Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (top novels .txt) 📖

TREATS OF TODGER’S AGAIN; AND OF ANOTHER BLIGHTED PLANT BESIDES THE PLANTS UPON THE LEADS

Early on the day next after that on which she bade adieu to the halls of her youth and the scenes of her childhood, Miss Pecksniff, arriving safely at the coach-office in London, was there received, and conducted to her peaceful home beneath the shadow of the Monument, by Mrs Todgers. M. Todgers looked a little worn by cares of gravy and other such solicitudes arising out of her establishment, but displayed her usual earnestness and warmth of manner.

‘And how, my sweet Miss Pecksniff,’ said she, ‘how is your princely pa?’

Miss Pecksniff signified (in confidence) that he contemplated the introduction of a princely ma; and repeated the sentiment that she wasn’t blind, and wasn’t quite a fool, and wouldn’t bear it.

Mrs Todgers was more shocked by the intelligence than any one could have expected. She was quite bitter. She said there was no truth in man and that the warmer he expressed himself, as a general principle, the falser and more treacherous he was. She foresaw with astonishing clearness that the object of Mr Pecksniff’s attachment was designing, worthless, and wicked; and receiving from Charity the fullest confirmation of these views, protested with tears in her eyes that she loved Miss Pecksniff like a sister, and felt her injuries as if they were her own.

‘Your real darling sister, I have not seen her more than once since her marriage,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘and then I thought her looking poorly. My sweet Miss Pecksniff, I always thought that you was to be the lady?’

‘Oh dear no!’ cried Cherry, shaking her head. ‘Oh no, Mrs Todgers. Thank you. No! not for any consideration he could offer.’

‘I dare say you are right,’ said Mrs Todgers with a sigh. ‘I feared it all along. But the misery we have had from that match, here among ourselves, in this house, my dear Miss Pecksniff, nobody would believe.’

‘Lor, Mrs Todgers!’

‘Awful, awful!’ repeated Mrs Todgers, with strong emphasis. ‘You recollect our youngest gentleman, my dear?’

‘Of course I do,’ said Cherry.

‘You might have observed,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘how he used to watch your sister; and that a kind of stony dumbness came over him whenever she was in company?’

‘I am sure I never saw anything of the sort,’ said Cherry, in a peevish manner. ‘What nonsense, Mrs Todgers!’

‘My dear,’ returned that lady in a hollow voice, ‘I have seen him again and again, sitting over his pie at dinner, with his spoon a perfect fixture in his mouth, looking at your sister. I have seen him standing in a corner of our drawingroom, gazing at her, in such a lonely, melancholy state, that he was more like a Pump than a man, and might have drawed tears.’

‘I never saw it!’ cried Cherry; ‘that’s all I can say.’

‘But when the marriage took place,’ said Mrs Todgers, proceeding with her subject, ‘when it was in the paper, and was read out here at breakfast, I thought he had taken leave of his senses, I did indeed. The violence of that young man, my dear Miss Pecksniff; the frightful opinions he expressed upon the subject of self-destruction; the extraordinary actions he performed with his tea; the clenching way in which he bit his bread and butter; the manner in which he taunted Mr Jinkins; all combined to form a picture never to be forgotten.’

‘It’s a pity he didn’t destroy himself, I think,’ observed Miss Pecksniff.

‘Himself!’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘it took another turn at night. He was for destroying other people then. There was a little chaffing going on—I hope you don’t consider that a low expression, Miss Pecksniff; it is always in our gentlemen’s mouths—a little chaffing going on, my dear, among ‘em, all in good nature, when suddenly he rose up, foaming with his fury, and but for being held by three would have had Mr Jinkins’s life with a bootjack.’

Miss Pecksniff’s face expressed supreme indifference.

‘And now,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘now he is the meekest of men. You can almost bring the tears into his eyes by looking at him. He sits with me the whole day long on Sundays, talking in such a dismal way that I find it next to impossible to keep my spirits up equal to the accommodation of the boarders. His only comfort is in female society. He takes me half-price to the play, to an extent which I sometimes fear is beyond his means; and I see the tears a-standing in his eyes during the whole performance—particularly if it is anything of a comic nature. The turn I experienced only yesterday,’ said Mrs Todgers putting her hand to her side, ‘when the house-maid threw his bedside carpet out of the window of his room, while I was sitting here, no one can imagine. I thought it was him, and that he had done it at last!’

The contempt with which Miss Charity received this pathetic account of the state to which the youngest gentleman in company was reduced, did not say much for her power of sympathising with that unfortunate character. She treated it with great levity, and went on to inform herself, then and afterwards, whether any other changes had occurred in the commercial boarding-house.

Mr Bailey was gone, and had been succeeded (such is the decay of human greatness!) by an old woman whose name was reported to be Tamaroo—which seemed an impossibility. Indeed it appeared in the fullness of time that the jocular boarders had appropriated the word from an English ballad, in which it is supposed to express the bold and fiery nature of a certain hackney coachman; and that it was bestowed upon Mr Bailey’s successor by reason of her having nothing fiery about her, except an occasional attack of that fire which is called St. Anthony’s. This ancient female had been engaged, in fulfillment of a vow, registered by Mrs Todgers, that no more boys should darken the commercial doors; and she was chiefly remarkable for a total absence of all comprehension upon every subject whatever. She was a perfect Tomb for messages and small parcels; and when dispatched to the Post Office with letters, had been frequently seen endeavouring to insinuate them into casual chinks in private doors, under the delusion that any door with a hole in it would answer the purpose. She was a very little old woman, and always wore a very coarse apron with a bib before and a loop behind, together with bandages on her wrists, which appeared to be afflicted with an everlasting sprain. She was on all occasions chary of opening the street door, and ardent to shut it again; and she waited at table in a bonnet.

This was the only great change over and above the change which had fallen on the youngest gentleman. As for him, he more than corroborated the account of Mrs Todgers; possessing greater sensibility than even she had given him credit for. He entertained some terrible notions of Destiny, among other matters, and talked much about people’s ‘Missions’; upon which he seemed to have some private information not generally attainable, as he knew it had been poor Merry’s mission to crush him in the bud. He was very frail and tearful; for being aware that a shepherd’s mission was to pipe to his flocks, and that a boatswain’s mission was to pipe all hands, and that one man’s mission was to be a paid piper, and another man’s mission was to pay the piper, so he had got it into his head that his own peculiar mission was to pipe his eye. Which he did perpetually.

He often informed Mrs Todgers that the sun had set upon him; that the billows had rolled over him; that the car of Juggernaut had crushed him, and also that the deadly Upas tree of Java had blighted him. His name was Moddle.

Towards this most unhappy Moddle, Miss Pecksniff conducted herself at first with distant haughtiness, being in no humour to be entertained with dirges in honour of her married sister. The poor young gentleman was additionally crushed by this, and remonstrated with Mrs Todgers on the subject.

‘Even she turns from me, Mrs Todgers,’ said Moddle.

‘Then why don’t you try and be a little bit more cheerful, sir?’ retorted Mrs Todgers.

‘Cheerful, Mrs Todgers! cheerful!’ cried the youngest gentleman; ‘when she reminds me of days for ever fled, Mrs Todgers!’

‘Then you had better avoid her for a short time, if she does,’ said Mrs Todgers, ‘and come to know her again, by degrees. That’s my advice.’

‘But I can’t avoid her,’ replied Moddle, ‘I haven’t strength of mind to do it. Oh, Mrs Todgers, if you knew what a comfort her nose is to me!’

‘Her nose, sir!’ Mrs Todgers cried.

‘Her profile, in general,’ said the youngest gentleman, ‘but particularly her nose. It’s so like;’ here he yielded to a burst of grief. ‘it’s so like hers who is Another’s, Mrs Todgers!’

The observant matron did not fail to report this conversation