Martin Chuzzlewit

The travellers had opened the carriage door, and had either jumped or fallen out. Jonas was the first to stagger to his feet. He felt sick and weak, and very giddy, and reeling to a five-barred gate, stood holding by it; looking drowsily about as the whole landscape swam before his eyes. But, by degrees, he grew more conscious, and presently observed that Montague was lying senseless in the road, within a few feet of the horses.

In an instant, as if his own faint body were suddenly animated by a demon, he ran to the horses’ heads; and pulling at their bridles with all his force, set them struggling and plunging with such mad violence as brought their hoofs at every effort nearer to the skull of the prostrate man; and must have led in half a minute to his brains being dashed out on the highway.

As he did this, he fought and contended with them like a man possessed, making them wilder by his cries.

‘Whoop!’ cried Jonas. ‘Whoop! again! another! A little more, a little more! Up, ye devils! Hillo!’

As he heard the driver, who had risen and was hurrying up, crying to him to desist, his violence increased.

‘Hiilo! Hillo!’ cried Jonas.

‘For God’s sake!’ cried the driver. ‘The gentleman – in the road – he’ll be killed!’

The same shouts and the same struggles were his only answer. But the man darting in at the peril of his own life, saved Montague’s, by dragging him through the mire and water out of the reach of present harm. That done, he ran to Jonas; and with the aid of his knife they very shortly disengaged the horses from the broken chariot, and got them, cut and bleeding, on their legs again. The postillion and Jonas had now leisure to look at each other, which they had not had yet.

‘Presence of mind, presence of mind!’ cried Jonas, throwing up his hands wildly. ‘What would you have done without me?’

‘The other gentleman would have done badly without me,’ returned the man, shaking his head. ‘You should have moved him first. I gave him up for dead.’

‘Presence of mind, you croaker, presence of mind’ cried Jonas with a harsh loud laugh. ‘Was he struck, do you think?’

They both turned to look at him. Jonas muttered something to himself, when he saw him sitting up beneath the hedge, looking vacantly around.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Montague. ‘Is anybody hurt?’

‘Ecod!’ said Jonas, ‘it don’t seem so. There are no bones broken, after all.’

They raised him, and he tried to walk. He was a good deal shaken, and trembled very much. But with the exception of a few cuts and bruises this was all the damage he had sustained.

‘Cuts and bruises, eh?’ said Jonas. ‘We’ve all got them. Only cuts and bruises, eh?’

‘I wouldn’t have given sixpence for the gentleman’s head in half-a-dozen seconds more, for all he’s only cut and bruised,’ observed the post-boy. ‘If ever you’re in an accident of this sort again, sir; which I hope you won’t be; never you pull at the bridle of a horse that’s down, when there’s a man’s head in the way. That can’t be done twice without there being a dead man in the case; it would have ended in that, this time, as sure as ever you were born, if I hadn’t come up just when I did.’

Jonas replied by advising him with a curse to hold his tongue, and to go somewhere, whither he was not very likely to go of his own accord. But Montague, who had listened eagerly to every word, himself diverted the subject, by exclaiming: ‘Where’s the boy?’

‘Ecod! I forgot that monkey,’ said Jonas. ‘What’s become of him?’ A very brief search settled that question. The unfortunate Mr Bailey had been thrown sheer over the hedge or the five-barred gate; and was lying in the neighbouring field, to all appearance dead.

‘When I said to-night, that I wished I had never started on this journey,’ cried his master, ‘I knew it was an ill-fated one. Look at this boy!’

‘Is that all?’ growled Jonas. ‘If you call that a sign of it – ’

‘Why, what should I call a sign of it?’ asked Montague, hurriedly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ said Jonas, stooping down over the body, ‘that I never heard you were his father, or had any particular reason to care much about him. Halloa. Hold up there!’

But the boy was past holding up, or being held up, or giving any other sign of life than a faint and fitful beating of the heart. After some discussion the driver mounted the horse which had been least injured, and took the lad in his arms as well as he could; while Montague and Jonas, leading the other horse, and carrying a trunk between them, walked by his side towards Salisbury.

‘You’d get there in a few minutes, and be able to send assistance to meet us, if you went forward, post-boy,’ said Jonas. ‘Trot on!’

‘No, no,’ cried Montague; ‘we’ll keep together.’

‘Why, what a chicken you are! You are not afraid of being robbed; are you?’ said Jonas.

‘I am not afraid of anything,’ replied the other, whose looks and manner were in flat contradiction to his words. ‘But we’ll keep together.’

‘You were mighty anxious about the boy, a minute ago,’ said Jonas. ‘I suppose you know that he may die in the meantime?’

‘Aye, aye. I know. But we’ll keep together.’

As it was clear that he was not to be moved from this determination, Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and they proceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; and the way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden by which they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition. After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; and having knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning), sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and roused a surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the service he could render, he rendered promptly and skillfully. But he gave it as his opinion that the boy was labouring under a severe concussion of the brain, and that Mr Bailey’s mortal course was run.

If Montague’s strong interest in the announcement could have been considered as unselfish in any degree, it might have been a redeeming trait in a character that had no such lineaments to spare. But it was not difficult to see that, for some unexpressed reason best appreciated by himself, he attached a strange value to the company and presence of this mere child. When, after receiving some assistance from the surgeon himself, he retired to the bedroom prepared for him, and it was broad day, his mind was still dwelling on this theme.

‘I would rather have lost,’ he said, ‘a thousand pounds than lost the boy just now. But I’ll return home alone. I am resolved upon that. Chuzzlewit shall go forward first, and I will follow in my own time. I’ll have no more of this,’ he added, wiping his damp forehead. ‘Twenty-four hours of this would turn my hair grey!’

After examining his chamber, and looking under the bed, and in the cupboards, and even behind the curtains, with unusual caution (although it was, as has been said, broad day), he double-locked the door by which he had entered, and retired to rest. There was another door in the room, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place it communicated, he knew not.

His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. He dreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it; a secret which he knew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsible for it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision by a distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherently entwined with this dream was another, which represented it as the hiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the business of his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent it from forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and a strange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that he had been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an old schoolmate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails to make the door secure; but though they worked never so hard, it was all in vain, for the nails broke, or changed to soft twigs, or what was worse, to worms, between their fingers; the wood of the door splintered and crumbled, so that even nails would not remain in it; and the iron plates curled up like hot paper. All this time the creature on the other side – whether it was in the shape of man, or beast, he neither knew nor sought to know – was gaining on them. But his greatest terror was when the man with the bloody smear upon his head demanded of him if he knew this creatures name, and said that he would whisper it. At this the dreamer fell upon his knees, his whole blood thrilling with inexplicable fear, and held his ears. But looking at the speaker’s lips, he saw that they formed the utterance of the letter ‘J’; and crying out aloud that the secret was discovered, and they were all lost, he awoke.

Awoke to find Jonas standing at his bedside watching him. And that very door wide open.

As their eyes met, Jonas retreated a few paces, and Montague sprang out of bed.

‘Heyday!’ said Jonas. ‘You’re all alive this morning.’

‘Alive!’ the other stammered, as he pulled the bell-rope violently. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘It’s your room to be sure,’ said Jonas; ‘but I’m almost inclined to ask you what you are doing here? My room is on the other side of that door. No one told me last night not to open it. I thought it led into a passage, and was coming out to order breakfast. There’s – there’s no bell in my room.’

Montague had in the meantime admitted the man with his hot water and boots, who hearing this, said, yes, there was; and passed into the adjoining room to point it out, at the head of the bed.

‘I couldn’t find it, then,’ said Jonas; ‘it’s all the same. Shall I order breakfast?’

Montague answered in the affirmative. When Jonas had retired, whistling, through his own room, he opened the door of communication, to take out the key and fasten it on the inner side. But it was taken out already.

He dragged a table against the door, and sat down to collect himself, as if his dreams still had some influence upon his mind.

‘An evil journey,’ he repeated several times. ‘An evil journey. But I’ll travel home alone. I’ll have no more of this.’

His presentiment, or superstition, that it was an evil journey, did not at all deter him from doing the evil for which the journey was undertaken. With this in view, he dressed himself more carefully than usual to make a favourable impression on Mr Pecksniff; and, reassured by his own appearance, the beauty of the morning, and the flashing of the wet boughs outside his window in the merry sunshine, was soon sufficiently inspirited to swear a few round oaths, and hum the fag-end of a song.

But he still muttered to himself at intervals, for all that: ‘I’ll travel home alone!’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

HAS AN INFLUENCE ON THE FORTUNES OF SEVERAL PEOPLE. MR PECKSNIFF IS EXHIBITED IN THE PLENITUDE OF POWER; AND WIELDS THE SAME WITH FORTITUDE AND MAGNANIMITY

On the night of the storm, Mrs Lupin, hostess of the Blue Dragon, sat by herself in her little bar. Her solitary condition, or the bad weather, or both united, made Mrs Lupin thoughtful, not to say sorrowful. As she sat with her chin upon her hand, looking out through a low back lattice, rendered dim in the brightest day-time by clustering vine-leaves, she shook her head very often, and said, ‘Dear me! Oh, dear, dear me!’

It was a melancholy time, even in the snugness of the Dragon bar. The rich expanse of corn-field, pasture-land, green slope, and gentle undulation, with its sparkling brooks, its many hedgerows, and its clumps of beautiful trees, was black and dreary, from the diamond panes of the lattice away to the far horizon, where the thunder seemed to roll along the hills. The heavy rain beat down the tender branches of vine and jessamine, and trampled on them in its fury; and when the lightning gleamed it showed the tearful leaves shivering and cowering together at the window, and tapping at it urgently, as if beseeching to be sheltered from the dismal night.

As a mark of her respect for the lightning, Mrs Lupin had removed her candle to the chimney-piece. Her basket of needle-work stood unheeded at her elbow; her supper, spread on a round table not far off, was untasted; and the knives had been removed for fear of attraction. She had sat for a long time with her chin upon her hand, saying to herself at intervals, ‘Dear me! Ah, dear, dear me!’

She was on the eve of saying so, once more, when the latch of the house-door (closed to keep the rain out), rattled on its well-worn catch, and a traveller came in, who, shutting it after him, and walking straight up to the half-door of the bar, said, rather gruffly:

‘A pint of the best old beer here.’

He had some reason to be gruff, for if he had passed the day in a waterfall, he could scarcely have been wetter than he was. He was wrapped up to the eyes in a rough blue sailor’s coat, and had an oil-skin hat on, from the capacious brim of which the rain fell trickling down upon his breast, and back, and shoulders. Judging from a certain liveliness of chin – he had so pulled down his hat, and pulled up his collar, to defend himself from the weather, that she could only see his chin, and even across that he drew the wet sleeve of his shaggy coat, as she looked at him – Mrs Lupin set him down for a good-natured fellow, too.

‘A bad night!’ observed the hostess cheerfully.

The traveller shook himself like a Newfoundland dog, and said it was, rather.

‘There’s a fire in the kitchen,’ said Mrs Lupin, ‘and very good company there. Hadn’t you better go and dry yourself?’

‘No, thankee,’ said the man, glancing towards the kitchen as he spoke; he seemed to know the way.

‘It’s enough to give you your death of cold,’ observed the hostess.

‘I don’t take my death easy,’ returned the traveller; ‘or I should most likely have took it afore to-night. Your health, ma’am!’

Mrs Lupin thanked him; but in the act of lifting the tankard to his mouth, he changed his mind, and put it down again. Throwing his body back, and looking about him stiffly, as a man does who is wrapped up, and has his hat low down over his eyes, he said:

‘What do you call this house? Not the Dragon, do you?’

Mrs Lupin complacently made answer, ‘Yes, the Dragon.’

‘Why, then, you’ve got a sort of a relation of mine here, ma’am,’ said the traveller; ‘a young man of the name of Tapley. What! Mark, my boy!’ apostrophizing the premises, ‘have I come upon you at last, old buck!’

This was touching Mrs Lupin on a tender point. She turned to trim the candle on the chimney-piece, and said, with her back towards the traveller:

‘Nobody should be made more welcome at the Dragon, master, than any one who brought me news of Mark. But it’s many and many a long day and month since he left here and England. And whether he’s alive or dead, poor fellow, Heaven above us only knows!’

She shook her head, and her voice trembled; her hand must have done so too, for the light required a deal of trimming.

‘Where did he go, ma’am?’ asked the traveller, in a gentler voice.

‘He went,’ said Mrs Lupin, with increased distress, ‘to America. He was always tender-hearted and kind, and perhaps at this moment may be lying in prison under sentence of death, for taking pity on some miserable black, and helping the poor runaway creetur to escape. How could he ever go to America! Why didn’t he go to some of those countries where the savages eat each other fairly, and give an equal chance to every one!’

Quite subdued by this time, Mrs Lupin sobbed, and was retiring to a chair to give her grief free vent, when the traveller caught her in his arms, and she uttered a glad cry of recognition.

‘Yes, I will!’ cried Mark, ‘another – one more – twenty more! You didn’t know me in that hat and coat? I thought you would have known me anywheres! Ten more!’

‘So I should have known you, if I could have seen you; but I couldn’t, and you spoke so gruff. I didn’t think you could speak gruff to me, Mark, at first coming back.’

‘Fifteen more!’ said Mr Tapley. ‘How handsome and how young you look! Six more! The last half-dozen warn’t a fair one, and must be done over again. Lord bless you, what a treat it is to see you! One more! Well, I never was so jolly. Just a few more, on account of there not being any credit in it!’

When Mr Tapley stopped in these calculations in simple addition, he did it, not because he was at all tired of the exercise, but because he was out of breath. The pause reminded him of other duties.

‘Mr Martin Chuzzlewit’s outside,’ he said. ‘I left him under the cartshed, while I came on to see if there was anybody here. We want to keep quiet to-night, till we know the news from you, and what it’s best for us to do.’

‘There’s not a soul in the house, except the kitchen company,’ returned the hostess. ‘If they were to know you had come back, Mark, they’d have a bonfire in the street, late as it is.’

‘But they mustn’t know it to-night, my precious soul,’ said Mark; ‘so have the house shut, and the kitchen fire made up; and when it’s all ready, put a light in the winder, and we’ll come in. One more! I long to hear about old friends. You’ll tell me all about ‘em, won’t you; Mr Pinch, and the butcher’s dog down the street, and the terrier over the way, and the wheelwright’s, and every one of ‘em. When I first caught sight of the church to-night, I thought the steeple would have choked me, I did. One more! Won’t you? Not a very little one to finish off with?’

‘You have had plenty, I am sure,’ said the hostess. ‘Go along with your foreign manners!’

‘That ain’t foreign, bless you!’ cried Mark. ‘Native as oysters, that is! One more, because it’s native! As a mark of respect for the land we live in! This don’t count as between you and me, you understand,’ said Mr Tapley. ‘I ain’t a-kissing you now, you’ll observe. I have been among the patriots; I’m a-kissin’ my country.’

It would have been very unreasonable to complain of the exhibition of his patriotism with which he followed up this explanation, that it was at all lukewarm or indifferent. When he had given full expression to his nationality, he hurried off to Martin; while Mrs Lupin, in a state of great agitation and excitement, prepared for their reception.

The company soon came tumbling out; insisting to each other that the Dragon clock was half an hour too fast, and that the thunder must have affected it. Impatient, wet, and weary though they were, Martin and Mark were overjoyed to see these old faces, and watched them with delighted interest as they departed from the house, and passed close by them.

‘There’s the old tailor, Mark!’ whispered Martin.

‘There he goes, sir! A little bandier than he was, I think, sir, ain’t he? His figure’s so far altered, as it seems to me, that you might wheel a rather larger barrow between his legs as he walks, than you could have done conveniently when we know’d him. There’s Sam a-coming out, sir.’

‘Ah, to be sure!’ cried Martin; ‘Sam, the hostler. I wonder whether that horse of Pecksniff’s is alive still?’

‘Not a doubt on it, sir,’ returned Mark. ‘That’s a description of animal, sir, as will go on in a bony way peculiar to himself for a long time, and get into the newspapers at last under the title of “Sing’lar Tenacity of Life in a Quadruped.” As if he had ever been alive in all his life, worth mentioning! There’s the clerk, sir – wery drunk, as usual.’

‘I see him!’ said Martin, laughing. ‘But, my life, how wet you are, Mark!’

‘I am! What do you consider yourself, sir?’

‘Oh, not half as bad,’ said his fellow-traveller, with an air of great vexation. ‘I told you not to keep on the windy side, Mark, but to let us change and change about. The rain has been beating on you ever since it began.’

‘You don’t know how it pleases me, sir,’ said Mark, after a short silence, ‘if I may make so bold as say so, to hear you a-going on in that there uncommon considerate way of yours; which I don’t mean to attend to, never, but which, ever since that time when I was floored in Eden, you have showed.’

‘Ah, Mark!’ sighed Martin, ‘the less we say of that the better. Do I see the light yonder?’

‘That’s the light!’ cried Mark. ‘Lord bless her, what briskness she possesses! Now for it, sir. Neat wines, good beds, and first-rate entertainment for man or beast.’

The kitchen fire burnt clear and red, the table was spread out, the kettle boiled; the slippers were there, the boot-jack too, sheets of ham were there, cooking on the gridiron; half-a-dozen eggs were there, poaching in the frying-pan; a plethoric cherry-brandy bottle was there, winking at a foaming jug of beer upon the table; rare provisions were there, dangling from the rafters as if you had only to open your mouth, and something exquisitely ripe and good would be glad of the excuse for tumbling into it. Mrs Lupin, who for their sakes had dislodged the very cook, high priestess of the temple, with her own genial hands was dressing their repast.

It was impossible to help it – a ghost must have hugged her. The Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea being, in that respect, all one, Martin hugged her instantly. Mr Tapley (as if the idea were quite novel, and had never occurred to him before), followed, with much gravity, on the same side.

‘Little did I ever think,’ said Mrs Lupin, adjusting her cap and laughing heartily; yes, and blushing too; ‘often as I have said that Mr Pecksniff’s young gentlemen were the life and soul of the Dragon, and that without them it would be too dull to live in – little did I ever think I am sure, that any one of them would ever make so free as you, Mr Martin! And still less that I shouldn’t be angry with him, but should be glad with all my heart to be the first to welcome him home from America, with Mark Tapley for his – ’

‘For his friend, Mrs Lupin,’ interposed Martin.

‘For his friend,’ said the hostess, evidently gratified by this distinction, but at the same time admonishing Mr Tapley with a fork to remain at a respectful distance. ‘Little did I ever think that! But still less, that I should ever have the changes to relate that I shall have to tell you of, when you have done your supper!’

‘Good Heaven!’ cried Martin, changing colour, ‘what changes?’

‘She,’ said the hostess, ‘is quite well, and now at Mr Pecksniff’s. Don’t be at all alarmed about her. She is everything you could wish. It’s of no use mincing matters, or making secrets, is it?’ added Mrs Lupin. ‘I know all about it, you see!’

‘My good creature,’ returned Martin, ‘you are exactly the person who ought to know all about it. I am delighted to think you do know about that! But what changes do you hint at? Has any death occurred?’

‘No, no!’ said the hostess. ‘Not as bad as that. But I declare now that I will not be drawn into saying another word till you have had your supper. If you ask me fifty questions in the meantime, I won’t answer one.’

She was so positive, that there was nothing for it but to get the supper over as quickly as possible; and as they had been walking a great many miles, and had fasted since the middle of the day, they did no great violence to their own inclinations in falling on it tooth and nail. It took rather longer to get through than might have been expected; for, half-a-dozen times, when they thought they had finished, Mrs Lupin exposed the fallacy of that impression triumphantly. But at last, in the course of time and nature, they gave in. Then, sitting with their slippered feet stretched out upon the kitchen hearth (which was wonderfully comforting, for the night had grown by this time raw and chilly), and looking with involuntary admiration at their dimpled, buxom, blooming hostess, as the firelight sparkled in her eyes and glimmered in her raven hair, they composed themselves to listen to her news.

Many were the exclamations of surprise which interrupted her, when she told them of the separation between Mr Pecksniff and his daughters, and between the same good gentleman and Mr Pinch. But these were nothing to the indignant demonstrations of Martin, when she related, as the common talk of the neighbourhood, what entire possession he had obtained over the mind and person of old Mr Chuzzlewit, and what high honour he designed for Mary. On receipt of this intelligence, Martin’s slippers flew off in a twinkling, and he began pulling on his wet boots with that indefinite intention of going somewhere instantly, and doing something to somebody, which is the first safety-valve of a hot temper.