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

fit has come upon you now?’

‘It is enough to make me mad, seeing what I have seen in this house!’ cried Chuffey. ‘Where is my dear old master! Where is his only son that I have nursed upon my knee, a child! Where is she, she who was the last; she that I’ve seen pining day by day, and heard weeping in the dead of night! She was the last, the last of all my friends! Heaven help me, she was the very last!’

Seeing that the tears were stealing down his face, Jonas mustered courage to unclench his hands, and push him off before he answered:

‘Did you hear me ask for her? Did you hear me send for her? How can I give you up what I haven’t got, idiot! Ecod, I’d give her up to you and welcome, if I could; and a precious pair you’d be!’

‘If she has come to any harm,’ cried Chuffey, ‘mind! I’m old and silly; but I have my memory sometimes; and if she has come to any harm—’

‘Devil take you,’ interrupted Jonas, but in a suppressed voice still; ‘what harm do you suppose she has come to? I know no more where she is than you do; I wish I did. Wait till she comes home, and see; she can’t be long. Will that content you?’

‘Mind!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Not a hair of her head! not a hair of her head illused! I won’t bear it. I—I—have borne it too long Jonas. I am silent, but I—I—I can speak. I—I—I can speak—’ he stammered, as he crept back to his chair, and turned a threatening, though a feeble, look upon him.

‘You can speak, can you!’ thought Jonas. ‘So, so, we’ll stop your speaking. It’s well I knew of this in good time. Prevention is better than cure.’

He had made a poor show of playing the bully and evincing a desire to conciliate at the same time, but was so afraid of the old man that great drops had started out upon his brow; and they stood there yet. His unusual tone of voice and agitated manner had sufficiently expressed his fear; but his face would have done so now, without that aid, as he again walked to and fro, glancing at him by the candelight.

He stopped at the window to think. An opposite shop was lighted up; and the tradesman and a customer were reading some printed bill together across the counter. The sight brought him back, instantly, to the occupation he had forgotten. ‘Look here! Do you know of this? Is it found? Do you suspect ME?’

A hand upon the door. ‘What’s that!’

‘A pleasant evenin’,’ said the voice of Mrs Gamp, ‘though warm, which, bless you, Mr Chuzzlewit, we must expect when cowcumbers is three for twopence. How does Mr Chuffey find his self tonight, sir?’

Mrs Gamp kept particularly close to the door in saying this, and curtseyed more than usual. She did not appear to be quite so much at her ease as she generally was.

‘Get him to his room,’ said Jonas, walking up to her, and speaking in her ear. ‘He has been raving tonight—stark mad. Don’t talk while he’s here, but come down again.’

‘Poor sweet dear!’ cried Mrs Gamp, with uncommon tenderness. ‘He’s all of a tremble.’

‘Well he may be,’ said Jonas, ‘after the mad fit he has had. Get him upstairs.’

She was by this time assisting him to rise.

‘There’s my blessed old chick!’ cried Mrs Gamp, in a tone that was at once soothing and encouraging. ‘There’s my darlin’ Mr Chuffey! Now come up to your own room, sir, and lay down on your bed a bit; for you’re a-shakin’ all over, as if your precious jints was hung upon wires. That’s a good creetur! Come with Sairey!’

‘Is she come home?’ inquired the old man.

‘She’ll be here directly minit,’ returned Mrs Gamp. ‘Come with Sairey, Mr Chuffey. Come with your own Sairey!’

The good woman had no reference to any female in the world in promising this speedy advent of the person for whom Mr Chuffey inquired, but merely threw it out as a means of pacifying the old man. It had its effect, for he permitted her to lead him away; and they quitted the room together.

Jonas looked out of the window again. They were still reading the printed paper in the shop opposite, and a third man had joined in the perusal. What could it be, to interest them so?’

A dispute or discussion seemed to arise among them, for they all looked up from their reading together, and one of the three, who had been glancing over the shoulder of another, stepped back to explain or illustrate some action by his gestures.

Horror! How like the blow he had struck in the wood!

It beat him from the window as if it had lighted on himself. As he staggered into a chair, he thought of the change in Mrs Gamp exhibited in her new-born tenderness to her charge. Was that because it was found?—because she knew of it?—because she suspected him?

‘Mr Chuffey is a-lyin’ down,’ said Mrs Gamp, returning, ‘and much good may it do him, Mr Chuzzlewit, which harm it can’t and good it may; be joyful!’

‘Sit down,’ said Jonas, hoarsely, ‘and let us get this business done. Where is the other woman?’

‘The other person’s with him now,’ she answered.

‘That’s right,’ said Jonas. ‘He is not fit to be left to himself. Why, he fastened on me tonight; here, upon my coat; like a savage dog. Old as he is, and feeble as he is usually, I had some trouble to shake him off. You—Hush!—It’s nothing. You told me the other woman’s name. I forget it.’

‘I mentioned Betsey Prig,’ said Mrs Gamp.

‘She is to be trusted, is she?’

‘That she ain’t!’ said Mrs Gamp; ‘nor have I brought her, Mr Chuzzlewit. I’ve brought another, which engages to give every satigefaction.’

‘What is her name?’ asked Jonas.

Mrs Gamp looked at him in an odd way without returning any answer, but appeared to understand the question too.

‘What is her name?’ repeated Jonas.

‘Her name,’ said Mrs Gamp, ‘is Harris.’

It was extraordinary how much effort it cost Mrs Gamp to pronounce the name she was commonly so ready with. She made some three or four gasps before she could get it out; and, when she had uttered it, pressed her hand upon her side, and turned up her eyes, as if she were going to faint away. But, knowing her to labour under a complication of internal disorders, which rendered a few drops of spirits indispensable at certain times to her existence, and which came on very strong when that remedy was not at hand, Jonas merely supposed her to be the victim of one of these attacks.

‘Well!’ he said, hastily, for he felt how incapable he was of confining his wandering attention to the subject. ‘You and she have arranged to take care of him, have you?’

Mrs Gamp replied in the affirmative, and softly discharged herself of her familiar phrase, ‘Turn and turn about; one off, one on.’ But she spoke so tremulously that she felt called upon to add, ‘which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this night!’

Jonas stopped to listen. Then said, hurriedly:

‘We shall not quarrel about terms. Let them be the same as they were before. Keep him close, and keep him quiet. He must be restrained. He has got it in his head tonight that my wife’s dead, and has been attacking me as if I had killed her. It’s—it’s common with mad people to take the worst fancies of those they like best. Isn’t it?’

Mrs Gamp assented with a short groan.

‘Keep him close, then, or in one of his fits he’ll be doing me a mischief. And don’t trust him at any time; for when he seems most rational, he’s wildest in his talk. But that you know already. Let me see the other.’

‘The t’other person, sir?’ said Mrs Gamp.

‘Aye! Go you to him and send the other. Quick! I’m busy.’

Mrs Gamp took two or three backward steps towards the door, and stopped there.

‘It is your wishes, Mr Chuzzlewit,’ she said, in a sort of quavering croak, ‘to see the t’other person. Is it?’

But the ghastly change in Jonas told her that the other person was already seen. Before she could look round towards the door, she was put aside by old Martin’s hand; and Chuffey and John Westlock entered with him.

‘Let no one leave the house,’ said Martin. ‘This man is my brother’s son. Ill-met, ill-trained, ill-begotten. If he moves from the spot on which he stands, or speaks a word above his breath to any person here, open the window, and call for help!’

‘What right have you to give such directions in this house?’ asked Jonas faintly.

‘The right of your wrong-doing. Come in there!’

An irrepressible exclamation burst from the lips of Jonas, as Lewsome entered at the door. It was not a groan, or a shriek, or a word, but was wholly unlike any sound that had ever fallen on the ears of those who heard it, while at the same time it was the most sharp and terrible expression of what was working in his guilty breast, that nature could have invented.

He had done murder for this! He had girdled himself about with perils, agonies of mind, innumerable fears, for this! He had hidden his secret in the wood; pressed and stamped it down into the bloody ground; and here it started up when least expected, miles upon miles away; known to many; proclaiming itself from the lips of an old man who had renewed his strength and vigour as by a miracle, to give it voice against him!

He leaned his hand on the back of a chair, and looked at them. It was in vain to try to do so scornfully, or with his usual insolence. He required the chair for his support. But he made a struggle for it.

‘I know that fellow,’ he said, fetching his breath at every word, and pointing his trembling finger towards Lewsome. ‘He’s the greatest liar alive. What’s his last tale? Ha, ha! You’re rare fellows, too! Why, that uncle of mine is childish; he’s even a greater child than his brother, my father, was, in his old age; or than Chuffey is. What the devil do you mean,’ he added, looking fiercely at John Westlock and Mark Tapley (the latter had entered with Lewsome), ‘by coming here, and bringing two idiots and a knave with you to take my house by storm? Hallo, there! Open the door! Turn these strangers out!’

‘I tell you what,’ cried Mr Tapley, coming forward, ‘if it wasn’t for your name, I’d drag you through the streets of my own accord, and single-handed I would! Ah, I would! Don’t try and look bold at me. You can’t do it! Now go on, sir,’ this was to old Martin. ‘Bring the murderin’ wagabond upon his knees! If he wants noise, he shall have enough of it; for as sure as he’s a shiverin’ from head to foot I’ll raise a uproar at this winder that shall bring half London in. Go on, sir! Let him try me once, and see whether I’m a man of my word or not.’

With that, Mark folded his arms, and took his seat upon the window-ledge, with an air of general preparation for anything, which seemed to imply that he was equally ready to jump out himself, or to throw Jonas out, upon receiving the slightest hint that it would be agreeable to the company.

Old Martin turned to Lewsome:

‘This is the man,’ he said, extending his hand towards Jonas.