IN WHICH MARTIN BIDS ADIEU TO THE LADY OF HIS LOVE; AND HONOURS AN OBSCURE INDIVIDUAL WHOSE FORTUNE HE INTENDS TO MAKE BY COMMENDING HER TO HIS PROTECTION
The letter being duly signed, sealed, and delivered, was handed to Mark Tapley, for immediate conveyance if possible. And he succeeded so well in his embassy as to be enabled to return that same night, just as the house was closing, with the welcome intelligence that he had sent it upstairs to the young lady, enclosed in a small manuscript of his own, purporting to contain his further petition to be engaged in Mr Chuzzlewit’s service; and that she had herself come down and told him, in great haste and agitation, that she would meet the gentleman at eight o’clock to-morrow morning in St. James’s Park. It was then agreed between the new master and the new man, that Mark should be in waiting near the hotel in good time, to escort the young lady to the place of appointment; and when they had parted for the night with this understanding, Martin took up his pen again; and before he went to bed wrote another letter, whereof more will be seen presently.
He was up before daybreak, and came upon the Park with the morning, which was clad in the least engaging of the three hundred and sixty-five dresses in the wardrobe of the year. It was raw, damp, dark, and dismal; the clouds were as muddy as the ground; and the short perspective of every street and avenue was closed up by the mist as by a filthy curtain.
‘Fine weather indeed,’ Martin bitterly soliloquised, ‘to be wandering up and down here in, like a thief! Fine weather indeed, for a meeting of lovers in the open air, and in a public walk! I need be departing, with all speed, for another country; for I have come to a pretty pass in this!’
He might perhaps have gone on to reflect that of all mornings in the year, it was not the best calculated for a young lady’s coming forth on such an errand, either. But he was stopped on the road to this reflection, if his thoughts tended that way, by her appearance at a short distance, on which he hurried forward to meet her. Her squire, Mr Tapley, at the same time fell discreetly back, and surveyed the fog above him with an appearance of attentive interest.
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‘My dear Martin,’ said Mary.
‘My dear Mary,’ said Martin; and lovers are such a singular kind of people that this is all they did say just then, though Martin took her arm, and her hand too, and they paced up and down a short walk that was least exposed to observation, half-a-dozen times.
‘If you have changed at all, my love, since we parted,’ said Martin at length, as he looked upon her with a proud delight, ‘it is only to be more beautiful than ever!’
Had she been of the common metal of love-worn young ladies, she would have denied this in her most interesting manner; and would have told him that she knew she had become a perfect fright; or that she had wasted away with weeping and anxiety; or that she was dwindling gently into an early grave; or that her mental sufferings were unspeakable; or would, either by tears or words, or a mixture of both, have furnished him with some other information to that effect, and made him as miserable as possible. But she had been reared up in a sterner school than the minds of most young girls are formed in; she had had her nature strengthened by the hands of hard endurance and necessity; had come out from her young trials constant, self-denying, earnest, and devoted; had acquired in her maidenhood—whether happily in the end, for herself or him, is foreign to our present purpose to inquire—something of that nobler quality of gentle hearts which is developed often by the sorrows and struggles of matronly years, but often by their lessons only. Unspoiled, unpampered in her joys or griefs; with frank and full, and deep affection for the object of her early love; she saw in him one who for her sake was an outcast from his home and fortune, and she had no more idea of bestowing that love upon him in other than cheerful and sustaining words, full of high hope and grateful trustfulness, than she had of being unworthy of it, in her lightest thought or deed, for any base temptation that the world could offer.
‘What change is there inyou, Martin,’ she replied; ‘for that concerns me nearest? You look more anxious and more thoughtful than you used.’
‘Why, as to that, my love,’ said Martin as he drew her waist within his arm, first looking round to see that there were no observers near, and beholding Mr Tapley more intent than ever on the fog; ‘it would be strange if I did not; for my life—especially of late—has been a hard one.’
‘I know it must have been,’ she answered. ‘When have I forgotten to think of it and you?’
‘Not often, I hope,’ said Martin. ‘Not often, I am sure. Not often, I have some right to expect, Mary; for I have undergone a great deal of vexation and privation, and I naturally look for that return, you know.’
‘A very, very poor return,’ she answered with a fainter smile. ‘But you have it, and will have it always. You have paid a dear price for a poor heart, Martin; but it is at least your own, and a true one.’
‘Of course I feel quite certain of that,’ said Martin, ‘or I shouldn’t have put myself in my present position. And don’t say a poor heart, Mary, for I say a rich one. Now, I am about to break a design to you, dearest, which will startle you at first, but which is undertaken for your sake. I am going,’ he added slowly, looking far into the deep wonder of her bright dark eyes, ‘abroad.’
‘Abroad, Martin!’
‘Only to America. See now. How you droop directly!’
‘If I do, or, I hope I may say, if I did,’ she answered, raising her head after a short silence, and looking once more into his face, ‘it was for grief to think of what you are resolved to undergo for me. I would not venture to dissuade you, Martin; but it is a long, long distance; there is a wide ocean to be crossed; illness and want are sad calamities in any place, but in a foreign country dreadful to endure. Have you thought of all this?’
‘Thought of it!’ cried Martin, abating, in his fondness—and hewasvery fond of her—hardly an iota of his usual impetuosity. ‘What am I to do? It’s very well to say, “Have I thought of it?” my love; but you should ask me in the same breath, have I thought of starving at home; have I thought of doing porter’s work for a living; have I thought of holding horses in the streets to earn my roll of bread from day to day? Come, come,’ he added, in a gentler tone, ‘do not hang down your head, my dear, for I need the encouragement that your sweet face alone can give me. Why, that’s well! Now you are brave again.’
‘I am endeavouring to be,’ she answered, smiling through her tears.
‘Endeavouring to be anything that’s good, and being it, is, with you, all one. Don’t I know that of old?’ cried Martin, gayly. ‘So! That’s famous! Now I can tell you all my plans as cheerfully as if you were my little wife already, Mary.’
She hung more closely on his arm, and looking upwards in his face, bade him speak on.
‘You see,’ said Martin, playing with the little hand upon his wrist, ‘that my attempts to advance myself at home have been baffled and rendered abortive. I will not say by whom, Mary, for that would give pain to us both. But so it is. Have you heard him speak of late of any relative of mine or his, called Pecksniff? Only tell me what I ask you, no more.’
‘I have heard, to my surprise, that he is a better man than was supposed.’
‘I thought so,’ interrupted Martin.
‘And that it is likely we may come to know him, if not to visit and reside with him and—I think—his daughters. Hehasdaughters, has he, love?’
‘A pair of them,’ Martin answered. ‘A precious pair! Gems of the first water!’
‘Ah! You are jesting!’
‘There is a sort of jesting which is very much in earnest, and includes some pretty serious disgust,’ said Martin. ‘I jest in reference to Mr Pecksniff (at whose house I have been living as his assistant, and at whose hands I have received insult and injury), in that vein. Whatever betides, or however closely you may be brought into communication with this family, never forget that, Mary; and never for an instant, whatever appearances may seem to contradict me, lose sight of this assurance—Pecksniff is a scoundrel.’
‘Indeed!’
‘In thought, and in deed, and in everything else. A scoundrel from the topmost hair of his head, to the nethermost atom of his heel. Of his daughters I will only say that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are dutiful young ladies, and take after their father closely. This is a digression from the main point, and yet it brings me to what I was going to say.’
He stopped to look into her eyes again, and seeing, in a hasty glance over his shoulder, that there was no one near, and that Mark was still intent upon the fog, not only looked at her lips, too, but kissed them into the bargain.
‘Now I am going to America, with great prospects of doing well, and of returning home myself very soon; it may be to take you there for a few years, but, at all events, to claim you for my wife; which, after such trials, I should do with no fear of your still thinking it a duty to cleave to him who will not suffer me to live (for this is true), if he can help it, in my own land. How long I may be absent is, of course, uncertain; but it shall not be very long. Trust me for that.’
‘In the meantime, dear Martin—’
‘That’s the very thing I am coming to. In the meantime you shall hear, constantly, of all my goings-on. Thus.’
He paused to take from his pocket the letter he had written overnight, and then resumed:
‘In this fellow’s employment, and living in this fellow’s house (by fellow, I mean Mr Pecksniff, of course), there is a certain person of the name of Pinch. Don’t forget; a poor, strange, simple oddity, Mary; but thoroughly honest and sincere; full of zeal; and with a cordial regard for me. Which I mean to return one of these days, by setting him up in life in some way or other.’
‘Your old kind nature, Martin!’
‘Oh!’ said Martin, ‘that’s not worth speaking of, my love. He’s very grateful and desirous to serve me; and I am more than repaid. Now one night I told this Pinch my history, and all about myself and you; in which he was not a little interested, I can tell you, for he knows you! Aye, you may look surprised—and the longer the better for it becomes you—but you have heard him play the organ in the church of that village before now; and he has seen you listening to his music; and has caught his inspiration from you, too!’
‘Washethe organist?’ cried Mary. ‘I thank him from my heart!’
‘Yes, he was,’ said Martin, ‘and is, and gets nothing for it either. There never was such a simple fellow! Quite an infant! But a very good sort of creature, I assure you.’
‘I am sure of that,’ she said with great earnestness. ‘He must be!’
‘Oh, yes, no doubt at all about it,’ rejoined Martin, in his usual careless way. ‘He is. Well! It has occurred to me—but stay. If I read you what I have written and intend sending to him by post to-night it will explain itself. “My dear Tom Pinch.” That’s rather familiar perhaps,’ said Martin, suddenly remembering that he was proud when they had last met, ‘but I call him my dear Tom Pinch because he likes it, and it pleases him.’
‘Very right, and very kind,’ said Mary.
‘Exactly so!’ cried Martin. ‘It’s as well to be kind whenever one can; and, as I said before, he really is an excellent fellow. “My dear Tom Pinch—I address this under cover to Mrs Lupin, at the Blue Dragon, and have begged her in a short note to deliver it to you without saying anything about it elsewhere; and to do the same with all future letters she may receive from me. My reason for so doing will be at once apparent to you”—I don’t know that it will be, by the bye,’ said Martin, breaking off, ‘for he’s slow of comprehension, poor fellow; but he’ll find it out in time. My reason simply is, that I don’t want my letters to be read by other people; and particularly by the scoundrel whom he thinks an angel.’
‘Mr Pecksniff again?’ asked Mary.
‘The same,’ said Martin ‘—will be at once apparent to you. I have completed my arrangements for going to America; and you will be surprised to hear that I am to be accompanied by Mark Tapley, upon whom I have stumbled strangely in London, and who insists on putting himself under my protection’—meaning, my love,’ said Martin, breaking off again, ‘our friend in the rear, of course.’
She was delighted to hear this, and bestowed a kind glance upon Mark, which he brought his eyes down from the fog to encounter and received with immense satisfaction. She said in his hearing, too, that he was a good soul and a merry creature, and would be faithful, she was certain; commendations which Mr Tapley inwardly resolved to deserve, from such lips, if he died for it.
‘“Now, my dear Pinch,”’ resumed Martin, proceeding with his letter; ‘“I am going to repose great trust in you, knowing that I may do so with perfect reliance on your honour and secrecy, and having nobody else just now to trust in.”’
‘I don’t think I would say that, Martin.’
‘Wouldn’t you? Well! I’ll take that out. It’s perfectly true, though.’
‘But it might seem ungracious, perhaps.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind Pinch,’ said Martin. ‘There’s no occasion to stand on any ceremony withhim. However, I’ll take it out, as you wish it, and make the full stop at “secrecy.” Very well! “I shall not only”—this is the letter again, you know.’
‘I understand.’
‘“I shall not only enclose my letters to the young lady of whom I have told you, to your charge, to be forwarded as she may request; but I most earnestly commit her, the young lady herself, to your care and regard, in the event of your meeting in my absence. I have reason to think that the probabilities of your encountering each other—perhaps very frequently—are now neither remote nor few; and although in our position you can do very little to lessen the uneasiness of hers, I trust to you implicitly to do that much, and so deserve the confidence I have reposed in you.” You see, my dear Mary,’ said Martin, ‘it will be a great consolation to you to have anybody, no matter how simple, with whom you can speak aboutme; and the very first time you talk to Pinch, you’ll feel at once that there is no more occasion for any embarrassment or hesitation in talking to him, than if he were an old woman.’
‘However that may be,’ she returned, smiling, ‘he is your friend, and that is enough.’
‘Oh, yes, he’s my friend,’ said Martin, ‘certainly. In fact, I have told him in so many words that we’ll always take notice of him, and protect him; and it’s a good trait in his character that he’s grateful—very grateful indeed. You’ll like him of all things, my love, I know. You’ll observe very much that’s comical and old-fashioned about Pinch, but you needn’t mind laughing at him; for he’ll not care about it. He’ll rather like it indeed!’
‘I don’t think I shall put that to the test, Martin.’
‘You won’t if you can help it, of course,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ll find him a little too much for your gravity. However, that’s neither here nor there, and it certainly is not the letter; which ends thus: “Knowing that I need not impress the nature and extent of that confidence upon you at any greater length, as it is already sufficiently established in your mind, I will only say, in bidding you farewell and looking forward to our next meeting, that I shall charge myself from this time, through all changes for the better, with your advancement and happiness, as if they were my own. You may rely upon that. And always believe me, my dear Tom Pinch, faithfully your friend, Martin Chuzzlewit. P.S.—I enclose the amount which you so kindly”—Oh,’ said Martin, checking himself, and folding up the letter, ‘that’s nothing!’
At this crisis Mark Tapley interposed, with an apology for remarking that the clock at the Horse Guards was striking.
‘Which I shouldn’t have said nothing about, sir,’ added Mark, ‘if the young lady hadn’t begged me to be particular in mentioning it.’
‘I did,’ said Mary. ‘Thank you. You are quite right. In another minute I shall be ready to return. We have time for a very few words more, dear Martin, and although I had much to say, it must remain unsaid until the happy time of our next meeting. Heaven send it may come speedily and prosperously! But I have no fear of that.’
‘Fear!’ cried Martin. ‘Why, who has? What are a few months? What is a whole year? When I come gayly back, with a road through life hewn out before me, then indeed, looking back upon this parting, it may seem a dismal one. But now! I swear I wouldn’t have it happen under more favourable auspices, if I could; for then I should be less inclined to go, and less impressed with the necessity.’
‘Yes, yes. I feel that too. When do you go?’
‘To-night. We leave for Liverpool to-night. A vessel sails from that port, as I hear, in three days. In a month, or less, we shall be there. Why, what’s a month! How many months have flown by, since our last parting!’
‘Long to look back upon,’ said Mary, echoing his cheerful tone, ‘but nothing in their course!’
‘Nothing at all!’ cried Martin. ‘I shall have change of scene and change of place; change of people, change of manners, change of cares and hopes! Time will wear wings indeed! I can bear anything, so that I have swift action, Mary.’
Was he thinking solely of her care for him, when he took so little heed of her share in the separation; of her quiet monotonous endurance, and her slow anxiety from day to day? Was there nothing jarring and discordant even in his tone of courage, with this one note ‘self’ for ever audible, however high the strain? Not in her ears. It had been better otherwise, perhaps, but so it was. She heard the same bold spirit which had flung away as dross all gain and profit for her sake, making light of peril and privation that she might be calm and happy; and she heard no more. That heart where self has found no place and raised no throne, is slow to recognize its ugly presence when it looks upon it. As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know each other in their hiding-places every day, when Virtue is incredulous and blind.
‘The quarter’s gone!’ cried Mr Tapley, in a voice of admonition.
‘I shall be ready to return immediately,’ she said. ‘One thing, dear Martin, I am bound to tell you. You entreated me a few minutes since only to answer what you asked me in reference to one theme, but you should and must know (otherwise I could not be at ease) that since that separation of which I was the unhappy occasion, he has never once uttered your name; has never coupled it, or any faint allusion to it, with passion or reproach; and has never abated in his kindness to me.’
‘I thank him for that last act,’ said Martin, ‘and for nothing else. Though on consideration I may thank him for his other forbearance also, inasmuch as I neither expect nor desire that he will mention my name again. He may once, perhaps—to couple it with reproach—in his will. Let him, if he please! By the time it reaches me, he will be in his grave; a satire on his own anger, God help him!’
‘Martin! If you would but sometimes, in some quiet hour; beside the winter fire; in the summer air; when you hear gentle music, or think of Death, or Home, or Childhood; if you would at such a season resolve to think, but once a month, or even once a year, of him, or any one who ever wronged you, you would forgive him in your heart, I know!’
‘If I believed that to be true, Mary,’ he replied, ‘I would resolve at no such time to bear him in my mind; wishing to spare myself the shame of such a weakness. I was not born to be the toy and puppet of any man, far less his; to whose pleasure and caprice, in return for any good he did me, my whole youth was sacrificed. It became between us two a fair exchange—a barter—and no more; and there is no such balance against me that I need throw in a mawkish forgiveness to poise the scale. He has forbidden all mention of me to you, I know,’ he added hastily. ‘Come! Has he not?’
‘That was long ago,’ she returned; ‘immediately after your parting; before you had left the house. He has never done so since.’
‘He has never done so since because he has seen no occasion,’ said Martin; ‘but that is of little consequence, one way or other. Let all allusion to him between you and me be interdicted from this time forth. And therefore, love’—he drew her quickly to him, for the time of parting had now come—‘in the first letter that you write to me through the Post Office, addressed to New York; and in all the others that you send through Pinch; remember he has no existence, but has become to us as one who is dead. Now, God bless you! This is a strange place for such a meeting and such a parting; but our next meeting shall be in a better, and our next and last parting in a worse.’
‘One other question, Martin, I must ask. Have you provided money for this journey?’
‘Have I?’ cried Martin; it might have been in his pride; it might have been in his desire to set her mind at ease: ‘Have I provided money? Why, there’s a question for an emigrant’s wife! How could I move on land or sea without it, love?’
‘I mean, enough.’
‘Enough! More than enough. Twenty times more than enough. A pocket-full. Mark and I, for all essential ends, are quite as rich as if we had the purse of Fortunatus in our baggage.’
‘The half-hour’s a-going!’ cried Mr Tapley.
‘Good-bye a hundred times!’ cried Mary, in a trembling voice.
But how cold the comfort in Good-bye! Mark Tapley knew it perfectly. Perhaps he knew it from his reading, perhaps from his experience, perhaps from intuition. It is impossible to say; but however he knew it, his knowledge instinctively suggested to him the wisest course of proceeding that any man could have adopted under the circumstances. He was taken with a violent fit of sneezing, and was obliged to turn his head another way. In doing which, he, in a manner fenced and screened the lovers into a corner by themselves.
There was a short pause, but Mark had an undefined sensation that it was a satisfactory one in its way. Then Mary, with her veil lowered, passed him with a quick step, and beckoned him to follow. She stopped once more before they lost that corner; looked back; and waved her hand to Martin. He made a start towards them at the moment as if he had some other farewell words to say; but she only hurried off the faster, and Mr Tapley followed as in duty bound.
When he rejoined Martin again in his own chamber, he found that gentleman seated moodily before the dusty grate, with his two feet on the fender, his two elbows on his knees, and his chin supported, in a not very ornamental manner, on the palms of his hands.
‘Well, Mark!’
‘Well, sir,’ said Mark, taking a long breath, ‘I see the young lady safe home, and I feel pretty comfortable after it. She sent a lot of kind words, sir, and this,’ handing him a ring, ‘for a parting keepsake.’
‘Diamonds!’ said Martin, kissing it—let us do him justice, it was for her sake; not for theirs—and putting it on his little finger. ‘Splendid diamonds! My grandfather is a singular character, Mark. He must have given her this now.’
Mark Tapley knew as well that she had bought it, to the end that that unconscious speaker might carry some article of sterling value with him in his necessity; as he knew that it was day, and not night. Though he had no more acquaintance of his own knowledge with the history of the glittering trinket on Martin’s outspread finger, than Martin himself had, he was as certain that in its purchase she had expended her whole stock of hoarded money, as if he had seen it paid down coin by coin. Her lover’s strange obtuseness in relation to this little incident, promptly suggested to Mark’s mind its real cause and root; and from that moment he had a clear and perfect insight into the one absorbing principle of Martin’s character.
‘She is worthy of the sacrifices I have made,’ said Martin, folding his arms, and looking at the ashes in the stove, as if in resumption of some former thoughts. ‘Well worthy of them. No riches’—here he stroked his chin and mused—‘could have compensated for the loss of such a nature. Not to mention that in gaining her affection I have followed the bent of my own wishes, and baulked the selfish schemes of others who had no right to form them. She is quite worthy—more than worthy—of the sacrifices I have made. Yes, she is. No doubt of it.’
These ruminations might or might not have reached Mark Tapley; for though they were by no means addressed to him, yet they were softly uttered. In any case, he stood there, watching Martin with an indescribable and most involved expression on his visage, until that young man roused himself and looked towards him; when he turned away, as being suddenly intent upon certain preparations for the journey, and, without giving vent to any articulate sound, smiled with surpassing ghastliness, and seemed by a twist of his features and a motion of his lips, to release himself of this word:
‘Jolly!’
A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of their own tongues, but newly resting from the ghostly preachment ‘One!’ The earth covered with a sable pall as for the burial of yesterday; the clumps of dark trees, its giant plumes of funeral feathers, waving sadly to and fro: all hushed, all noiseless, and in deep repose, save the swift clouds that skim across the moon, and the cautious wind, as, creeping after them upon the ground, it stops to listen, and goes rustling on, and stops again, and follows, like a savage on the trail.
Whither go the clouds and wind so eagerly? If, like guilty spirits, they repair to some dread conference with powers like themselves, in what wild regions do the elements hold council, or where unbend in terrible disport?
Here! Free from that cramped prison called the earth, and out upon the waste of waters. Here, roaring, raging, shrieking, howling, all night long. Hither come the sounding voices from the caverns on the coast of that small island, sleeping, a thousand miles away, so quietly in the midst of angry waves; and hither, to meet them, rush the blasts from unknown desert places of the world. Here, in the fury of their unchecked liberty, they storm and buffet with each other, until the sea, lashed into passion like their own, leaps up, in ravings mightier than theirs, and the whole scene is madness.
On, on, on, over the countless miles of angry space roll the long heaving billows. Mountains and caves are here, and yet are not; for what is now the one, is now the other; then all is but a boiling heap of rushing water. Pursuit, and flight, and mad return of wave on wave, and savage struggle, ending in a spouting-up of foam that whitens the black night; incessant change of place, and form, and hue; constancy in nothing, but eternal strife; on, on, on, they roll, and darker grows the night, and louder howls the wind, and more clamorous and fierce become the million voices in the sea, when the wild cry goes forth upon the storm ‘A ship!’
Onward she comes, in gallant combat with the elements, her tall masts trembling, and her timbers starting on the strain; onward she comes, now high upon the curling billows, now low down in the hollows of the sea, as hiding for the moment from its fury; and every storm-voice in the air and water cries more loudly yet, ‘A ship!’
Still she comes striving on; and at her boldness and the spreading cry, the angry waves rise up above each other’s hoary heads to look; and round about the vessel, far as the mariners on the decks can pierce into the gloom, they press upon her, forcing each other down and starting up, and rushing forward from afar, in dreadful curiosity. High over her they break; and round her surge and roar; and giving place to others, moaningly depart, and dash themselves to fragments in their baffled anger. Still she comes onward bravely. And though the eager multitude crowd thick and fast upon her all the night, and dawn of day discovers the untiring train yet bearing down upon the ship in an eternity of troubled water, onward she comes, with dim lights burning in her hull, and people there, asleep; as if no deadly element were peering in at every seam and chink, and no drowned seaman’s grave, with but a plank to cover it, were yawning in the unfathomable depths below.
Among these sleeping voyagers were Martin and Mark Tapley, who, rocked into a heavy drowsiness by the unaccustomed motion, were as insensible to the foul air in which they lay, as to the uproar without. It was broad day when the latter awoke with a dim idea that he was dreaming of having gone to sleep in a four-post bedstead which had turned bottom upwards in the course of the night. There was more reason in this too, than in the roasting of eggs; for the first objects Mr Tapley recognized when he opened his eyes were his own heels—looking down to him, as he afterwards observed, from a nearly perpendicular elevation.
‘Well!’ said Mark, getting himself into a sitting posture, after various ineffectual struggles with the rolling of the ship. ‘This is the first time as ever I stood on my head all night.’
‘You shouldn’t go to sleep upon the ground with your head to leeward then,’ growled a man in one of the berths.
‘With my head towhere?’ asked Mark.
The man repeated his previous sentiment.
‘No, I won’t another time,’ said Mark, ‘when I know whereabouts on the map that country is. In the meanwhile I can give you a better piece of advice. Don’t you nor any other friend of mine never go to sleep with his head in a ship any more.’
The man gave a grunt of discontented acquiescence, turned over in his berth, and drew his blanket over his head.
‘—For,’ said Mr Tapley, pursuing the theme by way of soliloquy in a low tone of voice; ‘the sea is as nonsensical a thing as any going. It never knows what to do with itself. It hasn’t got no employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy. Like them Polar bears in the wild-beast shows as is constantly a-nodding their heads from side to side, it nevercanbe quiet. Which is entirely owing to its uncommon stupidity.’
‘Is that you, Mark?’ asked a faint voice from another berth.
‘It’s as much of me as is left, sir, after a fortnight of this work,’ Mr Tapley replied, ‘What with leading the life of a fly, ever since I’ve been aboard—for I’ve been perpetually holding-on to something or other in a upside-down position—what with that, sir, and putting a very little into myself, and taking a good deal out of myself, there an’t too much of me to swear by. How do you find yourself this morning, sir?’
‘Very miserable,’ said Martin, with a peevish groan. ‘Ugh. This is wretched, indeed!’
‘Creditable,’ muttered Mark, pressing one hand upon his aching head and looking round him with a rueful grin. ‘That’s the great comfort. Itiscreditable to keep up one’s spirits here. Virtue’s its own reward. So’s jollity.’
Mark was so far right that unquestionably any man who retained his cheerfulness among the steerage accommodations of that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, ‘The Screw,’ was solely indebted to his own resources, and shipped his good humour, like his provisions, without any contribution or assistance from the owners. A dark, low, stifling cabin, surrounded by berths all filled to overflowing with men, women, and children, in various stages of sickness and misery, is not the liveliest place of assembly at any time; but when it is so crowded (as the steerage cabin of the Screw was, every passage out), that mattresses and beds are heaped upon the floor, to the extinction of everything like comfort, cleanliness, and decency, it is liable to operate not only as a pretty strong banner against amiability of temper, but as a positive encourager of selfish and rough humours. Mark felt this, as he sat looking about him; and his spirits rose proportionately.
There were English people, Irish people, Welsh people, and Scotch people there; all with their little store of coarse food and shabby clothes; and nearly all with their families of children. There were children of all ages; from the baby at the breast, to the slattern-girl who was as much a grown woman as her mother. Every kind of domestic suffering that is bred in poverty, illness, banishment, sorrow, and long travel in bad weather, was crammed into the little space; and yet was there infinitely less of complaint and querulousness, and infinitely more of mutual assistance and general kindness to be found in that unwholesome ark, than in many brilliant ballrooms.
Mark looked about him wistfully, and his face brightened as he looked. Here an old grandmother was crooning over a sick child, and rocking it to and fro, in arms hardly more wasted than its own young limbs; here a poor woman with an infant in her lap, mended another little creature’s clothes, and quieted another who was creeping up about her from their scanty bed upon the floor. Here were old men awkwardly engaged in little household offices, wherein they would have been ridiculous but for their good-will and kind purpose; and here were swarthy fellows—giants in their way—doing such little acts of tenderness for those about them, as might have belonged to gentlest-hearted dwarfs. The very idiot in the corner who sat mowing there, all day, had his faculty of imitation roused by what he saw about him; and snapped his fingers to amuse a crying child.
‘Now, then,’ said Mark, nodding to a woman who was dressing her three children at no great distance from him—and the grin upon his face had by this time spread from ear to ear—‘Hand over one of them young ‘uns according to custom.’
‘I wish you’d get breakfast, Mark, instead of worrying with people who don’t belong to you,’ observed Martin, petulantly.
‘All right,’ said Mark. ‘She’lldo that. It’s a fair division of labour, sir. I wash her boys, and she makes our tea. I nevercouldmake tea, but any one can wash a boy.’
The woman, who was delicate and ill, felt and understood his kindness, as well she might, for she had been covered every night with his greatcoat, while he had for his own bed the bare boards and a rug. But Martin, who seldom got up or looked about him, was quite incensed by the folly of this speech, and expressed his dissatisfaction by an impatient groan.
‘So it is, certainly,’ said Mark, brushing the child’s hair as coolly as if he had been born and bred a barber.
‘What are you talking about, now?’ asked Martin.
‘What you said,’ replied Mark; ‘or what you meant, when you gave that there dismal vent to your feelings. I quite go along with it, sir. Itisvery hard upon her.’
‘What is?’
‘Making the voyage by herself along with these young impediments here, and going such a way at such a time of the year to join her husband. If you don’t want to be driven mad with yellow soap in your eye, young man,’ said Mr Tapley to the second urchin, who was by this time under his hands at the basin, ‘you’d better shut it.’
‘Where does she join her husband?’ asked Martin, yawning.
‘Why, I’m very much afraid,’ said Mr Tapley, in a low voice, ‘that she don’t know. I hope she mayn’t miss him. But she sent her last letter by hand, and it don’t seem to have been very clearly understood between ‘em without it, and if she don’t see him a-waving his pocket-handkerchief on the shore, like a pictur out of a song-book, my opinion is, she’ll break her heart.’
‘Why, how, in Folly’s name, does the woman come to be on board ship on such a wild-goose venture!’ cried Martin.
Mr Tapley glanced at him for a moment as he lay prostrate in his berth, and then said, very quietly:
‘Ah! How indeed! I can’t think! He’s been away from her for two year; she’s been very poor and lonely in her own country; and has always been a-looking forward to meeting him. It’s very strange she should be here. Quite amazing! A little mad perhaps! There can’t be no other way of accounting for it.’
Martin was too far gone in the lassitude of sea-sickness to make any reply to these words, or even to attend to them as they were spoken. And the subject of their discourse returning at this crisis with some hot tea, effectually put a stop to any resumption of the theme by Mr Tapley; who, when the meal was over and he had adjusted Martin’s bed, went up on deck to wash the breakfast service, which consisted of two half-pint tin mugs, and a shaving-pot of the same metal.
It is due to Mark Tapley to state that he suffered at least as much from sea-sickness as any man, woman, or child, on board; and that he had a peculiar faculty of knocking himself about on the smallest provocation, and losing his legs at every lurch of the ship. But resolved, in his usual phrase, to ‘come out strong’ under disadvantageous circumstances, he was the life and soul of the steerage, and made no more of stopping in the middle of a facetious conversation to go away and be excessively ill by himself, and afterwards come back in the very best and gayest of tempers to resume it, than if such a course of proceeding had been the commonest in the world.
It cannot be said that as his illness wore off, his cheerfulness and good nature increased, because they would hardly admit of augmentation; but his usefulness among the weaker members of the party was much enlarged; and at all times and seasons there he was exerting it. If a gleam of sun shone out of the dark sky, down Mark tumbled into the cabin, and presently up he came again with a woman in his arms, or half-a-dozen children, or a man, or a bed, or a saucepan, or a basket, or something animate or inanimate, that he thought would be the better for the air. If an hour or two of fine weather in the middle of the day tempted those who seldom or never came on deck at other times to crawl into the long-boat, or lie down upon the spare spars, and try to eat, there, in the centre of the group, was Mr Tapley, handing about salt beef and biscuit, or dispensing tastes of grog, or cutting up the children’s provisions with his pocketknife, for their greater ease and comfort, or reading aloud from a venerable newspaper, or singing some roaring old song to a select party, or writing the beginnings of letters to their friends at home for people who couldn’t write, or cracking jokes with the crew, or nearly getting blown over the side, or emerging, half-drowned, from a shower of spray, or lending a hand somewhere or other; but always doing something for the general entertainment. At night, when the cooking-fire was lighted on the deck, and the driving sparks that flew among the rigging, and the clouds of sails, seemed to menace the ship with certain annihilation by fire, in case the elements of air and water failed to compass her destruction; there, again, was Mr Tapley, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves turned up to his elbows, doing all kinds of culinary offices; compounding the strangest dishes; recognized by every one as an established authority; and helping all parties to achieve something which, left to themselves, they never could have done, and never would have dreamed of. In short, there never was a more popular character than Mark Tapley became, on board that noble and fast-sailing line-of-packet ship, the Screw; and he attained at last to such a pitch of universal admiration, that he began to have grave doubts within himself whether a man might reasonably claim any credit for being jolly under such exciting circumstances.
‘If this was going to last,’ said Tapley, ‘there’d be no great difference as I can perceive, between the Screw and the Dragon. I never am to get credit, I think. I begin to be afraid that the Fates is determined to make the world easy to me.’
‘Well, Mark,’ said Martin, near whose berth he had ruminated to this effect. ‘When will this be over?’
‘Another week, they say, sir,’ returned Mark, ‘will most likely bring us into port. The ship’s a-going along at present, as sensible as a ship can, sir; though I don’t mean to say as that’s any very high praise.’
‘I don’t think it is, indeed,’ groaned Martin.
‘You’d feel all the better for it, sir, if you was to turn out,’ observed Mark.
‘And be seen by the ladies and gentlemen on the after-deck,’ returned Martin, with a scronful emphasis upon the words, ‘mingling with the beggarly crowd that are stowed away in this vile hole. I should be greatly the better for that, no doubt.’
‘I’m thankful that I can’t say from my own experience what the feelings of a gentleman may be,’ said Mark, ‘but I should have thought, sir, as a gentleman would feel a deal more uncomfortable down here than up in the fresh air, especially when the ladies and gentlemen in the after-cabin know just as much about him as he does about them, and are likely to trouble their heads about him in the same proportion. I should have thought that, certainly.’
‘I tell you, then,’ rejoined Martin, ‘you would have thought wrong, and do think wrong.’
‘Very likely, sir,’ said Mark, with imperturbable good temper. ‘I often do.’
‘As to lying here,’ cried Martin, raising himself on his elbow, and looking angrily at his follower. ‘Do you suppose it’s a pleasure to lie here?’
‘All the madhouses in the world,’ said Mr Tapley, ‘couldn’t produce such a maniac as the man must be who could think that.’
‘Then why are you forever goading and urging me to get up?’ asked Martin, ‘I lie here because I don’t wish to be recognized, in the better days to which I aspire, by any purse-proud citizen, as the man who came over with him among the steerage passengers. I lie here because I wish to conceal my circumstances and myself, and not to arrive in a new world badged and ticketed as an utterly poverty-stricken man. If I could have afforded a passage in the after-cabin I should have held up my head with the rest. As I couldn’t I hide it. Do you understand that?’
‘I am very sorry, sir,’ said Mark. ‘I didn’t know you took it so much to heart as this comes to.’
‘Of course you didn’t know,’ returned his master. ‘How should you know, unless I told you? It’s no trial to you, Mark, to make yourself comfortable and to bustle about. It’s as natural for you to do so under the circumstances as it is for me not to do so. Why, you don’t suppose there is a living creature in this ship who can by possibility have half so much to undergo on board of her as I have? Do you?’ he asked, sitting upright in his berth and looking at Mark, with an expression of great earnestness not unmixed with wonder.
Mark twisted his face into a tight knot, and with his head very much on one side, pondered upon this question as if he felt it an extremely difficult one to answer. He was relieved from his embarrassment by Martin himself, who said, as he stretched himself upon his back again and resumed the book he had been reading:
‘But what is the use of my putting such a case to you, when the very essence of what I have been saying is, that you cannot by possibility understand it! Make me a little brandy-and-water—cold and very weak—and give me a biscuit, and tell your friend, who is a nearer neighbour of ours than I could wish, to try and keep her children a little quieter to-night than she did last night; that’s a good fellow.’
Mr Tapley set himself to obey these orders with great alacrity, and pending their execution, it may be presumed his flagging spirits revived; inasmuch as he several times observed, below his breath, that in respect of its power of imparting a credit to jollity, the Screw unquestionably had some decided advantages over the Dragon. He also remarked that it was a high gratification to him to reflect that he would carry its main excellence ashore with him, and have it constantly beside him wherever he went; but what he meant by these consolatory thoughts he did not explain.
And now a general excitement began to prevail on board; and various predictions relative to the precise day, and even the precise hour at which they would reach New York, were freely broached. There was infinitely more crowding on deck and looking over the ship’s side than there had been before; and an epidemic broke out for packing up things every morning, which required unpacking again every night. Those who had any letters to deliver, or any friends to meet, or any settled plans of going anywhere or doing anything, discussed their prospects a hundred times a day; and as this class of passengers was very small, and the number of those who had no prospects whatever was very large, there were plenty of listeners and few talkers. Those who had been ill all along, got well now, and those who had been well, got better. An American gentleman in the after-cabin, who had been wrapped up in fur and oilskin the whole passage, unexpectedly appeared in a very shiny, tall, black hat, and constantly overhauled a very little valise of pale leather, which contained his clothes, linen, brushes, shaving apparatus, books, trinkets, and other baggage. He likewise stuck his hands deep into his pockets, and walked the deck with his nostrils dilated, as already inhaling the air of Freedom which carries death to all tyrants, and can never (under any circumstances worth mentioning) be breathed by slaves. An English gentleman who was strongly suspected of having run away from a bank, with something in his possession belonging to its strong box besides the key, grew eloquent upon the subject of the rights of man, and hummed the Marseillaise Hymn constantly. In a word, one great sensation pervaded the whole ship, and the soil of America lay close before them; so close at last, that, upon a certain starlight night they took a pilot on board, and within a few hours afterwards lay to until the morning, awaiting the arrival of a steamboat in which the passengers were to be conveyed ashore.
Off she came, soon after it was light next morning, and lying alongside an hour or more—during which period her very firemen were objects of hardly less interest and curiosity than if they had been so many angels, good or bad—took all her living freight aboard. Among them Mark, who still had his friend and her three children under his close protection; and Martin, who had once more dressed himself in his usual attire, but wore a soiled, old cloak above his ordinary clothes, until such time as he should separate for ever from his late companions.
The steamer—which, with its machinery on deck, looked, as it worked its long slim legs, like some enormously magnified insect or antediluvian monster—dashed at great speed up a beautiful bay; and presently they saw some heights, and islands, and a long, flat, straggling city.
‘And this,’ said Mr Tapley, looking far ahead, ‘is the Land of Liberty, is it? Very well. I’m agreeable. Any land will do for me, after so much water!’