“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, gaily. “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 tablecloth, and smiling in his face, he had never been so happy in his life.
XXXVIII
Secret service.
In walking from the city with his sentimental friend, Tom Pinch had looked into the face, and brushed against the threadbare sleeve, of Mr. Nadgett, man of mystery to the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company. Mr. Nadgett naturally passed away from Tom’s remembrance as he passed out of his view; for he didn’t know him, and had never heard his name.
As there are a vast number of people in the huge metropolis of England who rise up every morning not knowing where their heads will rest at night, so there are a multitude who shooting arrows over houses as their daily business, never know on whom they fall. Mr. Nadgett might have passed Tom Pinch ten thousand times; might even have been quite familiar with his face, his name, pursuits, and character; yet never once have dreamed that Tom had any interest in any act or mystery of his. Tom might have done the like by him of course. But the same private man out of all the men alive, was in the mind of each at the same moment; was prominently connected though in a different manner, with the day’s adventures of both; and formed, when they passed each other in the street, the one absorbing topic of their thoughts.
Why Tom had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his mind requires no explanation. Why Mr. Nadgett should have had Jonas Chuzzlewit in his, is quite another thing.
But, somehow or other, that amiable and worthy orphan had become a part of the mystery of Mr. Nadgett’s existence. Mr. Nadgett took an interest in his lightest proceedings; and it never flagged or wavered. He watched him in and out of the Assurance Office, where he was now formally installed as a Director; he dogged his footsteps in the streets; he stood listening when he talked; he sat in coffee-rooms entering his name in the great pocketbook, over and over again; he wrote letters to himself about him constantly; and, when he found them in his pocket, put them in the fire, with such distrust and caution that he would bend down to watch the crumpled tinder while it floated upwards, as if his mind misgave him, that the mystery it had contained might come out at the chimney-pot.
And yet all this was quite a secret. Mr. Nadgett kept it to himself, and kept it close. Jonas had no more idea that Mr. Nadgett’s eyes were fixed on him, than he had that he was living under the
