlock, “whom I have mentioned to you as having been seized with an illness at the inn near here, and undergone so much. He has had a very hard time of it, ever since he began to recover; but, as you see, he is now doing well.”
As he did not move or speak, and John Westlock made a pause, Martin, not knowing what to say, said that he was glad to hear it.
“The short statement that I wish you to hear from his own lips, Mr Chuzzlewit,” John pursued—looking attentively at him, and not at Martin—'he made to me for the first time yesterday, and repeated to me this morning, without the least variation of any essential particular. I have already told you that he informed me before he was removed from the Inn, that he had a secret to disclose to me which lay heavy on his mind. But, fluctuating between sickness and health and between his desire to relieve himself of it, and his dread of involving himself by revealing it, he has, until yesterday, avoided the disclosure. I never pressed him for it (having no idea of its weight or import, or of my right to do so), until within a few days past; when, understanding from him, on his own voluntary avowal, in a letter from the country, that it related to a person whose name was Jonas Chuzzlewit; and thinking that it might throw some light on that little mystery which made Tom anxious now and then; I urged the point upon him, and heard his statement, as you will now, from his own lips. It is due to him to say, that in the apprehension of death, he committed it to writing sometime since, and folded it in a sealed paper, addressed to me; which he could not resolve, however, to place of his own act in my hands. He has the paper in his breast, I believe, at this moment.”
The young man touched it hastily; in corroboration of the fact.
“It will be well to leave that in our charge, perhaps,” said John. “But do not mind it now.”
As he said this, he held up his hand to bespeak Martin's attention. It was already fixed upon the man before him, who, after a short silence said, in a low, weak, hollow voice:
“What relation was Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit, who—”
“—Who died—to me?” said Martin. “He was my grandfather's brother.”
“I fear he was made away with. Murdered!”
“My God!” said Martin. “By whom?”
The young man, Lewsome, looked up in his face, and casting down his eyes again, replied:
“I fear, by me.”
“By you?” cried Martin.
“Not by my act, but I fear by my means.”
“Speak out!” said Martin, “and speak the truth.”
“I fear this IS the truth.”
Martin was about to interrupt him again, but John Westlock saying softly, “Let him tell his story in his own way,” Lewsome went on thus:
“I have been bred a surgeon, and for the last few years have served a general practitioner in the City, as his assistant. While I was in his employment I became acquainted with Jonas Chuzzlewit. He is the principal in this deed.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Martin, sternly. “Do you know he is the son of the old man of whom you have spoken?”
“I do,” he answered.
He remained silent for some moments, when he resumed at the point where he had left off.
“I have reason to know it; for I have often heard him wish his old father dead, and complain of his being wearisome to him, and a drag upon him. He was in the habit of doing so, at a place of meeting we had—three or four of us—at night. There was no good in the place you may suppose, when you hear that he was the chief of the party. I wish I had died myself, and never seen it!”
He stopped again; and again resumed as before.
“We met to drink and game; not for large sums, but for sums that were large to us. He generally won. Whether or no, he lent money at interest to those who lost; and in this way, though I think we all secretly hated him, he came to be the master of us. To propitiate him we made a jest of his father; it began with his debtors; I was one; and we used to toast a quicker journey to the old man, and a swift inheritance to the young one.”
He paused again.
“One night he came there in a very bad humour. He had been greatly tried, he said, by the old man that day. He and I were alone together; and he angrily told me, that the old man was in his second childhood; that he was weak, imbecile, and drivelling; as unbearable to himself as he was to other people; and that it would be a charity to put him out of the way. He swore that he had often thought of mixing something with the stuff he took for his cough, which should help him to die easily. People were sometimes smothered who were bitten by mad dogs, he said; and why not help these lingering old men out of their troubles too? He looked full at me as he said so, and I looked full at him; but it went no farther that night.”
He stopped once more, and was silent for so long an interval that John Westlock said “Go on.”Martin had never removed his eyes from his face, but was so absorbed in horror and astonishment that he could not speak.
“It may have been a week after that, or it may have been less or more—the matter was in my mind all the time, but I cannot recollect the time, as I should any other period—when he spoke to me again. We were alone then, too; being there before the usual hour of assembling. There was no appointment between us; but I think I went there to meet him, and I know he came there to meet me. He was there first. He was reading a newspaper when I went in, and nodded to me without looking up, or leaving off reading. I sat down opposite and close to him. He said, immediately, that he wanted me to get him some of two sorts of drugs. One that was instantaneous in its effect; of which he wanted very little. One that was slow and not suspicious in appearance; of which he wanted more. While he was speaking to me he still read the newspaper. He said “Drugs,” and never used any other word. Neither did I.”
“This all agrees with what I have heard before,” observed John Westlock.
“I asked him what he wanted the drugs for? He said for no harm; to physic cats; what did it matter to me? I was going out to a distant colony (I had recently got the appointment, which, as Mr Westlock knows, I have since lost by my sickness, and which was my only hope of salvation from ruin), and what did it matter to me? He could get them without my aid at half a hundred places, but not so easily as he could get them of me. This was true. He might not want them at all, he said, and he had no present idea of using them; but he wished to have them by him. All this time he still read the newspaper. We talked about the price. He was to forgive me a small debt—I was quite in his power—and to pay me five pounds; and there the matter dropped, through others coming in. But, next night, under exactly similar circumstances, I gave him the drugs, on his saying I was a fool to think that he should ever use them for any harm; and he gave me the money. We have never met since. I only know that the poor old father died soon afterwards, just as he would have died from this cause; and that I have undergone, and suffer now, intolerable misery. Nothing” he added, stretching out his hands, “can paint my misery! It is well deserved, but nothing can paint it.”
With that he hung his head, and said no more, wasted and wretched, he was not a creature upon whom to heap reproaches that were unavailing.
“Let him remain at hand,” said Martin, turning from him; “but out of sight, in Heaven's name!”
“He will remain here,” John whispered. “Come with me!” Softly turning the key upon him as they went out, he conducted Martin into the adjoining room, in which they had been before.
Martin was so amazed, so shocked, and confounded by what he had heard that it was some time before he
could reduce it to any order in his mind, or could sufficiently comprehend the bearing of one part upon another, to take in all the details at one view. When he, at length, had the whole narrative clearly before him, John Westlock went on to point out the great probability of the guilt of Jonas being known to other people, who traded in it for their own benefit, and who were, by such means, able to exert that control over him which Tom Pinch had accidentally witnessed, and unconsciously assisted. This appeared so plain, that they agreed upon it without difficulty; but instead of deriving the least assistance from this source, they found that it embarrassed them the more.
They knew nothing of the real parties who possessed this power. The only person before them was Tom's landlord. They had no right to question Tom's landlord, even if they could find him, which, according to Tom's account, it would not be easy to do. And granting that they did question him, and he answered (which was taking a good deal for granted), he had only to say, with reference to the adventure on the wharf, that he had been sent from such and such a place to summon Jonas back on urgent business, and there was an end of it.
Besides, there was the great difficulty and responsibility of moving at all in the matter. Lewsome's story might be false; in his wretched state it might be greatly heightened by a diseased brain; or admitting it to be entirely true, the old man might have died a natural death. Mr Pecksniff had been there at the time; as Tom immediately remembered, when he came back in the afternoon, and shared their counsels; and there had been no secrecy about it. Martin's grandfather was of right the person to decide upon the course that should be taken; but to get at his views would be impossible, for Mr Pecksniff's views were certain to be his. And the nature of Mr Pecksniff's views in reference to his own son-in-law might be easily reckoned upon.
Apart from these considerations, Martin could not endure the thought of seeming to grasp at this unnatural charge against his relative, and using it as a stepping-stone to his grandfather's favour. But that he would seem to do so, if he presented himself before his grandfather in Mr Pecksniff's house again, for the purpose of declaring it; and that Mr Pecksniff, of all men, would represent his conduct in that despicable light, he perfectly well knew. On the other hand to be in possession of such a statement, and take no measures of further inquiry in reference to it, was tantamount to being a partner in the guilt it professed to disclose.
Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit Page 90