“Come, Mr. Pecksniff,” he said with a smile, “don’t let there be any
ill-blood between us, pray. I am sorry we have ever differed, and
extremely sorry I have ever given you offence. Bear me no ill-will at
parting, sir.”
“I bear,” answered Mr. Pecksniff, mildly, “no ill-will to any man on
earth.”
“I told you he didn’t,” said Pinch in an under-tone; “I knew he didn’t!
He always says he don’t.”
“Then you will shake hands, sir?” cried Westlock, advancing a step or
two, and bespeaking Mr. Pinch’s close attention by a glance.
“Umph!” said Mr. Pecksniff, in his most winning tone.
“You will shake hands, sir?”
“No, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, with a calmness quite ethereal; “no, I
will not shake hands, John. I have forgiven you. I had already forgiven
you, even before you ceased to reproach and taunt me. I have embraced you
in the spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands.”
“Pinch,” said the youth, turning towards him, with a hearty disgust of
his late master, “what did I tell you?”
Poor Pinch looked down uneasily at Mr. Pecksniff, whose eye was fixed
upon him as it had been from the first: and looking up at the ceiling
again, made no reply.
“As to your forgiveness, Mr. Pecksniff,” said the youth, “I’ll not have
it upon such terms. I won’t be forgiven.”
“Won’t you, John?” retorted Mr. Pecksniff with a smile. “You must. You
can’t help it. Forgiveness is a high quality; an exalted virtue far above
_your_ control or influence, John. I _will_ forgive you. You cannot move
me to remember any wrong you have ever done me, John.”
“Wrong!” said the other, with all the heat and impetuosity of his age.
“Here’s a pretty fellow! Wrong! Wrong I have done him! He’ll not even
remember the five hundred pounds he had with me under false pretences;
or the seventy pounds a-year for board and lodgings that would have been
dear at seventeen! Here’s a martyr!”
“Money, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “is the root of all evil. I grieve to
see that it is already bearing evil fruit in you. But I will not remember
its existence. I will not even remember the conduct of that misguided
person”—and here, although he spoke like one at peace with all the world,
he used an emphasis that plainly said ‘I have my eye upon the rascal
now’—“that misguided person who has brought you here to-night, seeking to
disturb (it is a happiness to say in vain) the heart’s repose and peace
of one who would have shed his dearest blood to serve him.”
The voice of Mr. Pecksniff trembled as he spoke, and sobs were heard from
his daughters. Sounds floated on the air, moreover, as if two spirit
voices had exclaimed: one, “Beast!” the other, “Savage!”
“Forgiveness,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “entire and pure forgiveness is not
incompatible with a wounded heart; perchance when the heart is wounded,
it becomes a greater virtue. With my breast still wrung and grieved to
its inmost core by the ingratitude of that person, I am proud and glad to
say, that I forgive him. Nay! I beg,” cried Mr. Pecksniff, raising his
voice as Pinch appeared about to speak, “I beg that individual not to
offer a remark; he will truly oblige me by not uttering one word: just
now. I am not sure that I am equal to the trial. In a very short space of
time I shall have sufficient fortitude, I trust, to converse with him as
if these events had never happened. But not,” said Mr. Pecksniff, turning
round again towards the fire, and waving his hand in the direction of the
door, “not now.”
“Bah!” cried John Westlock, with the utmost disgust and disdain the
monosyllable is capable of expressing. “Ladies, good evening. Come,
Pinch, it’s not worth thinking of. I was right and you were wrong. That’s
a small matter; you’ll be wiser another time.”
So saying, he clapped that dejected companion on the shoulder, turned
upon his heel, and walked out into the passage, whither poor Mr. Pinch,
after lingering irresolutely in the parlour for a few seconds, expressing
in his countenance the deepest mental misery and gloom, followed him.
They then took up the box between them, and sallied out to meet the mail.
That fleet conveyance passed, every night, the corner of a lane at some
distance; towards which point they bent their steps. For some minutes
they walked along in silence, until at length young Westlock burst into a
loud laugh, and at intervals into another and another. Still there was no
response from his companion.
“I’ll tell you what Pinch!” he said abruptly, after another lengthened
silence—“You haven’t half enough of the devil in you. Half enough! You
haven’t any.”
“Well!” said Pinch with a sigh, “I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s a
compliment to say so. If I haven’t, I suppose I’m all the better for it.”
“All the better!” repeated his companion tartly: “All the worse, you mean
to say.”
“And yet,” said Pinch, pursuing his own thoughts and not the last remark
on the part of his friend, “I must have a good deal of what you call
the devil in me, too, or how could I make Pecksniff so uncomfortable? I
wouldn’t have occasioned him so much distress—don’t laugh, please—for a
mine of money: and Heaven knows I could find good use for it, too, John.
How grieved he was!”
“_He_ grieved!” returned the other.
“Why didn’t you observe that the tears were almost starting out of his
eyes!” cried Pinch. “Bless my soul, John, is it nothing to see a man
moved to that extent and know one’s self to be the cause! And did you
hear him say that he could have shed his blood for me?”
“Do you _want_ any blood shed for you?” returned his friend, with
considerable irritation. “Does he shed any thing for you that you _do_
want? Does he shed employment for you, instruction for you, pocket-money
for you? Does he shed even legs of mutton for you in a decent proportion
to potatoes and garden stuff?”
“I am afraid,” said Pinch, sighing again, “that I’m a great eater: I
can’t disguise from myself that I’m a great eater. Now you know that,
John.”
“_You_ a great eater!” retorted his companion, with no less indignation
than before. “How do you know you are?”
There appeared to be forcible matter in this inquiry, for Mr. Pinch only
repeated in an under-tone that he had a strong misgiving on the subject,
and that he greatly feared he was.
“Besides, whether I am or no,” he added “that has little or nothing to
do with his thinking me ungrateful. John, there is scarcely a sin in
the world that is in my eyes such a crying one as ingratitude; and when
he taxes me with that, and believes me to be guilty of it, he makes me
miserable and wretched.”
“Do you think he don’t know that?” returned the other scornfully. “But
come, Pinch, before I say any more to you, just run over the reasons you
have for being grateful to him at all, will you? change hands first, for
the box is heavy. That’ll do. Now, go on.”
“In the first place,” said Pinch, “he took me as his pupil for much less
than he asked.”
“Well,” rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of
generosity. “What in the second place?”
“What in the second place!” cried Pinch, in a sort of desperation, “why,
every thing in the second place. My poor old grandmother died happy to
think she had put me with such an excellent man. I have grown up in his
house, I am in his confidence, I am his assistant, he allows me a salary:
when his business improves, my prospects are to improve too. All this,
and a great deal more, is in the second place. And in the very prologue
and preface to the first place, John, you must consider this, which
nobody knows better than I: that I was born for much plainer and poorer
things, that I am not a good hand at his kind of business, and have no
talent for it, or indeed for any thing else but odds and ends that are of
no use or service to anybody.”
He said this with so much earnestness, and in a tone so full of feeling,
that his companion instinctively changed his manner as he sat down on
the box (they had by this time reached the finger-post at the end of the
lane); motioned him to sit down beside him; and laid his hand upon his
shoulder.
“I believe you are one of the best fellows in the world,” he said, “Tom
Pinch.”
“Not at all,” rejoined Tom. “If you only knew Pecksniff as well as I do,
you might say it of him, indeed, and say it truly.”
“I’ll say any thing of him you like,” returned the other, “and not
another word to his disparagement.”
“It’s for my sake then; not his, I am afraid,” said Pinch, shaking his
head gravely.
“For whose you please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He’s a famous
fellow! _He_ never scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor
grandmother’s hard savings—she was a housekeeper, wasn’t she, Tom?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Pinch, nursing one of his large knees, and nodding his
head: “a gentleman’s housekeeper.”
“_He_ never scraped and clawed into his pouch all her hard savings;
dazzling her with prospects of your happiness and advancement, which he
knew (and no man better) never would be realized! _He_ never speculated
and traded on her pride in you, and her having educated you, and on her
desire that you at least should live to be a gentleman. Not he, Tom!”
“No,” said Tom, looking into his friend’s face, as if he were a little
doubtful of his meaning; “of course not.”
“So say I,” returned the youth, “of course he never did. _He_ didn’t
take less than he had asked, because that less was all she had, and more
than he expected: not he, Tom! he doesn’t keep you as his assistant
because you are of any use to him; because your wonderful faith in his
pretensions is of inestimable service in all his mean disputes; because
your honesty reflects honesty on him; because your wandering about this
little place all your spare hours, reading in ancient books and foreign
tongues, gets noised abroad, even as far as Salisbury, making of him,
Pecksniff, the master, a man of learning and of vast importance. _He_
gets no credit from you, Tom, not he.”
“Why, of course he don’t,” said Pinch, gazing at his friend with a more
troubled aspect than before. “Pecksniff get credit from _me_! Well!”
“Don’t I say that it’s ridiculous,” rejoined the other, “even to think of
such a thing?”
“Why, its madness,” said Tom.
“Madness!” returned young Westlock. “Certainly, it’s madness. Who but
a madman would suppose he cares to hear it said on Sundays, that the
volunteer who plays the organ in the church, and practises on summer
evenings in the dark, is Mr. Pecksniff’s young man, eh, Tom? Who but a
madman would suppose that it is the game of such a man as he, to have
his name in everybody’s mouth, connected with the thousand useless odds
and ends you do (and which, of course, he taught you), eh, Tom? Who but
a madman would suppose you advertise him hereabouts, much cheaper and
much better than a chalker on the walls could, eh, Tom? As well might one
suppose that he doesn’t on all occasions pour out his whole heart and
soul to you; that he doesn’t make you a very liberal and indeed rather
extravagant allowance; or, to be more wild and monstrous still, if that
be possible, as well might one suppose,” and here, at every word, he
struck him lightly on the breast, “that Pecksniff traded in your nature,
and that your nature was, to be timid and distrustful of yourself, and
trustful of all other men, but most of all of him who least deserves it.
There would be madness, Tom!”
Mr. Pinch had listened to all this with looks of bewilderment, which
seemed to be in part occasioned by the matter of his companion’s speech,
and in part by his rapid and vehement manner. Now that he had come to
a close, he drew a very long breath: and gazing wistfully in his face
as if he were unable to settle in his own mind what expression it wore,
and were desirous to draw from it as good a clue to his real meaning as
it was possible to obtain in the dark, was about to answer, when the
sound of the mail-guard’s horn came cheerily upon their ears, putting an
immediate end to the conference: greatly as it seemed to the satisfaction
of the younger man, who jumped up briskly, and gave his hand to his
companion.
“Both hands, Tom. I shall write to you from London, mind!”
“Yes,” said Pinch. “Yes. Do, please. Good bye. Good bye. I can hardly
believe you’re going. It seems now but yesterday that you came. Good bye!
my dear old fellow!”
John Westlock returned his parting words with no less heartiness of
manner, and sprung up to his seat upon the roof. Off went the mail at
a canter down the dark road: the lamps gleaming brightly, and the horn
awakening all the echoes, far and wide.
“Go your ways,” said Pinch, apostrophizing the coach; “I can hardly
persuade myself but you’re alive, and are some great monster who visits
this place at certain intervals, to bear my friends away into the world.
You’re more exulting and rampant than usual to-night, I think: and you
may well crow over your prize; for he is a fine lad, an ingenuous lad,
and has but one fault that I know of: he don’t mean it, but he is most
cruelly unjust to Pecksniff!”