the thin wine by drops, and smacked his lips, as though it were so rich and generous that to lose an atom of its fruity flavour were a sin; the look with which he paused sometimes, with his glass in his hand, proposing silent toasts to himself; and the anxious shade that came upon his contented face when, after wandering round the room, exulting in its uninvaded snugness, his glance encountered the dull brow of his companion; no cynic in the world, though in his hatred of its men a very griffin, could have withstood these things in Thomas Pinch.
Some men would have slapped him on the back, and pledged him in a bumper of the currant wine, though it had been the sharpest vinegar – aye, and liked its flavour too; some would have seized him by his honest hand, and thanked him for the lesson that his simple nature taught them. Some would have laughed with, and others would have laughed at him; of which last class was Martin Chuzzlewit, who, unable to restrain himself, at last laughed loud and long.
‘That’s right,’ said Tom, nodding approvingly. ‘Cheer up! That’s capital!’
At which encouragement young Martin laughed again; and said, as soon as he had breath and gravity enough:
‘I never saw such a fellow as you are, Pinch.’
‘Didn’t you though?’ said Tom. ‘Well, it’s very likely you do find me strange, because I have hardly seen anything of the world, and you have seen a good deal I dare say?’
‘Pretty well for my time of life,’ rejoined Martin, drawing his chair still nearer to the fire, and spreading his feet out on the fender. ‘Deuce take it, I must talk openly to somebody. I’ll talk openly to you, Pinch.’
‘Do!’ said Tom. ‘I shall take it as being very friendly of you,’
‘I’m not in your way, am I?’ inquired Martin, glancing down at Mr Pinch, who was by this time looking at the fire over his leg.
‘Not at all!’ cried Tom.
‘You must know then, to make short of a long story,’ said Martin, beginning with a kind of effort, as if the revelation were not agreeable to him; ‘that I have been bred up from childhood with great expectations, and have always been taught to believe that I should be, one day, very rich. So I should have been, but for certain brief reasons which I am going to tell you, and which have led to my being disinherited.’
‘By your father?’ inquired Mr Pinch, with open eyes.
‘By my grandfather. I have had no parents these many years. Scarcely within my remembrance.’
‘Neither have I,’ said Tom, touching the young man’s hand with his own and timidly withdrawing it again. ‘Dear me!’
‘Why, as to that, you know, Pinch,’ pursued the other, stirring the fire again, and speaking in his rapid, off-hand way; ‘it’s all very right and proper to be fond of parents when we have them, and to bear them in remembrance after they’re dead, if you have ever known anything of them. But as I never did know anything about mine personally, you know, why, I can’t be expected to be very sentimental about ‘em. And I am not; that’s the truth.’
Mr Pinch was just then looking thoughtfully at the bars. But on his companion pausing in this place, he started, and said ‘Oh! of course’ – and composed himself to listen again.
‘In a word,’ said Martin, ‘I have been bred and reared all my life by this grandfather of whom I have just spoken. Now, he has a great many good points – there is no doubt about that; I’ll not disguise the fact from you – but he has two very great faults, which are the staple of his bad side. In the first place, he has the most confirmed obstinacy of character you ever met with in any human creature. In the second, he is most abominably selfish.’
‘Is he indeed?’ cried Tom.
‘In those two respects,’ returned the other, ‘there never was such a man. I have often heard from those who know, that they have been, time out of mind, the failings of our family; and I believe there’s some truth in it. But I can’t say of my own knowledge. All I have to do, you know, is to be very thankful that they haven’t descended to me, and, to be very careful that I don’t contract ‘em.’
‘To be sure,’ said Mr Pinch. ‘Very proper.’
‘Well, sir,’ resumed Martin, stirring the fire once more, and drawing his chair still closer to it, ‘his selfishness makes him exacting, you see; and his obstinacy makes him resolute in his exactions. The consequence is that he has always exacted a great deal from me in the way of respect, and submission, and self-denial when his wishes were in question, and so forth. I have borne a great deal from him, because I have been under obligations to him (if one can ever be said to be under obligations to one’s own grandfather), and because I have been really attached to him; but we have had a great many quarrels for all that, for I could not accommodate myself to his ways very often – not out of the least reference to myself, you understand, but because – ’ he stammered here, and was rather at a loss.
Mr Pinch being about the worst man in the world to help anybody out of a difficulty of this sort, said nothing.
‘Well! as you understand me,’ resumed Martin, quickly, ‘I needn’t hunt for the precise expression I want. Now I come to the cream of my story, and the occasion of my being here. I am in love, Pinch.’
Mr Pinch looked up into his face with increased interest.
‘I say I am in love. 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. There is nothing very selfish in that love, I think?’
‘Selfish!’ cried Tom. ‘You have acted nobly. To love her as I am sure you do, and yet in consideration for her state of dependence, not even to disclose – ’
‘What are you talking about, Pinch?’ said Martin pettishly: ‘don’t make yourself ridiculous, my good fellow! What do you mean by not disclosing?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ answered Tom. ‘I thought you meant that, or I wouldn’t have said it.’
‘If I didn’t tell her I loved her, where would be the use of my being in love?’ said Martin: ‘unless to keep myself in a perpetual state of worry and vexation?’
‘That’s true,’ Tom answered. ‘Well! I can guess what she said when you told her,’ he added, glancing at Martin’s handsome face.
‘Why, not exactly, Pinch,’ he rejoined, with a slight frown; ‘because she has some girlish notions about duty and gratitude, and all the rest of it, which are rather hard to fathom; but in the main you are right. Her heart was mine, I found.’
‘Just what I supposed,’ said Tom. ‘Quite natural!’ and, in his great satisfaction, he took a long sip out of his wine-glass.
‘Although I had conducted myself from the first with the utmost circumspection,’ pursued Martin, ‘I had not managed matters so well but that my grandfather, who is full of jealousy and distrust, suspected me of loving her. He said nothing to her, but straightway attacked me in private, and charged me with designing to corrupt the fidelity to himself (there you observe his selfishness), of a young creature whom he had trained and educated to be his only disinterested and faithful companion, when he should have disposed of me in marriage to his heart’s content. Upon that, I took fire immediately, and told him that with his good leave I would dispose of myself in marriage, and would
