Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📕

It must be confessed that, at that moment, he had no very agreeable employment either for his moral or his physical perceptions. The day was dawning from a patch of watery light in the east, and sullen clouds came driving up before it, from which the rain descended in a thick, wet mist. It streamed from every twig and bramble in the hedge; made little gullies in the path; ran down a hundred channels in the road; and punched innumerable holes into the face of every pond and gutter. It fell with an oozy, slushy sound among the grass; and made a muddy kennel of every furrow in the ploughed fields. No living creature was anywhere to be seen. The prospect could hardly have been more desolate if animated nature had been dissolved in water, and poured down upon the earth again in that form.

The range of view within the solitary traveller was quite as cheerless as the scene without. Friendless and penniless; incensed to the last degree; deeply wounded in his pride and self-love; full of independent schemes, and perfectly destitute of any means of realizing them; his most vindictive enemy might have been satisfied with the extent of his troubles. To add to his other miseries, he was by this time sensible of being wet to the skin, and cold at his very heart.

In this deplorable condition he remembered Mr Pinch’s book; more because it was rather troublesome to carry, than from any hope of being comforted by that parting gift. He looked at the dingy lettering on the back, and finding it to be an odd volume of the ‘Bachelor of Salamanca,’ in the French tongue, cursed Tom Pinch’s folly twenty times. He was on the point of throwing it away, in his ill-humour and vexation, when he bethought himself that Tom had referred him to a leaf, turned down; and opening it at that place, that he might have additional cause of complaint against him for supposing that any cold scrap of the Bachelor’s wisdom could cheer him in such circumstances, found!—

Well, well! not much, but Tom’s all. The half-sovereign. He had wrapped it hastily in a piece of paper, and pinned it to the leaf. These words were scrawled in pencil on the inside: ‘I don’t want it indeed. I should not know what to do with it if I had it.’

There are some falsehoods, Tom, on which men mount, as on bright wings, towards Heaven. There are some truths, cold bitter taunting truths, wherein your worldly scholars are very apt and punctual, which bind men down to earth with leaden chains. Who would not rather have to fan him, in his dying hour, the lightest feather of a falsehood such as thine, than all the quills that have been plucked from the sharp porcupine, reproachful truth, since time began!

Martin felt keenly for himself, and he felt this good deed of Tom’s keenly. After a few minutes it had the effect of raising his spirits, and reminding him that he was not altogether destitute, as he had left a fair stock of clothes behind him, and wore a gold hunting-watch in his pocket. He found a curious gratification, too, in thinking what a winning fellow he must be to have made such an impression on Tom; and in reflecting how superior he was to Tom; and how much more likely to make his way in the world. Animated by these thoughts, and strengthened in his design of endeavouring to push his fortune in another country, he resolved to get to London as a rallying-point, in the best way he could; and to lose no time about it.

He was ten good miles from the village made illustrious by being the abiding-place of Mr Pecksniff, when he stopped to breakfast at a little roadside alehouse; and resting upon a high-backed settle before the fire, pulled off his coat, and hung it before the cheerful blaze to dry. It was a very different place from the last tavern in which he had regaled; boasting no greater extent of accommodation than the brick-floored kitchen yielded; but the mind so soon accommodates itself to the necessities of the body, that this poor waggoner’s house-of-call, which he would have despised yesterday, became now quite a choice hotel; while his dish of eggs and bacon, and his mug of beer, were not by any means the coarse fare he had supposed, but fully bore out the inscription on the window-shutter, which proclaimed those viands to be ‘Good entertainment for Travellers.’

He pushed away his empty plate; and with a second mug upon the hearth before him, looked thoughtfully at the fire until his eyes ached. Then he looked at the highly-coloured scripture pieces on the walls, in little black frames like common shaving-glasses, and saw how the Wise Men (with a strong family likeness among them) worshipped in a pink manger; and how the Prodigal Son came home in red rags to a purple father, and already feasted his imagination on a sea-green calf. Then he glanced through the window at the falling rain, coming down aslant upon the sign-post over against the house, and overflowing the horse-trough; and then he looked at the fire again, and seemed to descry a double distant London, retreating among the fragments of the burning wood.

He had repeated this process in just the same order, many times, as if it were a matter of necessity, when the sound of wheels called his attention to the window out of its regular turn; and there he beheld a kind of light van drawn by four horses, and laden, as well as he could see (for it was covered in), with corn and straw. The driver, who was alone, stopped at the door to water his team, and presently came stamping and shaking the wet off his hat and coat, into the room where Martin sat.

He was a red-faced burly young fellow; smart in his way, and with a good-humoured countenance. As he advanced towards the fire he touched his shining forehead with the forefinger of his stiff leather glove, by way of salutation; and said (rather unnecessarily) that it was an uncommon wet day.

‘Very wet,’ said Martin.

‘I don’t know as ever I see a wetter.’

‘I never felt one,’ said Martin.

The driver glanced at Martin’s soiled dress, and his damp shirt-sleeves, and his coat hung up to dry; and said, after a pause, as he warmed his hands:

‘You have been caught in it, sir?’

‘Yes,’ was the short reply.

‘Out riding, maybe?’ said the driver

‘I should have been, if I owned a horse; but I don’t,’ returned Martin.

‘That’s bad,’ said the driver.

‘And may be worse,’ said Martin.

Now the driver said ‘That’s bad,’ not so much because Martin didn’t own a horse, as because he said he didn’t with all the reckless desperation of his mood and circumstances, and so left a great deal to be inferred. Martin put his hands in his pockets and whistled when he had retorted on the driver; thus giving him to understand that he didn’t care a pin for Fortune; that he was above pretending to be her favourite when he was not; and that he snapped his fingers at her, the driver, and everybody else.

The driver looked at him stealthily for a minute or so; and in the pauses of his warming whistled too. At length he asked, as he pointed his thumb towards the road.

‘Up or down?’

‘Which IS up?’ said Martin.

‘London, of course,’ said the driver.

‘Up then,’ said Martin. He tossed his head in a careless manner afterwards, as if he would have added, ‘Now you know all about it.’ put his hands deeper into his pockets; changed his tune, and whistled a little louder.

‘I’m going up,’ observed the driver; ‘Hounslow, ten miles this side London.’

‘Are you?’ cried Martin, stopping short and looking at him.

The driver sprinkled the fire with his wet hat until it hissed again and answered, ‘Aye, to be sure he was.’

‘Why, then,’ said Martin, ‘I’ll be plain with you. You may suppose from my dress that I have money to spare. I have not. All I can afford for coach-hire is a crown, for I have but two. If you can take me for that, and my waistcoat, or this silk handkerchief, do. If you can’t, leave it alone.’

‘Short and sweet,’ remarked the driver.

‘You want more?’ said Martin. ‘Then I haven’t got more, and I can’t get it, so there’s an end of that.’ Whereupon he began to whistle again.

‘I didn’t say I wanted more, did I?’ asked the driver, with something like indignation.

‘You didn’t say my offer was enough,’ rejoined Martin.

‘Why, how could I, when you wouldn’t let me? In regard to the waistcoat, I wouldn’t have a man’s waistcoat, much less a gentleman’s waistcoat, on my mind, for no consideration; but the silk handkerchief’s another thing; and if you was satisfied when we got to Hounslow, I shouldn’t object to that as a gift.’

‘Is it a bargain, then?’ said Martin.

‘Yes, it is,’ returned the other.

‘Then finish this beer,’ said Martin, handing him the mug, and pulling on his coat with great alacrity; ‘and let us be off as soon as you like.’

In two minutes more he had paid his bill, which amounted to a shilling; was lying at full length on a truss of straw, high and dry at the top of the van, with the tilt a little open in front for the convenience of talking to his new friend; and was moving along in the right direction with a most satisfactory and encouraging briskness.

The driver’s name, as he soon informed Martin, was William Simmons, better known as Bill; and his spruce appearance was sufficiently explained by his connection with a large stagecoaching establishment at Hounslow, whither he was conveying his load from a farm belonging to the concern in Wiltshire. He was frequently up and down the road on such errands, he said, and to look after the sick and rest horses, of which animals he had much to relate that occupied a long time in the telling. He aspired to the dignity of the regular box, and expected an appointment on the first vacancy. He was musical besides, and had a little key-bugle in his pocket, on which, whenever the conversation flagged, he played the first part of a great many tunes, and regularly broke down in the second.

‘Ah!’ said Bill, with a sigh, as he drew the back of his hand across his lips, and put this instrument in his pocket, after screwing off the mouth-piece to drain it; ‘Lummy Ned of the Light Salisbury, HE was the one for musical talents. He WAS a guard. What you may call a Guard’an Angel, was Ned.’

‘Is he dead?’ asked Martin.

‘Dead!’ replied the other, with a contemptuous emphasis. ‘Not he. You won’t catch Ned a-dying easy. No, no. He knows better than that.’

‘You spoke of him in the past tense,’ observed Martin, ‘so I supposed he was no more.

‘He’s no more in England,’ said Bill, ‘if that’s what you mean. He went to the U-nited States.’

‘Did he?’ asked Martin, with sudden interest. ‘When?’

‘Five year ago, or then about,’ said Bill. ‘He had set up in the public line here, and couldn’t meet his engagements, so he cut off to Liverpool one day, without saying anything about it, and went and shipped himself for the U-nited States.’

‘Well?’ said Martin.

‘Well! as he landed there without a penny to bless himself with, of course they