CONTAINING STRANGE MATTER, ON WHICH MANY EVENTS IN THIS HISTORY MAY, FOR THEIR GOOD OR EVIL INFLUENCE, CHIEFLY DEPEND But Mr Pecksniff came to town on business. Had he forgotten that? Was he always taking his pleasure with Todgers’s jovial brood, unmindful of the serious demands, whatever they might be, upon his calm consideration? No.
Time and tide will wait for no man, saith the adage. But all men have to wait for time and tide. That tide which, taken at the flood, would lead Seth Pecksniff on to fortune, was marked down in the table, and about to flow. No idle Pecksniff lingered far inland, unmindful of the changes of the stream; but there, upon the water’s edge, over his shoes already, stood the worthy creature, prepared to wallow in the very mud, so that it slid towards the quarter of his hope.
The trustfulness of his two fair daughters was beautiful indeed. They had that firm reliance on their parent’s nature, which taught them to feel certain that in all he did he had his purpose straight and full before him. And that its noble end and object was himself, which almost of necessity included them, they knew. The devotion of these maids was perfect.
Their filial confidence was rendered the more touching, by their having no knowledge of their parent’s real designs, in the present instance. All that they knew of his proceedings was, that every morning, after the early breakfast, he repaired to the post office and inquired for letters. That task performed, his business for the day was over; and he again relaxed, until the rising of another sun proclaimed the advent of another post.
This went on for four or five days. At length, one morning, Mr Pecksniff returned with a breathless rapidity, strange to observe in him, at other times so calm; and, seeking immediate speech with his daughters, shut himself up with them in private conference for two whole hours. Of all that passed in this period, only the following words of Mr Pecksniff’s utterance are known:
‘How he has come to change so very much (if it should turn out as I expect, that he has), we needn’t stop to inquire. My dears, I have my thoughts upon the subject, but I will not impart them. It is enough that we will not be proud, resentful, or unforgiving. If he wants our friendship he shall have it. We know our duty, I hope!’
That same day at noon, an old gentleman alighted from a hackney-coach at the post-office, and, giving his name, inquired for a letter addressed to himself, and directed to be left till called for. It had been lying there some days. The superscription was in Mr Pecksniff’s hand, and it was sealed with Mr Pecksniff’s seal.
It was very short, containing indeed nothing more than an address ‘with Mr Pecksniff’s respectful, and (not withstanding what has passed) sincerely affectionate regards.’ The old gentleman tore off the direction—scattering the rest in fragments to the winds—and giving it to the coachman, bade him drive as near that place as he could. In pursuance of these instructions he was driven to the Monument; where he again alighted, and dismissed the vehicle, and walked towards Todgers’s.
Though the face, and form, and gait of this old man, and even his grip of the stout stick on which he leaned, were all expressive of a resolution not easily shaken, and a purpose (it matters little whether right or wrong, just now) such as in other days might have survived the rack, and had its strongest life in weakest death; still there were grains of hesitation in his mind, which made him now avoid the house he sought, and loiter to and fro in a gleam of sunlight, that brightened the little churchyard hard by. There may have been, in the presence of those idle heaps of dust among the busiest stir of life, something to increase his wavering; but there he walked, awakening the echoes as he paced up and down, until the church clock, striking the quarters for the second time since he had been there, roused him from his meditation. Shaking off his incertitude as the air parted with the sound of the bells, he walked rapidly to the house, and knocked at the door.
Mr Pecksniff was seated in the landlady’s little room, and his visitor found him reading—by an accident; he apologised for it—an excellent theological work. There were cake and wine upon a little table—by another accident, for which he also apologised. Indeed he said, he had given his visitor up, and was about to partake of that simple refreshment with his children, when he knocked at the door.
‘Your daughters are well?’ said old Martin, laying down his hat and stick.
Mr Pecksniff endeavoured to conceal his agitation as a father when he answered Yes, they were. They were good girls, he said, very good. He would not venture to recommend Mr Chuzzlewit to take the easy-chair, or to keep out of the draught from the door. If he made any such suggestion, he would expose himself, he feared, to most unjust suspicion. He would, therefore, content himself with remarking that there was an easy-chair in the room, and that the door was far from being air-tight. This latter imperfection, he might perhaps venture to add, was not uncommonly to be met with in old houses.
The old man sat down in the easy-chair, and after a few moments’ silence, said:
‘In the first place, let me thank you for coming to London so promptly, at my almost unexplained request; I need scarcely add, at my cost.’
‘At your cost, my good sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff, in a tone of great surprise.
‘It is not,’ said Martin, waving his hand impatiently, ‘my habit to put my—well! my relatives—to any personal expense to gratify my caprices.’
‘Caprices, my good sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff
‘That is scarcely the proper word either, in this instance,’ said the old man. ‘No. You are right.’
Mr Pecksniff was inwardly very much relieved to hear it, though he didn’t at all know why.
‘You are right,’ repeated Martin. ‘It is not a caprice. It is built up on reason, proof, and cool comparison. Caprices never are. Moreover, I am not a capricious man. I never was.’
‘Most assuredly not,’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘How do you know?’ returned the other quickly. ‘You are to begin to know it now. You are to test and prove it, in time to come. You and yours are to find that I can be constant, and am not to be diverted from my end. Do you hear?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Mr Pecksniff.
‘I very much regret,’ Martin resumed, looking steadily at him, and speaking in a slow and measured tone; ‘I very much regret that you and I held such a conversation together, as that which passed between us at our last meeting. I very much regret that I laid open to you what were then my thoughts of you, so freely as I did. The intentions that I bear towards you now are of another kind; deserted by all in whom I have ever trusted; hoodwinked and beset by all who should help and sustain me; I fly to you for refuge. I confide in you to be my ally; to attach yourself to me by ties of Interest and Expectation’—he laid great stress upon these words, though Mr Pecksniff particularly begged him not to mention it; ‘and to help me to visit the consequences of the very worst species of meanness, dissimulation, and subtlety, on the right heads.’
‘My noble sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff, catching at his outstretched hand. ‘And you regret the having harboured unjust thoughts of me! you with those grey hairs!’
‘Regrets,’ said Martin, ‘are the natural property of grey hairs; and I enjoy, in common with all other men, at least my share of such inheritance. And so enough of that. I regret having been severed from you so long. If I had known you sooner, and sooner used you as you well deserve, I might have been a happier man.’
Mr Pecksniff looked up to the ceiling, and clasped his hands in rapture.
‘Your daughters,’ said Martin, after a short silence. ‘I don’t know them. Are they like you?’
‘In the nose of my eldest and the chin of my youngest, Mr Chuzzlewit,’ returned the widower, ‘their sainted parent (not myself, their mother) lives again.’
‘I don’t mean in person,’ said the old man. ‘Morally, morally.’
‘’Tis not for me to say,’ retorted Mr Pecksniff with a gentle smile. ‘I have done my best, sir.’
‘I could wish to see them,’ said Martin; ‘are they near at hand?’
They were, very near; for they had in fact been listening at the door from the beginning of this conversation until now, when they precipitately retired. Having wiped the signs of weakness from his eyes, and so given them time to get upstairs, Mr Pecksniff opened the door, and mildly cried in the passage,
‘My own darlings, where are you?’
‘Here, my dear pa!’ replied the distant voice of Charity.
‘Come down into the back parlour, if you please, my love,’ said Mr Pecksniff, ‘and bring your sister with you.’
‘Yes, my dear pa,’ cried Merry; and down they came directly (being all obedience), singing as they came.
Nothing could exceed the astonishment of the two Miss Pecksniffs when they found a stranger with their dear papa. Nothing could surpass their mute amazement when he said, ‘My children, Mr Chuzzlewit!’ But when he told them that Mr Chuzzlewit and he were friends, and that Mr Chuzzlewit had said such kind and tender words as pierced his very heart, the two Miss Pecksniffs cried with one accord, ‘Thank Heaven for this!’ and fell upon the old man’s neck. And when they had embraced him with such fervour of affection that no words can describe it, they grouped themselves about his chair, and hung over him, as figuring to themselves no earthly joy like that of ministering to his wants, and crowding into the remainder of his life, the love they would have diffused over their whole existence, from infancy, if he—dear obdurate!—had but consented to receive the precious offering.
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The old man looked attentively from one to the other, and then at Mr Pecksniff, several times.
‘What,’ he asked of Mr Pecksniff, happening to catch his eye in its descent; for until now it had been piously upraised, with something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric storm: ‘What are their names?’
Mr Pecksniff told him, and added, rather hastily; his caluminators would have said, with a view to any testamentary thoughts that might be flitting through old Martin’s mind; ‘Perhaps, my dears, you had better write them down. Your humble autographs are of no value in themselves, but affection may prize them.’
‘Affection,’ said the old man, ‘will expend itself on the living originals. Do not trouble yourselves, my girls, I shall not so easily forget you, Charity and Mercy, as to need such tokens of remembrance. Cousin!’
‘Sir!’ said Mr Pecksniff, with alacrity.
‘Do you never sit down?’
‘Why—yes—occasionally, sir,’ said Mr Pecksniff, who had been standing all this time.
‘Will you do so now?’
‘Can you ask me,’ returned Mr Pecksniff, slipping into a chair immediately, ‘whether I will do anything that you desire?’
‘You talk confidently,’ said Martin, ‘and you mean well; but I fear you don’t know what an old man’s humours are. You don’t know what it is to be required to court his likings and dislikings; to adapt yourself to his prejudices; to do his bidding, be it what it may; to bear with his distrusts and jealousies; and always still be zealous in his service. When I remember how numerous these failings are in me, and judge of their occasional enormity by the injurious thoughts I lately entertained of you, I hardly dare to claim you for my friend.’
‘My worthy sir,’ returned his relative, ‘how can you talk in such a painful strain! What was more natural than that you should make one slight mistake, when in all other respects you were so very correct, and have had such reason—such very sad and undeniable reason—to judge of every one about you in the worst light!’
‘True,’ replied the other. ‘You are very lenient with me.’
‘We always said, my girls and I,’ cried Mr Pecksniff with increasing obsequiousness, ‘that while we mourned the heaviness of our misfortune in being confounded with the base and mercenary, still we could not wonder at it. My dears, you remember?’
Oh vividly! A thousand times!
‘We uttered no complaint,’ said Mr Pecksniff. ‘Occasionally we had the presumption to console ourselves with the remark that Truth would in the end prevail, and Virtue be triumphant; but not often. My loves, you recollect?’
Recollect! Could he doubt it! Dearest pa, what strange unnecessary questions!
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‘And when I saw you,’ resumed Mr Pecksniff, with still greater deference, ‘in the little, unassuming village where we take the liberty of dwelling, I said you were mistaken in me, my dear sir; that was all, I think?’
‘No—not all,’ said Martin, who had been sitting with his hand upon his brow for some time past, and now looked up again; ‘you said much more, which, added to other circumstances that have come to my knowledge, opened my eyes. You spoke to me, disinterestedly, on behalf of—I needn’t name him. You know whom I mean.’
Trouble was expressed in Mr Pecksniff’s visage, as he pressed his hot hands together, and replied, with humility, ‘Quite disinterestedly, sir, I assure you.’
‘I know it,’ said old Martin, in his quiet way. ‘I am sure of it. I said so. It was disinterested too, in you, to draw that herd of harpies off from me, and be their victim yourself; most other men would have suffered them to display themselves in all their rapacity, and would have striven to rise, by contrast, in my estimation. You felt for me, and drew them off, for which I owe you many thanks. Although I left the place, I know what passed behind my back, you see!’
‘You amaze me, sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff; which was true enough.
‘My knowledge of your proceedings,’ said the old man, does not stop at this. You have a new inmate in your house.’
‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined the architect, ‘I have.’
‘He must quit it’ said Martin.
‘For—for yours?’ asked Mr Pecksniff, with a quavering mildness.
‘For any shelter he can find,’ the old man answered. ‘He has deceived you.’
‘I hope not’ said Mr Pecksniff, eagerly. ‘I trust not. I have been extremely well disposed towards that young man. I hope it cannot be shown that he has forfeited all claim to my protection. Deceit—deceit, my dear Mr Chuzzlewit, would be final. I should hold myself bound, on proof of deceit, to renounce him instantly.’
The old man glanced at both his fair supporters, but especially at Miss Mercy, whom, indeed, he looked full in the face, with a greater demonstration of interest than had yet appeared in his features. His gaze again encountered Mr Pecksniff, as he said, composedly:
‘Of course you know that he has made his matrimonial choice?’
‘Oh dear!’ cried Mr Pecksniff, rubbing his hair up very stiff upon his head, and staring wildly at his daughters. ‘This is becoming tremendous!’
‘You know the fact?’ repeated Martin
‘Surely not without his grandfather’s consent and approbation my dear sir!’ cried Mr Pecksniff. ‘Don’t tell me that. For the honour of human nature, say you’re not about to tell me that!’
‘I thought he had suppressed it,’ said the old man.
The indignation felt by Mr Pecksniff at this terrible disclosure, was only to be equalled by the kindling anger of his daughters. What! Had they taken to their hearth and home a secretly contracted serpent; a crocodile, who had made a furtive offer of his hand; an imposition on society; a bankrupt bachelor with no effects, trading with the spinster world on false pretences! And oh, to think that he should have disobeyed and practised on that sweet, that venerable gentleman, whose name he bore; that kind and tender guardian; his more than father—to say nothing at all of mother—horrible, horrible! To turn him out with ignominy would be treatment much too good. Was there nothing else that could be done to him? Had he incurred no legal pains and penalties? Could it be that the statutes of the land were so remiss as to have affixed no punishment to such delinquency? Monster; how basely had they been deceived!
‘I am glad to find you second me so warmly,’ said the old man holding up his hand to stay the torrent of their wrath. ‘I will not deny that it is a pleasure to me to find you so full of zeal. We will consider that topic as disposed of.’
‘No, my dear sir,’ cried Mr Pecksniff, ‘not as disposed of, until I have purged my house of this pollution.’
‘That will follow,’ said the old man, ‘in its own time. I look upon that as done.’
‘You are very good, sir,’ answered Mr Pecksniff, shaking his hand. ‘You do me honour. You may look upon it as done, I assure you.’
‘There is another topic,’ said Martin, ‘on which I hope you will assist me. You remember Mary, cousin?’
‘The young lady that I mentioned to you, my dears, as having interested me so very much,’ remarked Mr Pecksniff. ‘Excuse my interrupting you, sir.’
‘I told you her history?’ said the old man.
‘Which I also mentioned, you will recollect, my dears,’ cried Mr Pecksniff. ‘Silly girls, Mr Chuzzlewit—quite moved by it, they were!’
‘Why, look now!’ said Martin, evidently pleased; ‘I feared I should have had to urge her case upon you, and ask you to regard her favourably for my sake. But I find you have no jealousies! Well! You have no cause for any, to be sure. She has nothing to ............