The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

"And now let me see," said Mr. Pecksniff presently, "how can you best employ yourself, Martin, while I am absent. Suppose you were to give me your idea of a monument to a Lord Mayor of London, or a tomb for a sheriff, or your notion of a cow-house to be erected in a nobleman's park. A pump is a very chaste practice. I have found that a lamp-post is calculated to refine the mind and give it a classical tendency. An ornamental turnpike has a remarkable effect upon the imagination. What do you say to beginning with an ornamental turnpike?"

"Whatever Mr. Pecksniff pleased," said Martin doubtfully.

"Stay," said that gentleman. "Come! as you're ambitious, and are a very neat draughtsman, you shall try your hand on these proposals for a grammar-school. When your mind requires to be refreshed by change of occupation, Thomas Pinch will instruct you in the art of surveying the back-garden, or in ascertaining the dead level of the road between this house and the finger-post, or in any other practical and pleasing pursuit. There is a cart-load of loose bricks, and a score or two of old flower-pots in the back-yard. If you could pile them up, my dear Martin, into any form which would remind me on my return, say, of St. Peter's at Rome, or the Mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople, it would be at once improving to you and agreeable to my feelings."

The coach having rolled away, with the olive-branches in the boot and the family of doves inside, Martin Chuzzlewit and Tom Pinch were left together. Now, there was something in the very simplicity of Pinch that invited confidences, and young Martin could not refrain from telling his story.

"I must talk openly to somebody," he began, "I'll talk openly to you. You must know, then, that I have been bred up from childhood with great expectations, and have always been taught to believe that one day I should be very rich. Certain things, however, have led to my being disinherited."

"By your father?" inquired Tom.

"By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Now, my grandfather has a great many good points, but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. He has the most confirmed obstinacy of character, and he is most abominably selfish; I have heard that these are failings of our family, and I have to be very thankful that they haven't descended to me. Now I come to the cream of my story, and the occasion of my being here. I am in love, Pinch. I am in love with one of the most beautiful girls the sun ever shone upon. But she is wholly and entirely dependent upon the pleasure of my grandfather; and if he were to know that she favoured my passion, she would lose her home and everything she possesses in the world. My grandfather, although I had conducted myself from the first with the utmost circumspection, is full of jealousy and mistrust, and suspected me of loving her. He said nothing to her, but attacked me in private, and charged me with designing to corrupt the fidelity to himself--observe his selfishness--of a young creature who was his only disinterested and faithful companion. The upshot of it was that I was to renounce her or be renounced by him. Of course, I was not going to yield to him, and here I am!"

Mr. Pinch, after staring at the fire, said, "Pecksniff, of course, you knew before?"

"Only by name. My grandfather kept not only himself, but me, aloof from all his relations. But our separation took place in a town in the neighbouring county. I saw Pecksniff's advertisement in the paper when I was at Salisbury, and answered it, having always had some natural taste in the matters to which it referred. I was doubly bent on coming to him if possible, on account of his being--"

"Such an excellent man," interposed Tom, rubbing his hands.

"Why, not so much on that account," returned Martin, "as because my grandfather has an inveterate dislike to him, and after the old man's arbitrary treatment of me, I had a natural desire to run as directly counter to all his opinions as I could."

II.--Mr. Pecksniff Discharges His Duty

Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters took up their lodging in London at Mrs. Todgers's Commercial Boarding House, and it was at that favoured abode that old Martin Chuzzlewit, whose grandson had just entered Mr. Pecksniff's house, sought him out.

"I very much regret," said old Martin, "that you and I held such a conversation as we did when we met awhile since. The intentions that I bear towards you now are of another kind. Deserted by all in whom I have ever trusted; hoodwinked and beset by all who should help and sustain me, I fly to you for refuge. I confide in you to be my ally; to attach yourself to me by ties of interest and expectations. I regret having been severed from you so long."