Charles Dickens - Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

Mr Pecksniff's duty to society could not be paid till Tom came back. The interval which preceded the return of that young man, he occupied in a close conference with his friend; so that when Tom did arrive, he found the two quite ready to receive him. Mary was in her own room above, whither Mr Pecksniff, always considerate, had besought old Martin to entreat her to remain some half-hour longer, that her feelings might be spared.

When Tom came back, he found old Martin sitting by the window, and Mr Pecksniff in an imposing attitude at the table. On one side of him was his pocket-handkerchief; and on the other a little heap (a very little heap) of gold and silver, and odd pence. Tom saw, at a glance, that it was his own salary for the current quarter.

“Have you fastened the vestry-window, Mr Pinch?” said Pecksniff.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you. Put down the keys if you please, Mr Pinch.”

Tom placed them on the table. He held the bunch by the key of the organ-loft (though it was one of the smallest), and looked hard at it as he laid it down. It had been an old, old friend of Tom's; a kind companion to him, many and many a day.

“Mr Pinch,” said Pecksniff, shaking his head; “oh, Mr Pinch! I wonder you can look me in the face!”

Tom did it though; and notwithstanding that he has been described as stooping generally, he stood as upright then as man could stand.

“Mr Pinch,” said Pecksniff, taking up his handkerchief, as if he felt that he should want it soon, “I will not dwell upon the past. I will spare you, and I will spare myself, that pain at least.”

Tom's was not a very bright eye, but it was a very expressive one when he looked at Mr Pecksniff, and said:

“Thank you, sir. I am very glad you will not refer to the past.”

“The present is enough,” said Mr Pecksniff, dropping a penny, “and the sooner THAT is past, the better. Mr Pinch, I will not dismiss you without a word of explanation. Even such a course would be quite justifiable under the circumstances; but it might wear an appearance of hurry, and I will not do it; for I am,” said Mr Pecksniff, knocking down another penny, “perfectly self-possessed. Therefore I will say to you, what I have already said to Mr Chuzzlewit.”

Tom glanced at the old gentleman, who nodded now and then as approving of Mr Pecksniff's sentences and sentiments, but interposed between them in no other way.

“From fragments of a conversation which I overheard in the church, just now, Mr Pinch,” said Pecksniff, “between yourself and Miss Graham—I say fragments, because I was slumbering at a considerable distance from you, when I was roused by your voices—and from what I saw, I ascertained (I would have given a great deal not to have ascertained, Mr Pinch) that you, forgetful of all ties of duty and of honour, sir; regardless of the sacred laws of hospitality, to which you were pledged as an inmate of this house; have presumed to address Miss Graham with unreturned professions of attachment and proposals of love.”

Tom looked at him steadily.

“Do you deny it, sir?” asked Mr Pecksniff, dropping one pound two and fourpence, and making a great business of picking it up again.

“No, sir,” replied Tom. “I do not.”

“You do not,” said Mr Pecksniff, glancing at the old gentleman. “Oblige me by counting this money, Mr Pinch, and putting your name to this receipt. You do not?”

No, Tom did not. He scorned to deny it. He saw that Mr Pecksniff having overheard his own disgrace, cared not a jot for sinking lower yet in his contempt. He saw that he had devised this fiction as the readiest means of getting rid of him at once, but that it must end in that any way. He saw that Mr Pecksniff reckoned on his not denying it, because his doing so and explaining would incense the old man more than ever against Martin and against Mary; while Pecksniff himself would only have been mistaken in his “fragments.”Deny it! No.

“You find the amount correct, do you, Mr Pinch?” said Pecksniff.

“Quite correct, sir,” answered Tom.

“A person is waiting in the kitchen,” said Mr Pecksniff, “to carry your luggage wherever you please. We part, Mr Pinch, at once, and are strangers from this time.”

Something without a name; compassion, sorrow, old tenderness, mistaken gratitude, habit; none of these, and yet all of them; smote upon Tom's gentle heart at parting. There was no such soul as Pecksniff's in that carcase; and yet, though his speaking out had not involved the compromise of one he loved, he couldn't have denounced the very shape and figure of the man. Not even then.

“I will not say,” cried Mr Pecksniff, shedding tears, “what a blow this is. I will not say how much it tries me; how it works upon my nature; how it grates upon my feelings. I do not care for that. I can endure as well as another man. But what I have to hope, and what you have to hope, Mr Pinch (otherwise a great responsibility rests upon you), is, that this deception may not alter my ideas of humanity; that it may not impair my freshness, or contract, if I may use the expression, my Pinions. I hope it will not; I don't think it will. It may be a comfort to you, if not now, at some future time, to know that I shall endeavour not to think the worse of my fellow-creatures in general, for what has passed between us. Farewell!”

Tom had meant to spare him one little puncturation with a lancet, which he had it in his power to administer, but he changed his mind on hearing this, and said:

“I think you left something in the church, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr Pinch,” said Pecksniff. “I am not aware that I did.”

“This is your double eye-glass, I believe?” said Tom.

“Oh!” cried Pecksniff, with some degree of confusion. “I am obliged to you. Put it down, if you please.”

“I found it,” said Tom, slowly—'when I went to bolt the vestrywindow—in the pew.”

So he had. Mr Pecksniff had taken it off when he was bobbing up and down, lest it should strike against the panelling; and had forgotten it. Going back to the church with his mind full of having been watched, and wondering very much from what part, Tom's attention was caught by the door of the state pew standing open. Looking into it he found the glass. And thus he knew, and by returning it gave Mr Pecksniff the information that he knew, where the listener had been; and that instead of overhearing fragments of the conversation, he must have rejoiced in every word of it.

“I am glad he's gone,” said Martin, drawing a long breath when Tom had left the room.

“It IS a relief,” assented Mr Pecksniff. “It is a great relief. But having discharged—I hope with tolerable firmness—the duty which I owed to society, I will now, my dear sir, if you will give me leave, retire to shed a few tears in the back garden, as an humble individual.”

Tom went upstairs; cleared his shelf of books; packed them up with his music and an old fiddle in his trunk; got out his clothes (they were not so many that they made his head ache); put them on the top of his books; and went into the workroom for his case of instruments. There was a ragged stool there, with the horsehair all sticking out of the top like a wig: a very Beast of a stool in itself; on which he had taken up his daily seat, year after year, during the whole period of his service. They had grown older and shabbier in company. Pupils had served their time; seasons had come and gone. Tom and the worn-out stool had held together through it all. That part of the room was traditionally called “Tom's Corner.”It had been assigned to him at first because of its being situated in a strong draught, and a great way from the fire; and he had occupied it ever since. There were portraits of him on the walls, with all his weak points monstrously portrayed. Diabolical sentiments, foreign to his character, were represented as issuing from his mouth in fat balloons. Every pupil had added something, even unto fancy portraits of his father with one eye, and of his mother with a disproportionate nose, and especially of his sister; who always being presented as extremely beautiful, made full amends to Tom for any other jokes. Under less uncommon circumstances, it would have cut Tom to the heart to leave these things and think that he saw them for the last time; but it didn't now. There was no Pecksniff; there never had been a Pecksniff; and all his other griefs were swallowed up in that.