Charles Dickens - Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

He continued to sit in gloomy rumination by the stove, unmindful of the boarders who dropped in one by one from their stores and counting-houses, or the neighbouring bar-rooms, and, after taking long pulls from a great white waterjug upon the sideboard, and lingering with a kind of hideous fascination near the brass spittoons, lounged heavily to bed; until at length Mark Tapley came and shook him by the arm, supposing him asleep.

“Mark!” he cried, starting.

“All right, sir,” said that cheerful follower, snuffing with his fingers the candle he bore. “It ain't a very large bed, your'n, sir; and a man as wasn't thirsty might drink, afore breakfast, all the water you've got to wash in, and afterwards eat the towel. But you'll sleep without rocking to-night, sir.”

“I feel as if the house were on the sea” said Martin, staggering when he rose; “and am utterly wretched.”

“I'm as jolly as a sandboy, myself, sir,” said Mark. “But, Lord, I have reason to be! I ought to have been born here; that's my opinion. Take care how you go'—for they were now ascending the stairs. “You recollect the gentleman aboard the Screw as had the very small trunk, sir?”

“The valise? Yes.”

“Well, sir, there's been a delivery of clean clothes from the wash to-night, and they're put outside the bedroom doors here. If you take notice as we go up, what a very few shirts there are, and what a many fronts, you'll penetrate the mystery of his packing.”

But Martin was too weary and despondent to take heed of anything, so had no interest in this discovery. Mr Tapley, nothing dashed by his indifference, conducted him to the top of the house, and into the bed-chamber prepared for his reception; which was a very little narrow room, with half a window in it; a bedstead like a chest without a lid; two chairs; a piece of carpet, such as shoes are commonly tried upon at a ready-made establishment in England; a little looking-glass nailed against the wall; and a washing-table, with a jug and ewer, that might have been mistaken for a milk-pot and slop-basin.

“I suppose they polish themselves with a dry cloth in this country,” said Mark. “They've certainly got a touch of the “phoby, sir.”

“I wish you would pull off my boots for me,” said Martin, dropping into one of the chairs “I am quite knocked up—dead beat, Mark.”

“You won't say that to-morrow morning, sir,” returned Mr Tapley; “nor even to-night, sir, when you've made a trial of this.”With which he produced a very large tumbler, piled up to the brim with little blocks of clear transparent ice, through which one or two thin slices of lemon, and a golden liquid of delicious appearance, appealed from the still depths below, to the loving eye of the spectator.

“What do you call this?” said Martin.

But Mr Tapley made no answer; merely plunging a reed into the mixture—which caused a pleasant commotion among the pieces of ice— and signifying by an expressive gesture that it was to be pumped up through that agency by the enraptured drinker.

Martin took the glass with an astonished look; applied his lips to the reed; and cast up his eyes once in ecstasy. He paused no more until the goblet was drained to the last drop.

“There, sir!” said Mark, taking it from him with a triumphant face; “if ever you should happen to be dead beat again, when I ain't in the way, all you've got to do is to ask the nearest man to go and fetch a cobbler.”

“To go and fetch a cobbler?” repeated Martin.

“This wonderful invention, sir,” said Mark, tenderly patting the empty glass, “is called a cobbler. Sherry cobbler when you name it long; cobbler, when you name it short. Now you're equal to having your boots took off, and are, in every particular worth mentioning, another man.”

Having delivered himself of this solemn preface, he brought the bootjack.

“Mind! I am not going to relapse, Mark,” said Martin; “but, good Heaven, if we should be left in some wild part of this country without goods or money!”

“Well, sir!” replied the imperturbable Tapley; “from what we've seen already, I don't know whether, under those circumstances, we shouldn't do better in the wild parts than in the tame ones.”

“Oh, Tom Pinch, Tom Pinch!” said Martin, in a thoughtful tone; “what would I give to be again beside you, and able to hear your voice, though it were even in the old bedroom at Pecksniff's!”

“Oh, Dragon, Dragon!” echoed Mark, cheerfully, “if there warn't any water between you and me, and nothing faint-hearted-like in going back, I don't know that I mightn't say the same. But here am I, Dragon, in New York, America; and there are you in Wiltshire, Europe; and there's a fortune to make, Dragon, and a beautiful young lady to make it for; and whenever you go to see the Monument, Dragon, you mustn't give in on the doorsteps, or you'll never get up to the top!”

“Wisely said, Mark,” cried Martin. “We must look forward.”

“In all the story-books as ever I read, sir, the people as looked backward was turned into stones,” replied Mark; “and my opinion always was, that they brought it on themselves, and it served “em right. I wish you good night, sir, and pleasant dreams!”

“They must be of home, then,” said Martin, as he lay down in bed.

“So I say, too,” whispered Mark Tapley, when he was out of hearing and in his own room; “for if there don't come a time afore we're well out of this, when there'll be a little more credit in keeping up one's jollity, I'm a United Statesman!”

Leaving them to blend and mingle in their sleep the shadows of objects afar off, as they take fantastic shapes upon the wall in the dim light of thought without control, be it the part of this slight chronicle—a dream within a dream—as rapidly to change the scene, and cross the ocean to the English shore.

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance, would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. As if, in the gap he had left, the wedge of change were driven to the head, rending what was a solid mass to fragments, things cemented and held together by the usages of years, burst asunder in as many weeks. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.

Most men, at one time or other, have proved this in some degree. The extent to which the natural laws of change asserted their supremacy in that limited sphere of action which Martin had deserted, shall be faithfully set down in these pages.

“What a cold spring it is!” whimpered old Anthony, drawing near the evening fire, “It was a warmer season, sure, when I was young!”

“You needn't go scorching your clothes into holes, whether it was or not,” observed the amiable Jonas, raising his eyes from yesterday's newspaper, “Broadcloth ain't so cheap as that comes to.”

“A good lad!” cried the father, breathing on his cold hands, and feebly chafing them against each other. “A prudent lad! He never delivered himself up to the vanities of dress. No, no!”

“I don't know but I would, though, mind you, if I could do it for nothing,” said his son, as he resumed the paper.

“Ah!” chuckled the old man. “IF, indeed!—But it's very cold.”

“Let the fire be!” cried Mr Jonas, stopping his honoured parent's hand in the use of the poker. “Do you mean to come to want in your old age, that you take to wasting now?”