“Hush! Hush!” said Merry, speaking kindly to him. “That happened long ago. Don’t you recollect?”
“Recollect!” rejoined the old man, with a cry of grief. “As if I could forget! As if I ever could forget!”
He put his hand up to his face for a moment; and then repeated turning round exactly as before:
“Who’s lying dead upstairs?”
“No one!” said Merry.
At first he gazed angrily upon her, as upon a stranger who endeavoured to deceive him; but peering into her face, and seeing that it was indeed she, he shook his head in sorrowful compassion.
“You think not. But they don’t tell you. No, no, poor thing! They don’t tell you. Who are these, and why are they merrymaking here, if there is no one dead? Foul play! Go see who it is!”
She made a sign to them not to speak to him, which indeed they had little inclination to do; and remained silent herself. So did he for a short time; but then he repeated the same question with an eagerness that had a peculiar terror in it.
“There’s someone dead,” he said, “or dying; and I want to knows who it is. Go see, go see! Where’s Jonas?”
“In the country,” she replied.
The old man gazed at her as if he doubted what she said, or had not heard her; and, rising from his chair, walked across the room and upstairs, whispering as he went, “Foul play!” They heard his footsteps overhead, going up into that corner of the room in which the bed stood (it was there old Anthony had died); and then they heard him coming down again immediately. His fancy was not so strong or wild that it pictured to him anything in the deserted bedchamber which was not there; for he returned much calmer, and appeared to have satisfied himself.
“They don’t tell you,” he said to Merry in his quavering voice, as he sat down again, and patted her upon the head. “They don’t tell me either; but I’ll watch, I’ll watch. They shall not hurt you; don’t be frightened. When you have sat up watching, I have sat up watching too. Aye, aye, I have!” he piped out, clenching his weak, shrivelled hand. “Many a night I have been ready!”
He said this with such trembling gaps and pauses in his want of breath, and said it in his jealous secrecy so closely in her ear, that little or nothing of it was understood by the visitors. But they had heard and seen enough of the old man to be disquieted, and to have left their seats and gathered about him; thereby affording Mrs. Gamp, whose professional coolness was not so easily disturbed, an eligible opportunity for concentrating the whole resources of her powerful mind and appetite upon the toast and butter, tea and eggs. She had brought them to bear upon those viands with such vigour that her face was in the highest state of inflammation, when she now (there being nothing left to eat or drink) saw fit to interpose.
“Why, highty tighty, sir!” cried Mrs. Gamp, “is these your manners? You want a pitcher of cold water throw’d over you to bring you round; that’s my belief; and if you was under Betsey Prig you’d have it, too, I do assure you, Mr. Chuffey. Spanish Flies is the only thing to draw this nonsense out of you; and if anybody wanted to do you a kindness, they’d clap a blister of ’em on your head, and put a mustard poultige on your back. Who’s dead, indeed! It wouldn’t be no grievous loss if someone was, I think!”
“He’s quiet now, Mrs. Gamp,” said Merry. “Don’t disturb him.”
“Oh, bother the old wictim, Mrs. Chuzzlewit,” replied that zealous lady, “I ain’t no patience with him. You give him his own way too much by half. A worritin’ wexagious creetur!”
No doubt with the view of carrying out the precepts she enforced, and “bothering the old wictim” in practice as well as in theory, Mrs. Gamp took him by the collar of his coat, and gave him some dozen or two of hearty shakes backward and forward in his chair; that exercise being considered by the disciples of the Prig school of nursing (who are very numerous among professional ladies) as exceedingly conducive to repose, and highly beneficial to the performance of the nervous functions. Its effect in this instance was to render the patient so giddy and addle-headed, that he could say nothing more; which Mrs. Gamp regarded as the triumph of her art.
“There!” she said, loosening the old man’s cravat, in consequence of his being rather black in the face, after this scientific treatment. “Now, I hope, you’re easy in your mind. If you should turn at all faint we can soon rewive you, sir, I promige you. Bite a person’s thumbs, or turn their fingers the wrong way,” said Mrs. Gamp, smiling with the consciousness of at once imparting pleasure and instruction to her auditors, “and they comes to, wonderful, Lord bless you!”
As this excellent woman had been formerly entrusted with the care of Mr. Chuffey on a previous occasion, neither Mrs. Jonas nor anybody else had the resolution to interfere directly with her mode of treatment; though all present (Tom Pinch and his sister especially) appeared to be disposed to differ from her views. For such is the rash boldness of the uninitiated, that they will frequently set up some monstrous abstract principle, such as humanity, or tenderness, or the like idle folly, in obstinate defiance of all precedent and usage; and will even venture to maintain the same against the persons who have made the precedents and established the usage, and who must therefore be the best and most impartial judges of the subject.
“Ah, Mr. Pinch!” said Miss Pecksniff. “It all comes of this unfortunate marriage. If my sister had not been so precipitate, and had not united herself to a Wretch, there would have been no Mr. Chuffey in the house.”
“Hush!” cried Tom. “She’ll hear you.”
“I
