"Now," said Tom, "we must first look out for some very unpretending streets, and then look out for bills in the windows."
So they walked off again, quite as happily as if they had just stepped out of a snug little house of their own, to look for lodgings on account of somebody else. Tom"s simplicity was unabated, Heaven knows; but now that he had somebody to rely upon him, he was stimulated to rely a little more upon himself, and was, in his own opinion, quite a desperate fellow.
After roaming up and down for hours, looking at some scores of lodgings, they began to find it rather fatiguing, especially as they saw none which were at all adapted to their purpose. At length, however, in a singular little old-fashioned house, up a blind street, they discovered two small bedrooms and a triangular parlour, which promised to suit them well enough. Their desiring to take possession immediately was a suspicious circ.u.mstance, but even this was surmounted by the payment of their first week"s rent, and a reference to John Westlock, Esquire, Furnival"s Inn, High Holborn.
Ah! It was a goodly sight, when this important point was settled, to behold Tom and his sister trotting round to the baker"s, and the butcher"s, and the grocer"s, with a kind of dreadful delight in the unaccustomed cares of housekeeping; taking secret counsel together as they gave their small orders, and distracted by the least suggestion on the part of the shopkeeper! When they got back to the triangular parlour, and Tom"s sister, bustling to and fro, busy about a thousand pleasant nothings, stopped every now and then to give old Tom a kiss or smile upon him, Tom rubbed his hands as if all Islington were his.
It was late in the afternoon now, though, and high time for Tom to keep his appointment. So, after agreeing with his sister that in consideration of not having dined, they would venture on the extravagance of chops for supper at nine, he walked out again to narrate these marvellous occurrences to John.
"I am quite a family man all at once," thought Tom. "If I can only get something to do, how comfortable Ruth and I may be! Ah, that if!
But it"s of no use to despond. I can but do that, when I have tried everything and failed; and even then it won"t serve me much. Upon my word," thought Tom, quickening his pace, "I don"t know what John will think has become of me. He"ll begin to be afraid I have strayed into one of those streets where the countrymen are murdered; and that I have been made meat pies of, or some such horrible thing."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
TOM PINCH, GOING ASTRAY, FINDS THAT HE IS NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN THAT PREDICAMENT. HE RETALIATES UPON A FALLEN FOE
Tom"s evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis; nor did it mark him out as the prey of ring-droppers, pea and thimble-riggers, duffers, touters, or any of those bloodless sharpers, who are, perhaps, a little better known to the Police. He fell into conversation with no gentleman who took him into a public-house, where there happened to be another gentleman who swore he had more money than any gentleman, and very soon proved he had more money than one gentleman by taking his away from him; neither did he fall into any other of the numerous man-traps which are set up without notice, in the public grounds of this city. But he lost his way. He very soon did that; and in trying to find it again he lost it more and more.
Now, Tom, in his guileless distrust of London, thought himself very knowing in coming to the determination that he would not ask to be directed to Furnival"s Inn, if he could help it; unless, indeed, he should happen to find himself near the Mint, or the Bank of England; in which case he would step in, and ask a civil question or two, confiding in the perfect respectability of the concern. So on he went, looking up all the streets he came near, and going up half of them; and thus, by dint of not being true to Goswell Street, and filing off into Aldermanbury, and bewildering himself in Barbican, and being constant to the wrong point of the compa.s.s in London Wall, and then getting himself crosswise into Thames Street, by an instinct that would have been marvellous if he had had the least desire or reason to go there, he found himself, at last, hard by the Monument.
The Man in the Monument was quite as mysterious a being to Tom as the Man in the Moon. It immediately occurred to him that the lonely creature who held himself aloof from all mankind in that pillar like some old hermit was the very man of whom to ask his way. Cold, he might be; little sympathy he had, perhaps, with human pa.s.sion--the column seemed too tall for that; but if Truth didn"t live in the base of the Monument, notwithstanding Pope"s couplet about the outside of it, where in London (thought Tom) was she likely to be found!
Coming close below the pillar, it was a great encouragement to Tom to find that the Man in the Monument had simple tastes; that stony and artificial as his residence was, he still preserved some rustic recollections; that he liked plants, hung up bird-cages, was not wholly cut off from fresh groundsel, and kept young trees in tubs. The Man in the Monument, himself, was sitting outside the door--his own door: the Monument-door: what a grand idea!--and was actually yawning, as if there were no Monument to stop his mouth, and give him a perpetual interest in his own existence.
Tom was advancing towards this remarkable creature, to inquire the way to Furnival"s Inn, when two people came to see the Monument. They were a gentleman and a lady; and the gentleman said, "How much a-piece?"
The Man in the Monument replied, "A Tanner."
It seemed a low expression, compared with the Monument.
The gentleman put a shilling into his hand, and the Man in the Monument opened a dark little door. When the gentleman and lady had pa.s.sed out of view, he shut it again, and came slowly back to his chair.
He sat down and laughed.
"They don"t know what a many steps there is!" he said. "It"s worth twice the money to stop here. Oh, my eye!"
The Man in the Monument was a Cynic; a worldly man! Tom couldn"t ask his way of HIM. He was prepared to put no confidence in anything he said.
"My gracious!" cried a well-known voice behind Mr Pinch. "Why, to be sure it is!"
At the same time he was poked in the back by a parasol. Turning round to inquire into this salute, he beheld the eldest daughter of his late patron.
"Miss Pecksniff!" said Tom.
"Why, my goodness, Mr Pinch!" cried Cherry. "What are you doing here?"
"I have rather wandered from my way," said Tom. "I--"
"I hope you have run away," said Charity. "It would be quite spirited and proper if you had, when my Papa so far forgets himself."
"I have left him," returned Tom. "But it was perfectly understood on both sides. It was not done clandestinely."
"Is he married?" asked Cherry, with a spasmodic shake of her chin.
"No, not yet," said Tom, colouring; "to tell you the truth, I don"t think he is likely to be, if--if Miss Graham is the object of his pa.s.sion."
"Tcha, Mr Pinch!" cried Charity, with sharp impatience, "you"re very easily deceived. You don"t know the arts of which such a creature is capable. Oh! it"s a wicked world."
"You are not married?" Tom hinted, to divert the conversation.
"N--no!" said Cherry, tracing out one particular paving-stone in Monument Yard with the end of her parasol. "I--but really it"s quite impossible to explain. Won"t you walk in?"
"You live here, then?" said Tom
"Yes," returned Miss Pecksniff, pointing with her parasol to Todgers"s; "I reside with this lady, AT PRESENT."
The great stress on the two last words suggested to Tom that he was expected to say something in reference to them. So he said.
"Only at present! Are you going home again soon?"
"No, Mr Pinch," returned Charity. "No, thank you. No! A mother-in-law who is younger than--I mean to say, who is as nearly as possible about the same age as one"s self, would not quite suit my spirit. Not quite!"
said Cherry, with a spiteful shiver.
"I thought from your saying "at present""--Tom observed.
"Really, upon my word! I had no idea you would press me so very closely on the subject, Mr Pinch," said Charity, blushing, "or I should not have been so foolish as to allude to--oh really!--won"t you walk in?"
Tom mentioned, to excuse himself, that he had an appointment in Furnival"s Inn, and that coming from Islington he had taken a few wrong turnings, and arrived at the Monument instead. Miss Pecksniff simpered very much when he asked her if she knew the way to Furnival"s Inn, and at length found courage to reply.
"A gentleman who is a friend of mine, or at least who is not exactly a friend so much as a sort of acquaintance--Oh upon my word, I hardly know what I say, Mr Pinch; you mustn"t suppose there is any engagement between us; or at least if there is, that it is at all a settled thing as yet--is going to Furnival"s Inn immediately, I believe upon a little business, and I am sure he would be very glad to accompany you, so as to prevent your going wrong again. You had better walk in. You will very likely find my sister Merry here," she said with a curious toss of her head, and anything but an agreeable smile.
"Then, I think, I"ll endeavour to find my way alone," said Tom, "for I fear she would not be very glad to see me. That unfortunate occurrence, in relation to which you and I had some amicable words together, in private, is not likely to have impressed her with any friendly feeling towards me. Though it really was not my fault."
"She has never heard of that, you may depend," said Cherry, gathering up the corners of her mouth, and nodding at Tom. "I am far from sure that she would bear you any mighty ill will for it, if she had."
"You don"t say so?" cried Tom, who was really concerned by this insinuation.
"I say nothing," said Charity. "If I had not already known what shocking things treachery and deceit are in themselves, Mr Pinch, I might perhaps have learnt it from the success they meet with--from the success they meet with." Here she smiled as before. "But I don"t say anything. On the contrary, I should scorn it. You had better walk in!"
There was something hidden here, which piqued Tom"s interest and troubled his tender heart. When, in a moment"s irresolution, he looked at Charity, he could not but observe a struggle in her face between a sense of triumph and a sense of shame; nor could he but remark how, meeting even his eyes, which she cared so little for, she turned away her own, for all the splenetic defiance in her manner.
An uneasy thought entered Tom"s head; a shadowy misgiving that the altered relations between himself and Pecksniff were somehow to involve an altered knowledge on his part of other people, and were to give him an insight into much of which he had had no previous suspicion. And yet he put no definite construction upon Charity"s proceedings. He certainly had no idea that as he had been the audience and spectator of her mortification, she grasped with eager delight at any opportunity of reproaching her sister with his presence in HER far deeper misery; for he knew nothing of it, and only pictured that sister as the same giddy, careless, trivial creature she always had been, with the same slight estimation of himself which she had never been at the least pains to conceal. In short, he had merely a confused impression that Miss Pecksniff was not quite sisterly or kind; and being curious to set it right, accompanied her as she desired.
The house-door being opened, she went in before Tom, requesting him to follow her; and led the way to the parlour door.