“Chuzzlewit!” replied Montague, leaning forward, with his arms upon his knees, and looking full into his face. “Strange things have been done, and are done every day; not only in our way, but in a variety of other ways; and no one suspects them. But ours, as you say, my good friend, is a strange way; and we strangely happen, sometimes, to come into the knowledge of very strange events.”
He beckoned to Jonas to bring his chair nearer; and looking slightly round, as if to remind him of the presence of Nadgett, whispered in his ear.
From red to white; from white to red again; from red to yellow; then to a cold, dull, awful, sweat-bedabbled blue. In that short whisper, all these changes fell upon the face of Jonas Chuzzlewit; and when at last he laid his hand upon the whisperer’s mouth, appalled, lest any syllable of what he said should reach the ears of the third person present, it was as bloodless and as heavy as the hand of Death.
He drew his chair away, and sat a spectacle of terror, misery, and rage. He was afraid to speak, or look, or move, or sit still. Abject, crouching, and miserable, he was a greater degradation to the form he bore, than if he had been a loathsome wound from head to heel.
His companion leisurely resumed his dressing, and completed it, glancing sometimes with a smile at the transformation he had effected, but never speaking once.
“You’ll not object,” he said, when he was quite equipped, “to venture further with us, Chuzzlewit, my friend?”
His pale lips faintly stammered out a “No.”
“Well said! That’s like yourself. Do you know I was thinking yesterday that your father-in-law, relying on your advice as a man of great sagacity in money matters, as no doubt you are, would join us, if the thing were well presented to him. He has money?”
“Yes, he has money.”
“Shall I leave Mr. Pecksniff to you? Will you undertake for Mr. Pecksniff.”
“I’ll try. I’ll do my best.”
“A thousand thanks,” replied the other, clapping him upon the shoulder. “Shall we walk downstairs? Mr. Nadgett! Follow us, if you please.”
They went down in that order. Whatever Jonas felt in reference to Montague; whatever sense he had of being caged, and barred, and trapped, and having fallen down into a pit of deepest ruin; whatever thoughts came crowding on his mind even at that early time, of one terrible chance of escape, of one red glimmer in a sky of blackness; he no more thought that the slinking figure half-a-dozen stairs behind him was his pursuing Fate, than that the other figure at his side was his Good Angel.
XXXIX
Containing some further particulars of the domestic economy of the Pinches; with strange news from the city, narrowly concerning Tom.
Pleasant little Ruth! Cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet little Ruth! No doll’s house ever yielded greater delight to its young mistress, than little Ruth derived from her glorious dominion over the triangular parlour and the two small bedrooms.
To be Tom’s housekeeper. What dignity! Housekeeping, upon the commonest terms, associated itself with elevated responsibilities of all sorts and kinds; but housekeeping for Tom implied the utmost complication of grave trusts and mighty charges. Well might she take the keys out of the little chiffonier which held the tea and sugar; and out of the two little damp cupboards down by the fireplace, where the very black beetles got mouldy, and had the shine taken out of their backs by envious mildew; and jingle them upon a ring before Tom’s eyes when he came down to breakfast! Well might she, laughing musically, put them up in that blessed little pocket of hers with a merry pride! For it was such a grand novelty to be mistress of anything, that if she had been the most relentless and despotic of all little housekeepers, she might have pleaded just that much for her excuse, and have been honourably acquitted.
So far from being despotic, however, there was a coyness about her very way of pouring out the tea, which Tom quite revelled in. And when she asked him what he would like to have for dinner, and faltered out “chops” as a reasonably good suggestion after their last night’s successful supper, Tom grew quite facetious, and rallied her desperately.
“I don’t know, Tom,” said his sister, blushing, “I am not quite confident, but I think I could make a beefsteak pudding, if I tried, Tom.”
“In the whole catalogue of cookery, there is nothing I should like so much as a beefsteak pudding!” cried Tom, slapping his leg to give the greater force to this reply.
“Yes, dear, that’s excellent! But if it should happen not to come quite right the first time,” his sister faltered; “if it should happen not to be a pudding exactly, but should turn out a stew, or a soup, or something of that sort, you’ll not be vexed, Tom, will you?”
The serious way in which she looked at Tom; the way in which Tom looked at her; and the way in which she gradually broke into a merry laugh at her own expense, would have enchanted you.
“Why,” said Tom, “this is capital. It gives us a new, and quite an uncommon interest in the dinner. We put into a lottery for a beefsteak pudding, and it is impossible to say what we may get. We may make some wonderful discovery, perhaps, and produce such a dish as never was known before.”
“I shall not be at all surprised if we do, Tom,” returned his sister, still laughing merrily, “or if it should prove to be such a dish as we shall not feel very anxious to produce again; but the meat must come out of the saucepan at last, somehow or other, you know. We can’t cook it into nothing at all;
