In which Tom Pinch and his sister take a little pleasure: but
quite in a domestic way, and with no ceremony about it
TOM PINCH AND HIS SISTER having to part, for the dispatch of the morning's
business, immediately after the dispersion of the other actors in the scene upon
the wharf with which the reader has been already made acquainted, had no
opportunity of discussing the subject at that time. But Tom, in his solitary
office, and Ruth, in the triangular parlour, thought about nothing else all day;
and, when their hour of meeting in the afternoon approached, they were very full
of it, to be sure.
There was a little plot between them, that Tom should always come out of the
Temple by one way; and that was past the fountain. Coming through Fountain
Court, he was just to glance down the steps leading into Garden Court, and to
look once all round him; and if Ruth had come to meet him, there he would see
her; not sauntering, you understand (on account of the clerks), but coming
briskly up, with the best little laugh upon her face that ever played in
opposition to the fountain, and beat it all to nothing. For, fifty to one, Tom
had been looking for her in the wrong direction, and had quite given her up,
while she had been tripping towards him from the first: jingling that little
reticule of hers (with all the keys in it) to attract his wandering observation.
Whether there was life enough left in the slow vegetation of Fountain Court
for the smoky shrubs to have any consciousness of the brightest and
purest-hearted little woman in the world, is a question for gardeners, and those
who are learned in the loves of plants. But, that it was a good thing for that
same paved yard to have such a delicate little figure flitting through it; that
it passed like a smile from the grimy old houses, and the worn flagstones, and
left them duller, darker, sterner than before; there is no sort of doubt. The
Temple fountain might have leaped up twenty feet to greet the spring of hopeful
maidenhood, that in her person stole on, sparkling, through the dry and dusty
channels of the Law; the chirping sparrows, bred in Temple chinks and crannies,
might have held their peace to listen to imaginary skylarks, as so fresh a
little creature passed; the dingy boughs, unused to droop, otherwise than in
their puny growth, might have bent down in a kindred gracefulness to shed their
benedictions on her graceful head; old love letters, shut up in iron boxes in
the neighbouring offices, and made of no account among the heaps of family
papers into which they had strayed, and of which, in their degeneracy, they
formed a part, might have stirred and fluttered with a moment's recollection of
their ancient tenderness, as she went lightly by. Anything might have happened
that did not happen, and never will, for the love of Ruth.
Something happened, too, upon the afternoon of which the history treats. Not
for her love. Oh no! quite by accident, and without the least reference to her
at all.
Either she was a little too soon, or Tom was a little too late--she was so
precise in general, that she timed it to half a minute--but no Tom was there.
Well! But was anybody else there, that she blushed so deeply, after looking
round, and tripped off down the steps with such unusual expedition?
Why, the fact is, that Mr. Westlock was passing at that moment. The Temple is
a public thoroughfare; they may write up on the gates that it is not, but so
long as the gates are left open it is, and will be; and Mr. Westlock had as good
a right to be there as anybody else. But why did she run away, then? Not being
ill dressed, for she was much too neat for that, why did she run away? The brown
hair that had fallen down beneath her bonnet, and had one impertinent imp of a
false flower clinging to it, boastful of its licence before all men, that could
not have been the cause, for it looked charming. Oh! foolish, panting,
frightened little heart, why did she run away!
Merrily the tiny fountain played, and merrily the dimples sparkled on its
sunny face. John Westlock hurried after her. Softly the whispering water broke
and fell; as roguishly the dimples twinkled, as he stole upon her footsteps.
Oh, foolish, panting, timid little heart, why did she feign to be unconscious
of his coming! Why wish herself so far away, yet be so flutteringly happy there!
`I felt sure it was you,' said John, when he overtook her in the sanctuary of
Garden Court. `I knew I couldn't be mistaken.'
She was so surprised.
`You are waiting for your brother,' said John. `Let me bear you company.'
So light was the touch of the coy little hand, that he glanced down to assure
himself he had it on his arm. But his glance, stopping for an instant at the
bright eyes, forgot its first design, and went no farther.
They walked up and down three or four times, speaking about Tom and his
mysterious employment. Now that was a very natural and innocent subject, surely.
Then why, whenever Ruth lifted up her eyes, did she let them fall again
immediately, and seek the uncongenial pavement of the court? They were not such
eyes as shun the light; they were not such eyes as require to be hoarded to
enhance their value. They were much too precious and too genuine to stand in
need of arts like those. Somebody must have been looking at them!
They found out Tom, though, quickly enough. This pair of eyes descried him in
the distance, the moment he appeared. He was staring about him, as usual, in all
directions but the right one; and was as obstinate in not looking towards them,
as if he had intended it. As it was plain that, being left to himself, he would
walk away home, John Westlock darted off to stop him.
This made the approach of poor little Ruth, by herself, one of the most
embarrassing of circumstances. There was Tom, manifesting extreme surprise (he
had no presence of mind, that Tom, on small occasions); there was John, making
as light of it as he could, but explaining at the same time with most
unnecessary elaboration; and here was she, coming towards them, with both of
them looking at her, conscious of blushing to a terrible extent, but trying to
throw up her eyebrows carelessly, and pout her rosy lips, as if she were the
coolest and most unconcerned of little women.
Merrily the fountain plashed and plashed, until the dimples, merging into one
another, swelled into a general smile, that covered the whole surface of the
basin.
`What an extraordinary meeting!' said Tom. `I should never have dreamed of
seeing you two together here.'
`Quite accidental,' John was heard to murmur.
`Exactly,' cried Tom; `that's what I mean, you know. If it wasn't accidental,
there would be nothing remarkable in it.'
`To be sure,' said John.
`Such an out-of-the-way place for you to have met in,' pursued Tom, quite
delighted. `Such an unlikely spot!'
John rather disputed that. On the contrary, he considered it a very likely
spot, indeed. He was constantly passing to and fro there, he said. He shouldn't
wonder if it were to happen again. His only wonder was, that it had never
happened before.
By this time Ruth had got round on the farther side of her brother, and had
taken his arm. She was squeezing it now, as much as to say `Are you going to
stop here all day, you dear old blundering Tom?'
Tom answered the squeeze as if it had been a speech. `John,' he said, `if
you'll give my sister your arm, we'll take her between us, and walk on. I have a
curious circumstance to relate to you. Our meeting could not have happened
better.'
Merrily the fountain leaped and danced, and merrily the smiling dimples
twinkled and expanded more and more, until they broke into a laugh against the
basin's rim, and vanished.
`Tom,' said his friend, as they turned into the noisy street, `I have a
proposition to make. It is, that you and your sister--if she will so far honour
a poor bachelor's dwelling--give me a great pleasure, and come and dine with
me.'
`What, to-day?' cried Tom.
`Yes, to-day. It's close by, you know. Pray, Miss Pinch, insist upon it. It
will be very disinterested, for I have nothing to give you.'
`Oh! you must not believe that, Ruth,' said Tom. `He is the most tremendous
fellow, in his housekeeping, that I ever heard of, for a single man. He ought to
be Lord Mayor. Well! what do you say? Shall we go?'
`If you please, Tom,' rejoined his dutiful little sister.
`But I mean,' said Tom, regarding her with smiling admiration: `is there
anything you ought to wear, and haven't got? I am sure I don't know, John: she
may not be able to take her bonnet off, for anything I can tell.'
There was a great deal of laughing at this, and there were divers compliments
from John Westlock--not compliments he said at least land really he was right),
but good, plain, honest truths, which no one could deny. Ruth laughed, and all
that, but she made no objection; so it was an engagement.
`If I had known it a little sooner,' said John, `I would have tried another
pudding. Not in rivalry; but merely to exalt that famous one. I wouldn't on any
account have had it made with suet.'
`Why not?' asked Tom.
`Because that cookery-book advises suet,' said John Westlock; `and ours was
made with flour and eggs.'
`Oh good gracious!' cried Tom. `Ours was made with flour and eggs, was it?
Ha, ha, ha! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and eggs! Why anybody knows
better than that. I know better than that! Ha, ha, ha!'
It is unnecessary to say that Tom had been present at the making of the
pudding, and had been a devoted believer in it all through. But he was so
delighted to have this joke against his busy little sister and was tickled to
that degree at having found her out, that he stopped in Temple Bar to laugh; and
it was no more to Tom, that he was anathematised and knocked about by the surly
passengers, than it would have been to a post; for he continued to exclaim with
unabated good humour, `flour and eggs! A beefsteak pudding made with flour and
eggs!' until John Westlock and his sister fairly ran away from him, and left him
to have his laugh out by himself: which he had, and then came dodging across the
crowded street to them, with such sweet temper and tenderness (it was quite a
tender joke of Tom's) beaming in his face, God bless it, that it might have
purified the air, though Temple Bar had been, as in the golden days gone by,
embellished with a row of rotting human heads.
There are snug chambers in those Inns where the bachelors live, and, for the
desolate fellows they pretend to be, it is quite surprising how well they get
on. John was very pathetic on the subject of his dreary life, and the deplorable
makeshifts and apologetic contrivances it involved, but he really seemed to make
himself pretty comfortable. His rooms were the perfection of neatness and
convenience at any rate; and if he were anything but comfortable, the fault was
certainly not theirs.
He had no sooner ushered Tom and his sister into his best room (where there
was a beautiful little vase of fresh flowers on the table, all ready for
Ruth.--Just as if he had expected her, Tom said), than seizing his hat, he
bustled out again, in his most energetically bustling, way; and presently came
hurrying back, as they saw through the half-opened door, attended by a
fiery-faced matron attired in a crunched bonnet, with particularly long strings
to it hanging down her back; in conjunction with whom he instantly began to lay
the cloth for dinner, polishing up the wine-glasses with his own hands,
brightening the silver top of the pepper-castor on his coat-sleeve, drawing
corks and filling decanters, with a skill and expedition that were quite
dazzling. And as if, in the course of this rubbing and polishing, he had rubbed
an enchanted lamp or a magic ring, obedient to which there were twenty thousand
supernatural slaves at least, suddenly there appeared a being in a white
waistcoat, carrying under his arm a napkin, and attended by another being with
an oblong box upon his head, from which a banquet, piping hot, was taken out and
set upon the table.
Salmon, lamb, peas, innocent young potatoes, a cool salad, sliced cucumber a
tender duckling, and a tart--all there. They all came at the right time. Where
they came from, didn't appear; but the oblong box was constantly going and
coming, and making its arrival known to the man in the white waistcoat by
bumping modestly against the outside of the door; for, after its first
appearance, it entered the room no more. He was never surprised, this man; he
never seemed to wonder at the extraordinary things he found in the box, but took
them out with a face expressive of a steady purpose and impenetrable character,
and put them on the table. He was a kind man; gentle in his manners, and much
interested in what they ate and drank. He was a learned man, and knew the
flavour of John Westlock's private sauces, which he softly and feelingly
described, as he handed the little bottles round. He was a grave man, and a
noiseless; for dinner being done, and wine and fruit arranged upon the board, he
vanished, box and all, like something that had never been.
`Didn't I say he was a tremendous fellow in his housekeeping?' cried Tom
`Bless my soul! It's wonderful.'
`Ah, Miss Pinch,' said John. `This is the bright side of the life we lead in
such a place. It would be a dismal life, indeed, if it didn't brighten up
to-day'
`Don't believe a word he says,' cried Tom. `He lives here like a monarch, and
wouldn't change his mode of life for any consideration. He only pretends to
grumble.'
No. John really did not appear to pretend; for he was uncommonly earnest in
his desire to have it understood that he was as dull, solitary and uncomfortable
on ordinary occasions as an unfortunate young man could in reason, be. It was a
wretched life, he said, a miserable life. He thought of getting rid of the
chambers as soon as possible; and meant, in fact, to put a bill up very shortly.
`Well' said Tom Pinch, `I don't know where you can go, John, to be more
comfortable. That's all I can say. What do you say, Ruth?'
Ruth trifled with the cherries on her plate, and said that she thought Mr.
Westlock ought to be quite happy, and that she had no doubt he was.
Ah, foolish, panting, frightened little heart, how timidly she said it!
`But you are forgetting what you had to tell, Tom: what occurred this
morning,' she added in the same breath.
`So I am,' said Tom `We have been so talkative on other topics that I declare
I have not had time to think of it. I'll tell it you at once, John, in case I
should forget it altogether.'
On Tom's relating what had passed upon the wharf, his friend was very much
surprised, and took such a great interest in the narrative as Tom could not
quite understand. He believed he knew the old lady whose acquaintance they had
made, he said; and that he might venture to say, from their description of her,
that her name was Gamp. But of what nature the communication could have been
which Tom had borne so unexpectedly; why its delivery had been entrusted to him;
how it happened that the parties were involved together; and what secret lay at
the bottom of the whole affair; perplexed him very much. Tom had been sure of
his taking some interest in the matter; but was not prepared for the strong
interest he showed. It held John Westlock to the subject even after Ruth had
left the room; and evidently made him anxious to pursue it further than as a
mere subject of conversation.
`I shall remonstrate with my landlord, of course,' said Tom: `though he is a
very singular secret sort of man, and not likely to afford me much satisfaction;
even if he knew what was in the letter.'
`Which you may swear he did,' John interposed.
`You think so?'
`I am certain of it.'
`Well!' said Tom, `I shall remonstrate with him when I see him (he goes in
and out in a strange way, but I will try to catch him tomorrow morning), on his
having asked me to execute such an unpleasant commission. And I have been
thinking, John, that if I went down to Mrs. What's-her-name's in the City, where
I was before, you know--Mrs. Todgers's--to-morrow morning, I might find poor
Mercy Pecksniff there, perhaps, and be able to explain to her how I came to have
any hand in the business.'
`You are perfectly right, Tom,' returned his friend, after a short interval
of reflection. `You cannot do better. It is quite clear to me that whatever the
business is, there is little good in it; and it is so desirable for you to
disentangle yourself from any appearance of wilful connexion with it, that I
would counsel you to see her husband, if you can, and wash your hands of it by a
plain statement of the facts. I have a misgiving that there is something dark at
work here, Tom. I will tell you why, at another time: when I have made an
inquiry or two myself.'
All this sounded very mysterious to Tom Pinch. But as he knew he could rely
upon his friend, he resolved to follow this advice.
Ah, but it would have been a good thing to have had a coat of invisibility
wherein to have watched little Ruth, when she was left to herself in John
Westlock's chambers, and John and her brother were talking thus, over their
wine! The gentle way in which she tried to get up a little conversation with the
fiery-faced matron in the crunched bonnet, who was waiting to attend her; after
making a desperate rally in regard of her dress, and attiring herself in a
washedout yellow gown with sprigs of the same upon it, so that it looked like a
tesselated work of pats of butter. That would have been pleasant. The grim and
griffin-like inflexibility with which the fiery-faced matron repelled these
engaging advances, as proceeding from a hostile and dangerous power, who could
have no business there, unless it were to deprive her of a customer, or suggest
what became of the self-consuming tea and sugar, and other general trifles. That
would have been agreeable. The bashful, winning, glorious curiosity, with which
little Ruth, when fiery-face was gone, peeped into the books and nick-nacks that
were lying about, and had a particular interest in some delicate paper-matches
on the chimney-piece: wondering who could have made them. That would have been
worth seeing. The faltering hand with which she tied those flowers together;
with which, almost blushing at her own fair self as imaged in the glass, she
arranged them in her breast, and looking at them with her head aside, now half
resolved to take them out again, now half resolved to leave them where they
were. That would have been delightful!
John seemed to think it all delightful: for coming in with Tom to tea, he
took his seat beside her like a man enchanted. And when the tea-service had been
removed, and Tom, sitting down at the piano, became absorbed in some of his old
organ tunes, he was still beside her at the open window, looking out upon the
twilight.
There is little enough to see in Furnival's Inn. It is a shady, quiet place,
echoing to the footsteps of the stragglers who have business there. and rather
monotonous and gloomy on summer evenings. What gave it such a charm to them,
that they remained at the window as unconscious of the flight of time as Tom
himself, the dreamer, while the melodies which had so often soothed his spirit
were hovering again about him! What power infused into the fading light, the
gathering darkness; the stars that here and there appeared; the evening air, the
City's hum and stir, the very chiming of the old church clocks; such exquisite
enthralment, that the divinest regions of the earth spread out before their eyes
could not have held them captive in a stronger chain?
The shadows deepened, deepened, and the room became quite dark. Still Tom's
fingers wandered over the keys of the piano, and still the window had its pair
of tenants.
At length, her hand upon his shoulder, and her breath upon his forehead,
roused Tom from his reverie.
`Dear me!' he cried, desisting with a start. `I am afraid I have been very
inconsiderate and unpolite.'
Tom little thought how much consideration and politeness he had shown!
`Sing something to us, my dear,' said Tom. `let us hear your voice. Come!'
John Westlock added his entreaties with such earnestness that a flinty heart
alone could have resisted them. Hers was not a flinty heart. O dear no! Quite
another thing.
So down she sat, and in a pleasant voice began to sing the ballads Tom loved
well. Old rhyming stories, with here and there a pause for a few simple chords,
such as a harper might have sounded in the ancient time while looking upward for
the current of some half-remembered legend; words of old poets, wedded to such
measures that the strain of music might have been the poet's breath, giving
utterance and expression to his thoughts; and now a melody so joyous and
light-hearted, that the singer seemed incapable of sadness, until in her
inconstancy (oh wicked little singer!) she relapsed, and broke the listeners'
hearts again: these were the simple means she used to please them. And that
these simple means prevailed, and she did please them, let the still darkened
chamber, and its long-deferred illumination witness.
The candles came at last, and it was time for moving homeward. Cutting paper
carefully, and rolling it about the stalks of those same flowers, occasioned
some delay; but even this was done in time, and Ruth was ready.
`Good night!' said Tom. `A memorable and delightful visit, John! Good night!'
John thought he would walk with them.
`No, no. Don't!' said Tom. `What nonsense! We can get home very well alone. I
couldn't think of taking you out.'
But John said he would rather.
`Are you sure you would rather?' said Tom. `I am afraid you only say so out
of politeness.'
John being quite sure, gave his arm to Ruth, and led her out. Fiery-face, who
was again in attendance, acknowledged her departure with so cold a curtsey that
it was hardly visible; and cut Tom dead.
Their host was bent on walking the whole distance, and would not listen to
Tom's dissuasions. Happy time, happy walk, happy parting, happy dreams! But
there are some sweet day-dreams, so there are that put the visions of the night
to shame.
Busily the Temple fountain murmured in the moonlight, while Ruth lay
sleeping, with her flowers beside her; and John Westlock sketched a
portrait--whose?--from memory.
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