"Oh, Merry!" she said, looking in, "I am so glad you have not gone home.
Who do you think I have met in the street, and brought to see you! Mr Pinch! There. Now you ARE surprised, I am sure!"
Not more surprised than Tom was, when he looked upon her. Not so much.
Not half so much.
"Mr Pinch has left Papa, my dear," said Cherry, "and his prospects are quite flourishing. I have promised that Augustus, who is going that way, shall escort him to the place he wants. Augustus, my child, where are you?"
With these words Miss Pecksniff screamed her way out of the parlour, calling on Augustus Moddle to appear; and left Tom Pinch alone with her sister.
If she had always been his kindest friend; if she had treated him through all his servitude with such consideration as was never yet received by struggling man; if she had lightened every moment of those many years, and had ever spared and never wounded him; his honest heart could not have swelled before her with a deeper pity, or a purer freedom from all base remembrance than it did then.
"My gracious me! You are really the last person in the world I should have thought of seeing, I am sure!"
Tom was sorry to hear her speaking in her old manner. He had not expected that. Yet he did not feel it a contradiction that he should be sorry to see her so unlike her old self, and sorry at the same time to hear her speaking in her old manner. The two things seemed quite natural.
"I wonder you find any gratification in coming to see me. I can"t think what put it in your head. I never had much in seeing you. There was no love lost between us, Mr Pinch, at any time, I think."
Her bonnet lay beside her on the sofa, and she was very busy with the ribbons as she spoke. Much too busy to be conscious of the work her fingers did.
"We never quarrelled," said Tom.--Tom was right in that, for one person can no more quarrel without an adversary, than one person can play at chess, or fight a duel. "I hoped you would be glad to shake hands with an old friend. Don"t let us rake up bygones," said Tom. "If I ever offended you, forgive me."
She looked at him for a moment; dropped her bonnet from her hands; spread them before her altered face, and burst into tears.
"Oh, Mr Pinch!" she said, "although I never used you well, I did believe your nature was forgiving. I did not think you could be cruel."
She spoke as little like her old self now, for certain, as Tom could possibly have wished. But she seemed to be appealing to him reproachfully, and he did not understand her.
"I seldom showed it--never--I know that. But I had that belief in you, that if I had been asked to name the person in the world least likely to retort upon me, I would have named you, confidently."
"Would have named me!" Tom repeated.
"Yes," she said with energy, "and I have often thought so."
After a moment"s reflection, Tom sat himself upon a chair beside her.
"Do you believe," said Tom, "oh, can you think, that what I said just now, I said with any but the true and plain intention which my words professed? I mean it, in the spirit and the letter. If I ever offended you, forgive me; I may have done so, many times. You never injured or offended me. How, then, could I possibly retort, if even I were stern and bad enough to wish to do it!"
After a little while she thanked him, through her tears and sobs, and told him she had never been at once so sorry and so comforted, since she left home. Still she wept bitterly; and it was the greater pain to Tom to see her weeping, from her standing in especial need, just then, of sympathy and tenderness.
"Come, come!" said Tom, "you used to be as cheerful as the day was long."
"Ah! used!" she cried, in such a tone as rent Tom"s heart.
"And will be again," said Tom.
"No, never more. No, never, never more. If you should talk with old Mr Chuzzlewit, at any time," she added, looking hurriedly into his face--"I sometimes thought he liked you, but suppressed it--will you promise me to tell him that you saw me here, and that I said I bore in mind the time we talked together in the churchyard?"
Tom promised that he would.
"Many times since then, when I have wished I had been carried there before that day, I have recalled his words. I wish that he should know how true they were, although the least acknowledgment to that effect has never pa.s.sed my lips and never will."
Tom promised this, conditionally too. He did not tell her how improbable it was that he and the old man would ever meet again, because he thought it might disturb her more.
"If he should ever know this, through your means, dear Mr Pinch," said Mercy, "tell him that I sent the message, not for myself, but that he might be more forbearing and more patient, and more trustful to some other person, in some other time of need. Tell him that if he could know how my heart trembled in the balance that day, and what a very little would have turned the scale, his own would bleed with pity for me."
"Yes, yes," said Tom, "I will."
"When I appeared to him the most unworthy of his help, I was--I know I was, for I have often, often, thought about it since--the most inclined to yield to what he showed me. Oh! if he had relented but a little more; if he had thrown himself in my way for but one other quarter of an hour; if he had extended his compa.s.sion for a vain, unthinking, miserable girl, in but the least degree; he might, and I believe he would, have saved her! Tell him that I don"t blame him, but am grateful for the effort that he made; but ask him for the love of G.o.d, and youth, and in merciful consideration for the struggle which an ill-advised and unwakened nature makes to hide the strength it thinks its weakness--ask him never, never, to forget this, when he deals with one again!"
Although Tom did not hold the clue to her full meaning, he could guess it pretty nearly. Touched to the quick, he took her hand and said, or meant to say, some words of consolation. She felt and understood them, whether they were spoken or no. He was not quite certain, afterwards, but that she had tried to kneel down at his feet, and bless him.
He found that he was not alone in the room when she had left it. Mrs Todgers was there, shaking her head. Tom had never seen Mrs Todgers, it is needless to say, but he had a perception of her being the lady of the house; and he saw some genuine compa.s.sion in her eyes, that won his good opinion.
"Ah, sir! You are an old friend, I see," said Mrs Todgers.
"Yes," said Tom.
"And yet," quoth Mrs Todgers, shutting the door softly, "she hasn"t told you what her troubles are, I"m certain."
Tom was struck by these words, for they were quite true. "Indeed," he said, "she has not."
"And never would," said Mrs Todgers, "if you saw her daily. She never makes the least complaint to me, or utters a single word of explanation or reproach. But I know," said Mrs Todgers, drawing in her breath, "I know!"
Tom nodded sorrowfully, "So do I."
"I fully believe," said Mrs Todgers, taking her pocket-handkerchief from the flat reticule, "that n.o.body can tell one half of what that poor young creature has to undergo. But though she comes here, constantly, to ease her poor full heart without his knowing it; and saying, "Mrs Todgers, I am very low to-day; I think that I shall soon be dead," sits crying in my room until the fit is past; I know no more from her. And, I believe," said Mrs Todgers, putting back her handkerchief again, "that she considers me a good friend too."
Mrs Todgers might have said her best friend. Commercial gentlemen and gravy had tried Mrs Todgers"s temper; the main chance--it was such a very small one in her case, that she might have been excused for looking sharp after it, lest it should entirely vanish from her sight--had taken a firm hold on Mrs Todgers"s attention. But in some odd nook in Mrs Todgers"s breast, up a great many steps, and in a corner easy to be overlooked, there was a secret door, with "Woman" written on the spring, which, at a touch from Mercy"s hand, had flown wide open, and admitted her for shelter.
When boarding-house accounts are balanced with all other ledgers, and the books of the Recording Angel are made up for ever, perhaps there may be seen an entry to thy credit, lean Mrs Todgers, which shall make thee beautiful!
She was growing beautiful so rapidly in Tom"s eyes; for he saw that she was poor, and that this good had sprung up in her from among the sordid strivings of her life; that she might have been a very Venus in a minute more, if Miss Pecksniff had not entered with her friend.
"Mr Thomas Pinch!" said Charity, performing the ceremony of introduction with evident pride. "Mr Moddle. Where"s my sister?"
"Gone, Miss Pecksniff," Mrs Todgers answered. "She had appointed to be home."
"Ah!" said Charity, looking at Tom. "Oh, dear me!"
"She"s greatly altered since she"s been Anoth--since she"s been married, Mrs Todgers!" observed Moddle.
"My dear Augustus!" said Miss Pecksniff, in a low voice. "I verily believe you have said that fifty thousand times, in my hearing. What a Prose you are!"
This was succeeded by some trifling love pa.s.sages, which appeared to originate with, if not to be wholly carried on by Miss Pecksniff. At any rate, Mr Moddle was much slower in his responses than is customary with young lovers, and exhibited a lowness of spirits which was quite oppressive.
He did not improve at all when Tom and he were in the streets, but sighed so dismally that it was dreadful to hear him. As a means of cheering him up, Tom told him that he wished him joy.
"Joy!" cried Moddle. "Ha, ha!"