“You’ll—ha, ha, ha!—you’ll excuse me, Mr. Jonas, if I close this door a moment, will you?” said Pecksniff. “This may be a professional call. Indeed I am pretty sure it is. Thank you.” Then Mr. Pecksniff, gently warbling a rustic stave, put on his garden hat, seized a spade, and opened the street door; calmly appearing on the threshold, as if he thought he had, from his vineyard, heard a modest rap, but was not quite certain.
Seeing a gentleman and lady before him, he started back in as much confusion as a good man with a crystal conscience might betray in mere surprise. Recognition came upon him the next moment, and he cried:
“Mr. Chuzzlewit! Can I believe my eyes! My dear sir; my good sir! A joyful hour, a happy hour indeed. Pray, my dear sir, walk in. You find me in my garden-dress. You will excuse it, I know. It is an ancient pursuit, gardening. Primitive, my dear sir; or, if I am not mistaken, Adam was the first of our calling. My Eve, I grieve to say is no more, sir; but”—here he pointed to his spade, and shook his head as if he were not cheerful without an effort—“but I do a little bit of Adam still.”
He had by this time got them into the best parlour, where the portrait by Spiller, and the bust by Spoker, were.
“My daughters,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “will be overjoyed. If I could feel weary upon such a theme, I should have been worn out long ago, my dear sir, by their constant anticipation of this happiness, and their repeated allusions to our meeting at Mrs. Todgers’s. Their fair young friend, too,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “whom they so desire to know and love—indeed to know her, is to love—I hope I see her well. I hope in saying, ‘Welcome to my humble roof!’ I find some echo in her own sentiments. If features are an index to the heart, I have no fears of that. An extremely engaging expression of countenance, Mr. Chuzzlewit, my dear sir—very much so!”
“Mary,” said the old man, “Mr. Pecksniff flatters you. But flattery from him is worth the having. He is not a dealer in it, and it comes from his heart. We thought Mr.—”
“Pinch,” said Mary.
“Mr. Pinch would have arrived before us, Pecksniff.”
“He did arrive before you, my dear sir,” retorted Pecksniff, raising his voice for the edification of Tom upon the stairs, “and was about, I dare say, to tell me of your coming, when I begged him first to knock at my daughters’ chamber, and inquire after Charity, my dear child, who is not so well as I could wish. No,” said Mr. Pecksniff, answering their looks, “I am sorry to say, she is not. It is merely an hysterical affection; nothing more, I am not uneasy. Mr. Pinch! Thomas!” exclaimed Pecksniff, in his kindest accents. “Pray come in. I shall make no stranger of you. Thomas is a friend of mine, of rather long-standing, Mr. Chuzzlewit, you must know.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Tom. “You introduce me very kindly, and speak of me in terms of which I am very proud.”
“Old Thomas!” cried his master, pleasantly “God bless you!”
Tom reported that the young ladies would appear directly, and that the best refreshments which the house afforded were even then in preparation, under their joint superintendence. While he was speaking, the old man looked at him intently, though with less harshness than was common to him; nor did the mutual embarrassment of Tom and the young lady, to whatever cause he attributed it, seem to escape his observation.
“Pecksniff,” he said after a pause, rising and taking him aside towards the window, “I was much shocked on hearing of my brother’s death. We had been strangers for many years. My only comfort is that he must have lived the happier and better man for having associated no hopes or schemes with me. Peace to his memory! We were playfellows once; and it would have been better for us both if we had died then.”
Finding him in this gentle mood, Mr. Pecksniff began to see another way out of his difficulties, besides the casting overboard of Jonas.
“That any man, my dear sir, could possibly be the happier for not knowing you,” he returned, “you will excuse my doubting. But that Mr. Anthony, in the evening of his life, was happier in the affection of his excellent son—a pattern, my dear sir, a pattern to all sons—and in the care of a distant relation who, however lowly in his means of serving him, had no bounds to his inclination; I can inform you.”
“How’s this?” said the old man. “You are not a legatee?”
“You don’t,” said Mr. Pecksniff, with a melancholy pressure of his hand, “quite understand my nature yet, I find. No, sir, I am not a legatee. I am proud to say I am not a legatee. I am proud to say that neither of my children is a legatee. And yet, sir, I was with him at his own request. He understood me somewhat better, sir. He wrote and said, ‘I am sick. I am sinking. Come to me!’ I went to him. I sat beside his bed, sir, and I stood beside his grave. Yes, at the risk of offending even you, I did it, sir. Though the avowal should lead to our instant separation, and to the severing of those tender ties between us which have recently been formed, I make it. But I am not a legatee,” said Mr. Pecksniff, smiling dispassionately; “and I never expected to be a legatee. I knew better!”
“His son a pattern!” cried old Martin. “How can you tell me that? My brother had in his wealth the usual doom of wealth, and root of misery. He carried his corrupting influence with him, go where he would; and shed it round him, even on his hearth. It made of his
