Chapter Forty-Five

Martin Chuzzlewit

by Charles Dickens

IN WHICH TOM PINCH AND HIS SISTER TAKE A LITTLE PLEASURE; BUT
QUITE IN A DOMESTIC WAY, AND WITH NO CEREMONY ABOUT IT

Tom Pinch and his sister having to part, for the dispatch of the
morning's business, immediately after the dispersion of the other
actors in the scene upon the wharf with which the reader has been
already made acquainted, had no opportunity of discussing the subject
at that time. But Tom, in his solitary office, and Ruth, in the
triangular parlour, thought about nothing else all day; and, when
their hour of meeting in the afternoon approached, they were very
full of it, to be sure.

There was a little plot between them, that Tom should always
come out of the Temple by one way; and that was past the fountain.
Coming through Fountain Court, he was just to glance down the steps
leading into Garden Court, and to look once all round him; and if
Ruth had come to meet him, there he would see her; not sauntering,
you understand (on account of the clerks), but coming briskly up,
with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in
opposition to the fountain, and beat it all to nothing. For, fifty
to one, Tom had been looking for her in the wrong direction, and had
quite given her up, while she had been tripping towards him from the
first; jingling that little reticule of hers (with all the keys in
it) to attract his wandering observation.

Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of
Fountain Court for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the
brightest and purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question
for gardeners, and those who are learned in the loves of plants.
But, that it was a good thing for that same paved yard to have such a
delicate little figure flitting through it; that it passed like a
smile from the grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and left
them duller, darker, sterner than before; there is no sort of doubt.
The Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the
spring of hopeful maidenhood, that in her person stole on, sparkling,
through the dry and dusty channels of the Law; the chirping sparrows,
bred in Temple chinks and crannies, might have held their peace to
listen to imaginary skylarks, as so fresh a little creature passed;
the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in their puny
growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their
benedictions on her graceful head; old love letters, shut up in iron
boxes in the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the
heaps of family papers into which they had strayed, and of which, in
their degeneracy, they formed a part, might have stirred and
fluttered with a moment's recollection of their ancient tenderness,
as she went lightly by. Anything might have happened that did not
happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth.

Something happened, too, upon the afternoon of which the history
treats. Not for her love. Oh no! quite by accident, and without the
least reference to her at all.

Either she was a little too soon, or Tom was a little too
late--she was so precise in general, that she timed it to half a
minute--but no Tom was there. Well! But was anybody else there,
that she blushed so deeply, after looking round, and tripped off down
the steps with such unusual expedition?

Why, the fact is, that Mr Westlock was passing at that moment.
The Temple is a public thoroughfare; they may write up on the gates
that it is not, but so long as the gates are left open it is, and
will be; and Mr Westlock had as good a right to be there as anybody
else. But why did she run away, then? Not being ill dressed, for she
was much too neat for that, why did she run away? The brown hair
that had fallen down beneath her bonnet, and had one impertinent imp
of a false flower clinging to it, boastful of its licence before all
men, that could not have been the cause, for it looked charming. Oh!
foolish, panting, frightened little heart, why did she run away!

Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily the dimples
sparkled on its sunny face. John Westlock hurried after her. Softly
the whispering water broke and fell; as roguishly the dimples
twinkled, as he stole upon her footsteps.

Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart, why did she feign to
be unconscious of his coming! Why wish herself so far away, yet be
so flutteringly happy there!

'I felt sure it was you,' said John, when he overtook her in the
sanctuary of Garden Court. 'I knew I couldn't be mistaken.'

She was so surprised.

'You are waiting for your brother,' said John. 'Let me bear you
company.'

So light was the touch of the coy little hand, that he glanced
down to assure himself he had it on his arm. But his glance,
stopping for an instant at the bright eyes, forgot its first design,
and went no farther.

They walked up and down three or four times, speaking about Tom
and his mysterious employment. Now that was a very natural and
innocent subject, surely. Then why, whenever Ruth lifted up her
eyes, did she let them fall again immediately, and seek the
uncongenial pavement of the court? They were not such eyes as shun
the light; they were not such eyes as require to be hoarded to
enhance their value. They were much too precious and too genuine to
stand in need of arts like those. Somebody must have been looking at
them!

They found out Tom, though, quickly enough. This pair of eyes
descried him in the distance, the moment he appeared. He was staring
about him, as usual, in all directions but the right one; and was as
obstinate in not looking towards them, as if he had intended it. As
it was plain that, being left to himself, he would walk away home,
John Westlock darted off to stop him.

This made the approach of poor little Ruth, by herself, one of
the most embarrassing of circumstances. There was Tom, manifesting
extreme surprise (he had no presence of mind, that Tom, on small
occasions); there was John, making as light of it as he could, but
explaining at the same time with most unnecessary elaboration; and
here was she, coming towards them, with both of them looking at her,
conscious of blushing to a terrible extent, but trying to throw up
her eyebrows carelessly, and pout her rosy lips, as if she were the
coolest and most unconcerned of little women.

Merrily the fountain plashed and plashed, until the dimples,
merging into one another, swelled into a general smile, that covered
the whole surface of the basin.

'What an extraordinary meeting!' said Tom. 'I should never have
dreamed of seeing you two together here.'

'Quite accidental,' John was heard to murmur.

'Exactly,' cried Tom; 'that's what I mean, you know. If it
wasn't accidental, there would be nothing remarkable in it.'

'To be sure,' said John.

'Such an out-of-the-way place for you to have met in,' pursued
Tom, quite delighted. 'Such an unlikely spot!'

John rather disputed that. On the contrary, he considered it a
very likely spot, indeed. He was constantly passing to and fro
there, he said. He shouldn't wonder if it were to happen again. His
only wonder was, that it had never happened before.

By this time Ruth had got round on the farther side of her
brother, and had taken his arm. She was squeezing it now, as much as
to say 'Are you going to stop here all day, you dear, old, blundering
Tom?'

Tom answered the squeeze as if it had been a speech. 'John,' he
said, 'if you'll give my sister your arm, we'll take her between us,
and walk on. I have a curious circumstance to relate to you. Our
meeting could not have happened better.'

Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling
dimples twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a
laugh against the basin's rim, and vanished.

'Tom,' said his friend, as they turned into the noisy street, 'I
have a proposition to make. It is, that you and your sister--if she
will so far honour a poor bachelor's dwelling--give me a great
pleasure, and come and dine with me.'

'What, to-day?' cried Tom.

'Yes, to-day. It's close by, you know. Pray, Miss Pinch,
insist upon it. It will be very disinterested, for I have nothing to
give you.'

'Oh! you must not believe that, Ruth,' said Tom. 'He is the
most tremendous fellow, in his housekeeping, that I ever heard of,
for a single man. He ought to be Lord Mayor. Well! what do you say?
Shall we go?'

'If you please, Tom,' rejoined his dutiful little sister.

'But I mean,' said Tom, regarding her with smiling admiration;
'is there anything you ought to wear, and haven't got? I am sure I
don't know, John; she may not be able to take her bonnet off, for
anything I can tell.'

There was a great deal of laughing at this, and there were
divers compliments from John Westlock--not compliments he said at
least (and really he was right), but good, plain, honest truths,
which no one could deny. Ruth laughed, and all that, but she made no
objection; so it was an engagement.

'If I had known it a little sooner,' said John, 'I would have
tried another pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that
famous one. I wouldn't on any account have had it made with
suet.'

'Why not?' asked Tom.

'Because that cookery-book advises suet,' said John Westlock;
'and ours was made with flour and eggs.'

'Oh good gracious!' cried Tom. 'Ours was made with flour and
eggs, was it? Ha, ha, ha! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and
eggs! Why anybody knows better than that. I know better than that!
Ha, ha, ha!'

It is unnecessary to say that Tom had been present at the making
of the pudding, and had been a devoted believer in it all through.
But he was so delighted to have this joke against his busy little
sister and was tickled to that degree at having found her out, that
he stopped in Temple Bar to laugh; and it was no more to Tom, that he
was anathematized and knocked about by the surly passengers, than it
would have been to a post; for he continued to exclaim with unabated
good humour, 'flour and eggs! A beefsteak pudding made with flour
and eggs!' until John Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from
him, and left him to have his laugh out by himself; which he had, and
then came dodging across the crowded street to them, with such sweet
temper and tenderness (it was quite a tender joke of Tom's) beaming
in his face, God bless it, that it might have purified the air,
though Temple Bar had been, as in the golden days gone by,
embellished with a row of rotting human heads.

There are snug chambers in those Inns where the bachelors live,
and, for the desolate fellows they pretend to be, it is quite
surprising how well they get on. John was very pathetic on the
subject of his dreary life, and the deplorable makeshifts and
apologetic contrivances it involved, but he really seemed to make
himself pretty comfortable. His rooms were the perfection of
neatness and convenience at any rate; and if he were anything but
comfortable, the fault was certainly not theirs.

He had no sooner ushered Tom and his sister into his best room
(where there was a beautiful little vase of fresh flowers on the
table, all ready for Ruth. Just as if he had expected her, Tom
said), than, seizing his hat, he bustled out again, in his most
energetically bustling, way; and presently came hurrying back, as
they saw through the half-opened door, attended by a fiery-faced
matron attired in a crunched bonnet, with particularly long strings
to it hanging down her back; in conjunction with whom he instantly
began to lay the cloth for dinner, polishing up the wine-glasses with
his own hands, brightening the silver top of the pepper-caster on his
coat-sleeve, drawing corks and filling decanters, with a skill and
expedition that were quite dazzling. And as if, in the course of
this rubbing and polishing, he had rubbed an enchanted lamp or a
magic ring, obedient to which there were twenty thousand supernatural
slaves at least, suddenly there appeared a being in a white
waistcoat, carrying under his arm a napkin, and attended by another
being with an oblong box upon his head, from which a banquet, piping
hot, was taken out and set upon the table.

Salmon, lamb, peas, innocent young potatoes, a cool salad,
sliced cucumber, a tender duckling, and a tart--all there. They all
came at the right time. Where they came from, didn't appear; but the
oblong box was constantly going and coming, and making its arrival
known to the man in the white waistcoat by bumping modestly against
the outside of the door; for, after its first appearance, it entered
the room no more. He was never surprised, this man; he never seemed
to wonder at the extraordinary things he found in the box, but took
them out with a face expressive of a steady purpose and impenetrable
character, and put them on the table. He was a kind man; gentle in
his manners, and much interested in what they ate and drank. He was
a learned man, and knew the flavour of John Westlock's private
sauces, which he softly and feelingly described, as he handed the
little bottles round. He was a grave man, and a noiseless; for
dinner being done, and wine and fruit arranged upon the board, he
vanished, box and all, like something that had never been.

'Didn't I say he was a tremendous fellow in his housekeeping?'
cried Tom. 'Bless my soul! It's wonderful.'

'Ah, Miss Pinch,' said John. 'This is the bright side of the
life we lead in such a place. It would be a dismal life, indeed, if
it didn't brighten up to-day'

'Don't believe a word he says,' cried Tom. 'He lives here like
a monarch, and wouldn't change his mode of life for any
consideration. He only pretends to grumble.'

No, John really did not appear to pretend; for he was uncommonly
earnest in his desire to have it understood that he was as dull,
solitary, and uncomfortable on ordinary occasions as an unfortunate
young man could, in reason, be. It was a wretched life, he said, a
miserable life. He thought of getting rid of the chambers as soon as
possible; and meant, in fact, to put a bill up very shortly.

'Well' said Tom Pinch, 'I don't know where you can go, John, to
be more comfortable. That's all I can say. What do you say,
Ruth?'

Ruth trifled with the cherries on her plate, and said that she
thought Mr Westlock ought to be quite happy, and that she had no
doubt he was.

Ah, foolish, panting, frightened little heart, how timidly she
said it!

'But you are forgetting what you had to tell, Tom; what occurred
this morning,' she added in the same breath.

'So I am,' said Tom. 'We have been so talkative on other topics
that I declare I have not had time to think of it. I'll tell it you
at once, John, in case I should forget it altogether.'

On Tom's relating what had passed upon the wharf, his friend was
very much surprised, and took such a great interest in the narrative
as Tom could not quite understand. He believed he knew the old lady
whose acquaintance they had made, he said; and that he might venture
to say, from their description of her, that her name was Gamp. But
of what nature the communication could have been which Tom had borne
so unexpectedly; why its delivery had been entrusted to him; how it
happened that the parties were involved together; and what secret lay
at the bottom of the whole affair; perplexed him very much. Tom had
been sure of his taking some interest in the matter; but was not
prepared for the strong interest he showed. It held John Westlock to
the subject even after Ruth had left the room; and evidently made him
anxious to pursue it further than as a mere subject of
conversation.

'I shall remonstrate with my landlord, of course,' said Tom;
'though he is a very singular secret sort of man, and not likely to
afford me much satisfaction; even if he knew what was in the
letter.'

'Which you may swear he did,' John interposed.

'You think so?'

'I am certain of it.'

'Well!' said Tom, 'I shall remonstrate with him when I see him
(he goes in and out in a strange way, but I will try to catch him
tomorrow morning), on his having asked me to execute such an
unpleasant commission. And I have been thinking, John, that if I
went down to Mrs What's-her-name's in the City, where I was before,
you know--Mrs Todgers's--to-morrow morning, I might find poor Mercy
Pecksniff there, perhaps, and be able to explain to her how I came to
have any hand in the business.'

'You are perfectly right, Tom,' returned his friend, after a
short interval of reflection. 'You cannot do better. It is quite
clear to me that whatever the business is, there is little good in
it; and it is so desirable for you to disentangle yourself from any
appearance of willful connection with it, that I would counsel you to
see her husband, if you can, and wash your hands of it by a plain
statement of the facts. I have a misgiving that there is something
dark at work here, Tom. I will tell you why, at another time; when I
have made an inquiry or two myself.'

All this sounded very mysterious to Tom Pinch. But as he knew
he could rely upon his friend, he resolved to follow this advice.

Ah, but it would have been a good thing to have had a coat of
invisibility, wherein to have watched little Ruth, when she was left
to herself in John Westlock's chambers, and John and her brother were
talking thus, over their wine! The gentle way in which she tried to
get up a little conversation with the fiery-faced matron in the
crunched bonnet, who was waiting to attend her; after making a
desperate rally in regard of her dress, and attiring herself in a
washed-out yellow gown with sprigs of the same upon it, so that it
looked like a tesselated work of pats of butter. That would have
been pleasant. The grim and griffin-like inflexibility with which
the fiery-faced matron repelled these engaging advances, as
proceeding from a hostile and dangerous power, who could have no
business there, unless it were to deprive her of a customer, or
suggest what became of the self-consuming tea and sugar, and other
general trifles. That would have been agreeable. The bashful,
winning, glorious curiosity, with which little Ruth, when fiery-face
was gone, peeped into the books and nick-nacks that were lying about,
and had a particular interest in some delicate paper-matches on the
chimney-piece; wondering who could have made them. That would have
been worth seeing. The faltering hand with which she tied those
flowers together; with which, almost blushing at her own fair self as
imaged in the glass, she arranged them in her breast, and looking at
them with her head aside, now half resolved to take them out again,
now half resolved to leave them where they were. That would have been
delightful!

John seemed to think it all delightful; for coming in with Tom
to tea, he took his seat beside her like a man enchanted. And when
the tea-service had been removed, and Tom, sitting down at the piano,
became absorbed in some of his old organ tunes, he was still beside
her at the open window, looking out upon the twilight.

There is little enough to see in Furnival's Inn. It is a shady,
quiet place, echoing to the footsteps of the stragglers who have
business there; and rather monotonous and gloomy on summer evenings.
What gave it such a charm to them, that they remained at the window
as unconscious of the flight of time as Tom himself, the dreamer,
while the melodies which had so often soothed his spirit were
hovering again about him! What power infused into the fading light,
the gathering darkness; the stars that here and there appeared; the
evening air, the City's hum and stir, the very chiming of the old
church clocks; such exquisite enthrallment, that the divinest regions
of the earth spread out before their eyes could not have held them
captive in a stronger chain?

The shadows deepened, deepened, and the room became quite dark.
Still Tom's fingers wandered over the keys of the piano, and still
the window had its pair of tenants. At length, her hand upon his
shoulder, and her breath upon his forehead, roused Tom from his
reverie.

'Dear me!' he cried, desisting with a start. 'I am afraid I
have been very inconsiderate and unpolite.'

Tom little thought how much consideration and politeness he had
shown!

'Sing something to us, my dear,' said Tom. 'let us hear your
voice. Come!'

John Westlock added his entreaties with such earnestness that a
flinty heart alone could have resisted them. Hers was not a flinty
heart. Oh, dear no! Quite another thing.

So down she sat, and in a pleasant voice began to sing the
ballads Tom loved well. Old rhyming stories, with here and there a
pause for a few simple chords, such as a harper might have sounded in
the ancient time while looking upward for the current of some half-
remembered legend; words of old poets, wedded to such measures that
the strain of music might have been the poet's breath, giving
utterance and expression to his thoughts; and now a melody so joyous
and light-hearted, that the singer seemed incapable of sadness, until
in her inconstancy (oh wicked little singer!) she relapsed, and broke
the listeners' hearts again; these were the simple means she used to
please them. And that these simple means prevailed, and she did
please them, let the still darkened chamber, and its long- deferred
illumination witness.

The candles came at last, and it was time for moving homeward.
Cutting paper carefully, and rolling it about the stalks of those
same flowers, occasioned some delay; but even this was done in time,
and Ruth was ready.

'Good night!' said Tom. 'A memorable and delightful visit,
John! Good night!'

John thought he would walk with them.

'No, no. Don't!' said Tom. 'What nonsense! We can get home
very well alone. I couldn't think of taking you out.'

But John said he would rather.

'Are you sure you would rather?' said Tom. 'I am afraid you
only say so out of politeness.'

John being quite sure, gave his arm to Ruth, and led her out.
Fiery-face, who was again in attendance, acknowledged her departure
with so cold a curtsey that it was hardly visible; and cut Tom,
dead.

Their host was bent on walking the whole distance, and would not
listen to Tom's dissuasions. Happy time, happy walk, happy parting,
happy dreams! But there are some sweet day-dreams, so there are that
put the visions of the night to shame.

Busily the Temple fountain murmured in the moonlight, while Ruth
lay sleeping, with her flowers beside her; and John Westlock sketched
a portrait--whose?--from memory.