CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
TOM PINCH, GOING ASTRAY, FINDS THAT HE IS NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN
THAT PREDICAMENT. HE RETALIATES UPON A FALLEN FOE
Tom's evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those
preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard
country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis;
nor did it mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers, pea and
thimble-riggers, duffers, touters, or any of those bloodless
sharpers, who are, perhaps, a little better known to the Police. He
fell into conversation with no gentleman who took him into a public-
house, where there happened to be another gentleman who swore he had
more money than any gentleman, and very soon proved he had more
money than one gentleman by taking his away from him; neither did he
fall into any other of the numerous man-traps which are set up
without notice, in the public grounds of this city. But he lost his
way. He very soon did that; and in trying to find it again he lost
it more and more.
Now, Tom, in his guileless distrust of London, thought himself very
knowing in coming to the determination that he would not ask to be
directed to Furnival's Inn, if he could help it; unless, indeed, he
should happen to find himself near the Mint, or the Bank of England;
in which case he would step in, and ask a civil question or two,
confiding in the perfect respectability of the concern. So on he
went, looking up all the streets he came near, and going up half of
them; and thus, by dint of not being true to Goswell Street, and
filing off into Aldermanbury, and bewildering himself in Barbican,
and being constant to the wrong point of the compass in London Wall,
and then getting himself crosswise into Thames Street, by an
instinct that would have been marvellous if he had had the least
desire or reason to go there, he found himself, at last, hard by the
Monument.
The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to Tom as
the Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him that the lonely
creature who held himself aloof from all mankind in that pillar like
some old hermit was the very man of whom to ask his way. Cold, he
might be; little sympathy he had, perhaps, with human passion--the
column seemed too tall for that; but if Truth didn't live in the
base of the Monument, notwithstanding Pope's couplet about the
outside of it, where in London (thought Tom) was she likely to be
found!
Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement to Tom
to find that the Man in the Monument had simple tastes; that stony
and artificial as his residence was, he still preserved some rustic
recollections; that he liked plants, hung up bird-cages, was not
wholly cut off from fresh groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs.
The Man in the Monument, himself, was sitting outside the door--his
own door: the Monument-door: what a grand idea!--and was actually
yawning, as if there were no Monument to stop his mouth, and give
him a perpetual interest in his own existence.
Tom was advancing towards this remarkable creature, to inquire the
way to Furnival's Inn, when two people came to see the Monument.
They were a gentleman and a lady; and the gentleman said, 'How much
a-piece?'
The Man in the Monument replied, 'A Tanner.'
It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument.
The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in the
Monument opened a dark little door. When the gentleman and lady had
passed out of view, he shut it again, and came slowly back to his
chair.
He sat down and laughed.
'They don't know what a many steps there is!' he said. 'It's worth
twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!'
The Man in the Monument was a Cynic; a worldly man! Tom couldn't ask
his way of HIM. He was prepared to put no confidence in anything he
said.
'My gracious!' cried a well-known voice behind Mr Pinch. 'Why, to
be sure it is!'
At the same time he was poked in the back by a parasol. Turning
round to inquire into this salute, he beheld the eldest daughter of
his late patron.
'Miss Pecksniff!' said Tom.
'Why, my goodness, Mr Pinch!' cried Cherry. 'What are you doing
here?'
'I have rather wandered from my way,' said Tom. 'I--'
'I hope you have run away,' said Charity. 'It would be quite
spirited and proper if you had, when my Papa so far forgets
himself.'
'I have left him,' returned Tom. 'But it was perfectly understood
on both sides. It was not done clandestinely.'
'Is he married?' asked Cherry, with a spasmodic shake of her chin.
'No, not yet,' said Tom, colouring; 'to tell you the truth, I don't
think he is likely to be, if--if Miss Graham is the object of his
passion.'
'Tcha, Mr Pinch!' cried Charity, with sharp impatience, 'you're very
easily deceived. You don't know the arts of which such a creature
is capable. Oh! it's a wicked world.'
'You are not married?' Tom hinted, to divert the conversation.
'N--no!' said Cherry, tracing out one particular paving-stone in
Monument Yard with the end of her parasol. 'I--but really it's
quite impossible to explain. Won't you walk in?'
'You live here, then?' said Tom
'Yes,' returned Miss Pecksniff, pointing with her parasol to
Todgers's; 'I reside with this lady, AT PRESENT.'
The great stress on the two last words suggested to Tom that he was
expected to say something in reference to them. So he said.
'Only at present! Are you going home again soon?'
'No, Mr Pinch,' returned Charity. 'No, thank you. No! A mother-in-
law who is younger than--I mean to say, who is as nearly as possible
about the same age as one's self, would not quite suit my spirit.
Not quite!' said Cherry, with a spiteful shiver.
'I thought from your saying "at present"'--Tom observed.
'Really, upon my word! I had no idea you would press me so very
closely on the subject, Mr Pinch,' said Charity, blushing, 'or I
should not have been so foolish as to allude to--oh really!--won't
you walk in?'
Tom mentioned, to excuse himself, that he had an appointment in
Furnival's Inn, and that coming from Islington he had taken a few
wrong turnings, and arrived at the Monument instead. Miss Pecksniff
simpered very much when he asked her if she knew the way to
Furnival's Inn, and at length found courage to reply.
'A gentleman who is a friend of mine, or at least who is not exactly
a friend so much as a sort of acquaintance--Oh upon my word, I
hardly know what I say, Mr Pinch; you mustn't suppose there is any
engagement between us; or at least if there is, that it is at all a
settled thing as yet--is going to Furnival's Inn immediately, I
believe upon a little business, and I am sure he would be very glad
to accompany you, so as to prevent your going wrong again. You had
better walk in. You will very likely find my sister Merry here,'
she said with a curious toss of her head, and anything but an
agreeable smile.
'Then, I think, I'll endeavour to find my way alone,' said Tom, 'for
I fear she would not be very glad to see me. That unfortunate
occurrence, in relation to which you and I had some amicable words
together, in private, is not likely to have impressed her with any
friendly feeling towards me. Though it really was not my fault.'
'She has never heard of that, you may depend,' said Cherry,
gathering up the corners of her mouth, and nodding at Tom. 'I am
far from sure that she would bear you any mighty ill will for it, if
she had.'
'You don't say so?' cried Tom, who was really concerned by this
insinuation.
'I say nothing,' said Charity. 'If I had not already known what
shocking things treachery and deceit are in themselves, Mr Pinch, I
might perhaps have learnt it from the success they meet with--from
the success they meet with.' Here she smiled as before. 'But I
don't say anything. On the contrary, I should scorn it. You had
better walk in!'
There was something hidden here, which piqued Tom's interest and
troubled his tender heart. When, in a moment's irresolution, he
looked at Charity, he could not but observe a struggle in her face
between a sense of triumph and a sense of shame; nor could he but
remark how, meeting even his eyes, which she cared so little for,
she turned away her own, for all the splenetic defiance in her
manner.
An uneasy thought entered Tom's head; a shadowy misgiving that the
altered relations between himself and Pecksniff were somehow to
involve an altered knowledge on his part of other people, and were
to give him an insight into much of which he had had no previous
suspicion. And yet he put no definite construction upon Charity's
proceedings. He certainly had no idea that as he had been the
audience and spectator of her mortification, she grasped with eager
delight at any opportunity of reproaching her sister with his
presence in HER far deeper misery; for he knew nothing of it, and
only pictured that sister as the same giddy, careless, trivial
creature she always had been, with the same slight estimation of
himself which she had never been at the least pains to conceal. In
short, he had merely a confused impression that Miss Pecksniff was
not quite sisterly or kind; and being curious to set it right,
accompanied her as she desired.
The house-door being opened, she went in before Tom, requesting him
to follow her; and led the way to the parlour door.
'Oh, Merry!' she said, looking in, 'I am so glad you have not gone
home. Who do you think I have met in the street, and brought to see
you! Mr Pinch! There. Now you ARE surprised, I am sure!'
Not more surprised than Tom was, when he looked upon her. Not so
much. Not half so much.
'Mr Pinch has left Papa, my dear,' said Cherry, 'and his prospects
are quite flourishing. I have promised that Augustus, who is going
that way, shall escort him to the place he wants. Augustus, my
child, where are you?'
With these words Miss Pecksniff screamed her way out of the parlour,
calling on Augustus Moddle to appear; and left Tom Pinch alone with
her sister.
If she had always been his kindest friend; if she had treated him
through all his servitude with such consideration as was never yet
received by struggling man; if she had lightened every moment of
those many years, and had ever spared and never wounded him; his
honest heart could not have swelled before her with a deeper pity,
or a purer freedom from all base remembrance than it did then.
'My gracious me! You are really the last person in the world I
should have thought of seeing, I am sure!'
Tom was sorry to hear her speaking in her old manner. He had not
expected that. Yet he did not feel it a contradiction that he
should be sorry to see her so unlike her old self, and sorry at the
same time to hear her speaking in her old manner. The two things
seemed quite natural.
'I wonder you find any gratification in coming to see me. I can't
think what put it in your head. I never had much in seeing you.
There was no love lost between us, Mr Pinch, at any time, I think.'
Her bonnet lay beside her on the sofa, and she was very busy with
the ribbons as she spoke. Much too busy to be conscious of the work
her fingers did.
'We never quarrelled,' said Tom.--Tom was right in that, for one
person can no more quarrel without an adversary, than one person can
play at chess, or fight a duel. 'I hoped you would be glad to shake
hands with an old friend. Don't let us rake up bygones,' said Tom.
'If I ever offended you, forgive me.'
She looked at him for a moment; dropped her bonnet from her hands;
spread them before her altered face, and burst into tears.
'Oh, Mr Pinch!' she said, 'although I never used you well, I did
believe your nature was forgiving. I did not think you could be
cruel.'
She spoke as little like her old self now, for certain, as Tom could
possibly have wished. But she seemed to be appealing to him
reproachfully, and he did not understand her.
'I seldom showed it--never--I know that. But I had that belief in
you, that if I had been asked to name the person in the world least
likely to retort upon me, I would have named you, confidently.'
'Would have named me!' Tom repeated.
'Yes,' she said with energy, 'and I have often thought so.'
After a moment's reflection, Tom sat himself upon a chair beside
her.
'Do you believe,' said Tom, 'oh, can you think, that what I said
just now, I said with any but the true and plain intention which my
words professed? I mean it, in the spirit and the letter. If I
ever offended you, forgive me; I may have done so, many times. You
never injured or offended me. How, then, could I possibly retort,
if even I were stern and bad enough to wish to do it!'
After a little while she thanked him, through her tears and sobs,
and told him she had never been at once so sorry and so comforted,
since she left home. Still she wept bitterly; and it was the
greater pain to Tom to see her weeping, from her standing in
especial need, just then, of sympathy and tenderness.
'Come, come!' said Tom, 'you used to be as cheerful as the day was
long.'
'Ah! used!' she cried, in such a tone as rent Tom's heart.
'And will be again,' said Tom.
'No, never more. No, never, never more. If you should talk with
old Mr Chuzzlewit, at any time,' she added, looking hurriedly into
his face--'I sometimes thought he liked you, but suppressed it--will
you promise me to tell him that you saw me here, and that I said I
bore in mind the time we talked together in the churchyard?'
Tom promised that he would.
'Many times since then, when I have wished I had been carried there
before that day, I have recalled his words. I wish that he should
know how true they were, although the least acknowledgment to that
effect has never passed my lips and never will.'
Tom promised this, conditionally too. He did not tell her how
improbable it was that he and the old man would ever meet again,
because he thought it might disturb her more.
'If he should ever know this, through your means, dear Mr Pinch,'
said Mercy, 'tell him that I sent the message, not for myself, but
that he might be more forbearing and more patient, and more trustful
to some other person, in some other time of need. Tell him that if
he could know how my heart trembled in the balance that day, and
what a very little would have turned the scale, his own would bleed
with pity for me.'
'Yes, yes,' said Tom, 'I will.'
'When I appeared to him the most unworthy of his help, I was--I know
I was, for I have often, often, thought about it since--the most
inclined to yield to what he showed me. Oh! if he had relented but
a little more; if he had thrown himself in my way for but one other
quarter of an hour; if he had extended his compassion for a vain,
unthinking, miserable girl, in but the least degree; he might, and I
believe he would, have saved her! Tell him that I don't blame him,
but am grateful for the effort that he made; but ask him for the
love of God, and youth, and in merciful consideration for the
struggle which an ill-advised and unwakened nature makes to hide the
strength it thinks its weakness--ask him never, never, to forget
this, when he deals with one again!'
Although Tom did not hold the clue to her full meaning, he could
guess it pretty nearly. Touched to the quick, he took her hand and
said, or meant to say, some words of consolation. She felt and
understood them, whether they were spoken or no. He was not quite
certain, afterwards, but that she had tried to kneel down at his
feet, and bless him.
He found that he was not alone in the room when she had left it.
Mrs Todgers was there, shaking her head. Tom had never seen Mrs
Todgers, it is needless to say, but he had a perception of her being
the lady of the house; and he saw some genuine compassion in her
eyes, that won his good opinion.
'Ah, sir! You are an old friend, I see,' said Mrs Todgers.
'Yes,' said Tom.
'And yet,' quoth Mrs Todgers, shutting the door softly, 'she hasn't
told you what her troubles are, I'm certain.'
Tom was struck by these words, for they were quite true. 'Indeed,'
he said, 'she has not.'
'And never would,' said Mrs Todgers, 'if you saw her daily. She
never makes the least complaint to me, or utters a single word of
explanation or reproach. But I know,' said Mrs Todgers, drawing in
her breath, 'I know!'
Tom nodded sorrowfully, 'So do I.'
'I fully believe,' said Mrs Todgers, taking her pocket-handkerchief
from the flat reticule, 'that nobody can tell one half of what that
poor young creature has to undergo. But though she comes here,
constantly, to ease her poor full heart without his knowing it; and
saying, "Mrs Todgers, I am very low to-day; I think that I shall
soon be dead," sits crying in my room until the fit is past; I know
no more from her. And, I believe,' said Mrs Todgers, putting back
her handkerchief again, 'that she considers me a good friend too.'
Mrs Todgers might have said her best friend. Commercial gentlemen
and gravy had tried Mrs Todgers's temper; the main chance--it was
such a very small one in her case, that she might have been excused
for looking sharp after it, lest it should entirely vanish from her
sight--had taken a firm hold on Mrs Todgers's attention. But in
some odd nook in Mrs Todgers's breast, up a great many steps, and in
a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with
'Woman' written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy's hand,
had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter.
When boarding-house accounts are balanced with all other ledgers,
and the books of the Recording Angel are made up for ever, perhaps
there may be seen an entry to thy credit, lean Mrs Todgers, which
shall make thee beautiful!
She was growing beautiful so rapidly in Tom's eyes; for he saw that
she was poor, and that this good had sprung up in her from among the
sordid strivings of her life; that she might have been a very Venus
in a minute more, if Miss Pecksniff had not entered with her friend.
'Mr Thomas Pinch!' said Charity, performing the ceremony of
introduction with evident pride. 'Mr Moddle. Where's my sister?'
'Gone, Miss Pecksniff,' Mrs Todgers answered. 'She had appointed to
be home.'
'Ah!' said Charity, looking at Tom. 'Oh, dear me!'
'She's greatly altered since she's been Anoth--since she's been
married, Mrs Todgers!' observed Moddle.
'My dear Augustus!' said Miss Pecksniff, in a low voice. 'I verily
believe you have said that fifty thousand times, in my hearing.
What a Prose you are!'
This was succeeded by some trifling love passages, which appeared to
originate with, if not to be wholly carried on by Miss Pecksniff.
At any rate, Mr Moddle was much slower in his responses than is
customary with young lovers, and exhibited a lowness of spirits
which was quite oppressive.
He did not improve at all when Tom and he were in the streets, but
sighed so dismally that it was dreadful to hear him. As a means of
cheering him up, Tom told him that he wished him joy.
'Joy!' cried Moddle. 'Ha, ha!'
'What an extraordinary young man!' thought Tom.
'The Scorner has not set his seal upon you. YOU care what becomes
of you?' said Moddle.
Tom admitted that it was a subject in which he certainly felt some
interest.
'I don't,' said Mr Moddle. 'The Elements may have me when they
please. I'm ready.'
Tom inferred from these, and other expressions of the same nature,
that he was jealous. Therefore he allowed him to take his own
course; which was such a gloomy one, that he felt a load removed
from his mind when they parted company at the gate of Furnival's
Inn.
It was now a couple of hours past John Westlock's dinner-time; and
he was walking up and down the room, quite anxious for Tom's safety.
The table was spread; the wine was carefully decanted; and the
dinner smelt delicious.
'Why, Tom, old boy, where on earth have you been? Your box is here.
Get your boots off instantly, and sit down!'
'I am sorry to say I can't stay, John,' replied Tom Pinch, who was
breathless with the haste he had made in running up the stairs.
'Can't stay!'
'If you'll go on with your dinner,' said Tom, 'I'll tell you my
reason the while. I mustn't eat myself, or I shall have no appetite
for the chops.'
'There are no chops here, my food fellow.'
'No. But there are at Islington,' said Tom.
John Westlock was perfectly confounded by this reply, and vowed he
would not touch a morsel until Tom had explained himself fully. So
Tom sat down, and told him all; to which he listened with the
greatest interest.
He knew Tom too well, and respected his delicacy too much, to ask
him why he had taken these measures without communicating with him
first. He quite concurred in the expediency of Tom's immediately
returning to his sister, as he knew so little of the place in
which he had left her, and good-humouredly proposed to ride back
with him in a cab, in which he might convey his box. Tom's
proposition that he should sup with them that night, he flatly
rejected, but made an appointment with him for the morrow. 'And now
Tom,' he said, as they rode along, 'I have a question to ask you to
which I expect a manly and straightforward answer. Do you want any
money? I am pretty sure you do.'
'I don't indeed,' said Tom.
'I believe you are deceiving me.'
'No. With many thanks to you, I am quite in earnest,' Tom replied.
'My sister has some money, and so have I. If I had nothing else,
John, I have a five-pound note, which that good creature, Mrs Lupin,
of the Dragon, handed up to me outside the coach, in a letter
begging me to borrow it; and then drove off as hard as she could
go.'
'And a blessing on every dimple in her handsome face, say I!' cried
John, 'though why you should give her the preference over me, I
don't know. Never mind. I bide my time, Tom.'
'And I hope you'll continue to bide it,' returned Tom, gayly. 'For
I owe you more, already, in a hundred other ways, than I can ever
hope to pay.'
They parted at the door of Tom's new residence. John Westlock,
sitting in the cab, and, catching a glimpse of a blooming little
busy creature darting out to kiss Tom and to help him with his box,
would not have had the least objection to change places with him.
Well! she WAS a cheerful little thing; and had a quaint, bright
quietness about her that was infinitely pleasant. Surely she was
the best sauce for chops ever invented. The potatoes seemed to take
a pleasure in sending up their grateful steam before her; the froth
upon the pint of porter pouted to attract her notice. But it was
all in vain. She saw nothing but Tom. Tom was the first and last
thing in the world.
As she sat opposite to Tom at supper, fingering one of Tom's pet
tunes upon the table-cloth, and smiling in his face, he had never
been so happy in his life.
