Tales from Dickens Part 31

Jonas, his part of the bargain finished, hurried back to London. There, after telling Mercy not to disturb him, as he expected to sleep all next day, he locked himself into his room. When it was dark he dressed himself in a rough suit that he had prepared for disguise, let himself out by a rear way and took the stage back again to the village where he had left Tigg with Pecksniff.

He lay in wait in a wood through which Tigg pa.s.sed after his last call on the architect, and there he killed him with a club. Then he went swiftly back to London and let himself into his room again, thinking no one had noticed his absence.

But there had been an eye at the shutter of the window in the house opposite that did not fail to observe Jonas when he went and when he came. And this eye belonged to Nadgett, the spy.

IV

WHAT CAME OF MARTIN'S TRIP TO AMERICA

While these things were occurring, much had happened to Martin and Mark Tapley far away in America.

The sailing vessel on which they crossed was crowded and dirty, and in order to save their money they had taken pa.s.sage in the steerage. For a long time Martin was very seasick, and even when he grew better he was so ashamed at having to travel in the worst and cheapest part of the vessel that he would not go on deck.

But Tapley had none of this false pride. He made friends with all, helped every one he could and soon became such a general favorite that (as he thought sadly) he was having much too good a time for him to be jolly with any credit.

The long voyage of so many weeks came to an end at last, and they reached New York. They found it a strange place indeed, and met many strange characters in it. Only one they met pleased them: a gentleman named Bevan, and from him they got much information and advice. There seemed, however, to be little opening for an architect in New York, and Martin at length decided to go West and settle in some newer region.

In the western town where they left the train they found a land agent who was selling lots in a new settlement, on the Mississippi River, called Eden. To buy their railway tickets Martin had already sold the ring Mary Graham had given him, and he had just enough to purchase a tract of land in Eden and to pay their fare there.

Martin looked at the agent's splendid plans of the new town, showing wharves, churches and public buildings, and thought it a capital place for a young architect; so they closed the bargain without more ado and took the next steamer down the desolate Mississippi.

A terrible disappointment awaited them when they found what Eden really was--a handful of rotting log cabins set in a swamp. The wharves and public buildings existed only on the agent's map with which he had so cruelly cheated them. There were only a few wan men alive there--the rest had succ.u.mbed to the sickly hot vapor that rose from the swamp and hung in the air. At the sight of what they had come to, Martin lay down and wept in very despair. But for his comrade's cheerfulness he would have wholly given up hope.

Next morning Martin found himself in the grip of the deadly fever with which the place reeked, and for many days thereafter he lay helpless and burning, nursed like a child by the faithful Mark Tapley. When he had begun to recover it came the other's turn to fall ill and Martin took his place at nursing.

Through all Tapley never complained. At last he found himself in circ.u.mstances where to be jolly was really a credit to anybody. He always insisted that he was in great spirits, and when he was weakest and could not speak he wrote "jolly" on a slate for Martin to see.

Watching beside his friend day by day, Martin came to know himself truly and to see his own selfishness. As he nursed Tapley to health again he determined to root it out of his nature and to return to England a n.o.bler man. He began to think not of what he had sacrificed for Mary, but of what she would have sacrificed for him, and to wish with all his heart that he had not parted from his grandfather in anger. And even before Tapley was able to sit up Martin had determined to return as soon as possible to England.

He laid aside his pride and wrote to Bevan, who had befriended them in New York, to borrow money enough to bring them both to that city. Once there, Tapley found a position as cook in the same s.h.i.+p that had brought them from England and his wages proved sufficient to pay for Martin's pa.s.sage.

So Martin started back to the home he had parted from a year before, poorer than he had left it, but at heart a better and a sounder man. His false pride was gone now. He mingled with others and helped them, and by the time they landed he was as popular a pa.s.senger as Mark Tapley was a cook.

Almost the first man they saw on landing, curiously enough, was the oily Pecksniff. They saw him escorted along the street, pointed out by the crowds as "the great architect." On that day the corner stone of a splendid public building was to be laid, and Pecksniff's design for this structure had taken the prize. The two comrades went with the crowd to hear Pecksniff's speech, and looking over a gentleman's shoulder at a picture of the building as it was to look, Martin saw that it was the very grammar school he himself had designed when he had first come to Pecksniff's. The old rascal had stolen the plans!

Martin was angry, of course, but there was no help for it, and besides he had other things to think of. Mary Graham, to be sure, was his first thought, and he and Tapley set out at once for The Blue Dragon to learn the latest news.

The rosy landlady laughed and cried together to see them and Mark Tapley kissed her so many times that she was quite out of breath. She cooked the finest dinner in the world for them and told them all she knew about their friends: how Tom Pinch had been sent away, and how every one said that Pecksniff intended to marry Mary. This news made Martin grind his teeth, and it would have been unlucky for the architect if he had been near at that moment.

Martin first sent Tapley with a note addressed to his grandfather, but Pecksniff, who came to the door, tore up the letter before the bearer's face. Mark told Martin of this, and together they forced themselves into the house, and into the room where old Chuzzlewit sat, with Pecksniff beside him, and Mary standing behind his chair.

Martin's grandfather hardly looked at him, keeping his eyes on Pecksniff's face, as though he depended on him even for his thoughts.

Martin, seeing this, was almost hopeless, but he did as he had determined, and in a few manly words begged old Chuzzlewit's pardon for his own haste and temper, and asked him to take him back to his favor.

While he talked, Mary had hidden her face in her hands and was weeping, for she believed his grandfather so wholly in Pecksniff's power that she had no hope for Martin.

Pecksniff was in rare good humor, for it was this very day that he had turned his money over to Tigg to make a fortune for him in the great Anglo-Bengalee Company. Now, rejoicing in his opportunity, he took it upon himself to answer. He called Martin a shameless, cowardly vagabond and ordered him from the door. Then he gave his arm to the old man and led him out of the room.

Martin clasped Mary for a moment in his arms as he kissed her and told her to keep up heart. Then he left the house and set out with Mark Tapley for London.

V

OLD CHUZZLEWIT'S PLOT SUCCEEDS

Where was the guilty Jonas meanwhile? s.h.i.+vering at every sound, listening for the news that Tigg's body had been found in the wood, wondering if by any chance the crime might be laid on him.

Already fate was weaving a net about his feet. The man from whom he had bought the poison to kill his father had fallen very ill, and in his illness had repented of the part he had played. He had confessed to Westlock, whom, before he had fallen into wicked company, he had once known. Westlock sent for old Chuzzlewit, and he, too, was told the story of the purchased poison. Then together the three went to Jonas's house and brought him face to face with his accuser.

Confronted with their evidence Jonas gave himself up for lost, but old Chuffey, whom he had so abused, escaped the watchful eye of Sairey Gamp and entered just in time to keep his promise to his dead master and to clear Jonas, the son. He told them how it had really happened: How Jonas had intended to kill his father but how the latter's death had been due, not to the poison which he had never taken, but to the knowledge of his son's wickedness.

Jonas, in the reaction from his fear, laughed aloud, and was abusively ordering them to leave, when the door opened and the color suddenly left his cheeks. Policemen stood there, and at their head was Nadgett, the spy.

In another moment there were handcuffs on his wrists and he knew not only that the murder of Tigg had been discovered, but that every action of his own on that fatal night had been traced and that he was surely doomed to die on the gallows.

When he realized that he was lost he fell to the floor in pitiable fear.

They put him in a wagon to take him to jail, but when they arrived there they found him motionless in his seat. He had swallowed some of his own poison which he carried in his pocket, and was as dead as any hangman could have made him.

Old Chuzzlewit had yet another purpose to carry out before he left London, and for this purpose he asked Westlock to meet him in his rooms at a certain time next day. He sent for Tom Pinch and his sister Ruth, for his grandson Martin, and Mark Tapley, and last, but not least, for Pecksniff himself, all to meet him there at the same hour.

All save Pecksniff arrived together, and greatly astonished most of them were, you may be sure, to see old Chuzzlewit so changed. For now the dull, bent look had vanished. His eyes were bright, his form erect and every feature eager and full of purpose. Even Mary Graham scarcely knew what to make of it.

As they sat wondering and waiting for old Chuzzlewit to speak, Pecksniff came hurriedly in, to start back as if at a shock of electricity. But he recovered himself, and clasped his hands with a look of pious joy to see the old man safe and well. Then he looked around him and shook his head.

"Oh, vermin! Oh, bloodsuckers!" he said. "Horde of unnatural plunderers and robbers! Begone! Leave him and do not stay in a spot hallowed by the gray hairs of this patriarchal gentleman!"

He advanced with outstretched arms, but he had not seen how tightly old Chuzzlewit's hand clasped the walking-stick he held. The latter, in one great burst of indignation, rose up, and with a single blow, stretched him on the ground. Mark Tapley dragged him into a corner and propped him against the wall, and in this ridiculous position, cringing, and with his a.s.surance all gone, Pecksniff listened, as did they all, to the old man's story.

He told the a.s.sembled company how the curse of selfishness had seemed to him always to rest upon his family. How he had misunderstood Martin, his best loved grandson, and how he had seen Pecksniff doing his best to add to this bad feeling. He beckoned Martin to him and put Mary's hand in his, as he told how he had tested them both and had at last resolved to see to what a length the hypocrisy of Pecksniff would lead him. How to this end he had pretended feebleness of mind and had planned and plotted finally to expose Pecksniff and set all right.

When he had finished the door was opened and Pecksniff, looking all shrunken and frowsy and yellow, pa.s.sed out, never to enter again into the lives of any of them.

There was a great and joyful gathering that night, when all these, so strangely united, took dinner together. Martin sat beside Mary, while Westlock walked home with Ruth, and before they reached there she had promised to be his wife.

Martin and Mary were married soon, and old Chuzzlewit made Martin his heir. He also gave a home to poor Mercy, the wife of the dead Jonas. Tom Pinch lived a long and happy life in the home which Westlock made for Ruth, where he had a fine organ on which he played every day. Mark Tapley, of course, married the rosy landlady of The Blue Dragon, and settled down at the inn, which he renamed The Jolly Tapley.

Charity Pecksniff succeeded in ensnaring her young man at last. The day they were to be married, however, he did not come to the church, but ran off to Van Diemen's Land, and she lived and died a vinegary, shrewish old maid.

As for Pecksniff himself, having lost all his money in the Anglo-Bengalee Company (which, of course, went to pieces on Tigg's death), he sank lower and lower, till at last, a drunken, squalid old man, he eked out a miserable existence writing whining begging letters to the very people whom he had once labored so hard to make unhappy.

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

Published 1864-1865

_Scene_: London and Neighboring Towns