Charles Dickens - Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

Jonas received this compliment with anything but a good grace, perhaps because of his own private sentiments in reference to the personal appearance of his deceased parent; perhaps because he was not best pleased to find that Montague and Tigg were one. That gentleman perceived it, and tapping him familiarly on the sleeve, beckoned him to the window. From this moment, Mr Montague's jocularity and flow of spirits were remarkable.

“Do you find me at all changed since that time?” he asked. “Speak plainly.”

Jonas looked hard at his waistcoat and jewels; and said “Rather, ecod!”

“Was I at all seedy in those days?” asked Montague.

“Precious seedy,” said Jonas.

Mr Montague pointed down into the street, where Bailey and the cab were in attendance.

“Neat; perhaps dashing. Do you know whose it is?”

“No.”

“Mine. Do you like this room?”

“It must have cost a lot of money,” said Jonas.

“You're right. Mine too. Why don't you'—he whispered this, and nudged him in the side with his elbow—'why don't you take premiums, instead of paying “em? That's what a man like you should do. Join us!”

Jonas stared at him in amazement.

“Is that a crowded street?” asked Montague, calling his attention to the multitude without.

“Very,” said Jonas, only glancing at it, and immediately afterwards looking at him again.

“There are printed calculations,” said his companion, “which will tell you pretty nearly how many people will pass up and down that thoroughfare in the course of a day. I can tell you how many of “em will come in here, merely because they find this office here; knowing no more about it than they do of the Pyramids. Ha, ha! Join us. You shall come in cheap.”

Jonas looked at him harder and harder.

“I can tell you,” said Tigg in his ear, “how many of “em will buy annuities, effect insurances, bring us their money in a hundred shapes and ways, force it upon us, trust us as if we were the Mint; yet know no more about us than you do of that crossing-sweeper at the corner. Not so much. Ha, ha!”

Jonas gradually broke into a smile.

“Yah!” said Montague, giving him a pleasant thrust in the breast; “you're too deep for us, you dog, or I wouldn't have told you. Dine with me to-morrow, in Pall Mall!”

“I will” said Jonas.

“Done!” cried Montague. “Wait a bit. Take these papers with you and look “em over. See,” he said, snatching some printed forms from the table. “B is a little tradesman, clerk, parson, artist, author, any common thing you like.”

“Yes,” said Jonas, looking greedily over his shoulder. “Well!”

“B wants a loan. Say fifty or a hundred pound; perhaps more; no matter. B proposes self and two securities. B is accepted. Two securities give a bond. B assures his own life for double the amount, and brings two friends” lives also—just to patronize the office. Ha ha, ha! Is that a good notion?”

“Ecod, that's a capital notion!” cried Jonas. “But does he really do it?”

“Do it!” repeated the chairman. “B's hard up, my good fellow, and will do anything. Don't you see? It's my idea.”

“It does you honour. I'm blest if it don't,” said Jonas.

“I think it does,” replied the chairman, “and I'm proud to hear you say so. B pays the highest lawful interest—”

“That an't much,” interrupted Jonas.

“Right! quite right!” retorted Tigg. “And hard it is upon the part of the law that it should be so confoundedly down upon us unfortunate victims; when it takes such amazing good interest for itself from all its clients. But charity begins at home, and justice begins next door. Well! The law being hard upon us, we're not exactly soft upon B; for besides charging B the regular interest, we get B's premium, and B's friends” premiums, and we charge B for the bond, and, whether we accept him or not, we charge B for “inquiries” (we keep a man, at a pound a week, to make “em), and we charge B a trifle for the secretary; and in short, my good fellow, we stick it into B, up hill and down dale, and make a devilish comfortable little property out of him. Ha, ha, ha! I drive B, in point of fact,” said Tigg, pointing to the cabriolet, “and a thoroughbred horse he is. Ha, ha, ha!”

Jonas enjoyed this joke very much indeed. It was quite in his peculiar vein of humour.

“Then,” said Tigg Montague, “we grant annuities on the very lowest and most advantageous terms known in the money market; and the old ladies and gentlemen down in the country buy “em. Ha, ha, ha! And we pay “em too—perhaps. Ha, ha, ha!”

“But there's responsibility in that,” said Jonas, looking doubtful.

“I take it all myself,” said Tigg Montague. “Here I am responsible for everything. The only responsible person in the establishment! Ha, ha, ha! Then there are the Life Assurances without loans; the common policies. Very profitable, very comfortable. Money down, you know; repeated every year; capital fun!”

“But when they begin to fall in,” observed Jonas. “It's all very well, while the office is young, but when the policies begin to die—that's what I am thinking of.”

“At the first start, my dear fellow,” said Montague, “to show you how correct your judgment is, we had a couple of unlucky deaths that brought us down to a grand piano.”

“Brought you down where?” cried Jonas.

“I give you my sacred word of honour,” said Tigg Montague, “that I raised money on every other individual piece of property, and was left alone in the world with a grand piano. And it was an uprightgrand too, so that I couldn't even sit upon it. But, my dear fellow, we got over it. We granted a great many new policies that week (liberal allowance to solicitors, by the bye), and got over it in no time. Whenever they should chance to fall in heavily, as you very justly observe they may, one of these days; then—” he finished the sentence in so low a whisper, that only one disconnected word was audible, and that imperfectly. But it sounded like “Bolt.”

“Why, you're as bold as brass!” said Jonas, in the utmost admiration.

“A man can well afford to be as bold as brass, my good fellow, when he gets gold in exchange!” cried the chairman, with a laugh that shook him from head to foot. “You'll dine with me to-morrow?”

“At what time?” asked Jonas.

“Seven. Here's my card. Take the documents. I see you'll join us!”

“I don't know about that,” said Jonas. “There's a good deal to be looked into first.”

“You shall look,” said Montague, slapping him on the back, “into anything and everything you please. But you'll join us, I am convinced. You were made for it. Bullamy!”

Obedient to the summons and the little bell, the waistcoat appeared. Being charged to show Jonas out, it went before; and the voice within it cried, as usual, “By your leave there, by your leave! Gentleman from the board-room, by your leave!”

Mr Montague being left alone, pondered for some moments, and then said, raising his voice:

“Is Nadgett in the office there?”

“Here he is, sir.”And he promptly entered; shutting the board-room door after him, as carefully as if he were about to plot a murder.

He was the man at a pound a week who made the inquiries. It was no virtue or merit in Nadgett that he transacted all his Anglo-Bengalee business secretly and in the closest confidence; for he was born to be a secret. He was a short, dried-up, withered old man, who seemed to have secreted his very blood; for nobody would have given him credit for the possession of six ounces of it in his whole body. How he lived was a secret; where he lived was a secret; and even what he was, was a secret. In his musty old pocket-book he carried contradictory cards, in some of which he called himself a coalmerchant, in others a wine-merchant, in others a commission-agent, in others a collector, in others an accountant; as if he really didn't know the secret himself. He was always keeping appointments in the City, and the other man never seemed to come. He would sit on “Change for hours, looking at everybody who walked in and out, and would do the like at Garraway's, and in other business coffeerooms, in some of which he would be occasionally seen drying a very damp pocket-handkerchief before the fire, and still looking over his shoulder for the man who never appeared. He was mildewed, threadbare, shabby; always had flue upon his legs and back; and kept his linen so secretly buttoning up and wrapping over, that he might have had none—perhaps he hadn't. He carried one stained beaver glove, which he dangled before him by the forefinger as he walked or sat; but even its fellow was a secret. Some people said he had been a bankrupt, others that he had gone an infant into an ancient Chancery suit which was still depending, but it was all a secret. He carried bits of sealing-wax and a hieroglyphical old copper seal in his pocket, and often secretly indited letters in corner boxes of the trysting-places before mentioned; but they never appeared to go to anybody, for he would put them into a secret place in his coat, and deliver them to himself weeks afterwards, very much to his own surprise, quite yellow. He was that sort of man that if he had died worth a million of money, or had died worth twopence halfpenny, everybody would have been perfectly satisfied, and would have said it was just as they expected. And yet he belonged to a class; a race peculiar to the City; who are secrets as profound to one another, as they are to the rest of mankind.