CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CONTINUATION OF THE ENTERPRISE OF MR JONAS AND HIS FRIEND
The doctor's prognostication in reference to the weather was speedilyverified. Although the weather was not a patient of his, and no thirdparty had required him to give an opinion on the case, the quickfulfilment of his prophecy may be taken as an instance of hisprofessional tact; for, unless the threatening aspect of the nighthad been perfectly plain and unmistakable, Mr Jobling would never havecompromised his reputation by delivering any sentiments on the subject.He used this principle in Medicine with too much success to be unmindfulof it in his commonest transactions.
It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windowslistening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; whenthey recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonelytravellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning.Lightning flashed and quivered on the black horizon even now; and hollowmurmurings were in the wind, as though it had been blowing where thethunder rolled, and still was charged with its exhausted echoes. But thestorm, though gathering swiftly, had not yet come up; and the prevailingstillness was the more solemn, from the dull intelligence that seemed tohover in the air, of noise and conflict afar off.
It was very dark; but in the murky sky there were masses of cloud whichshone with a lurid light, like monstrous heaps of copper that had beenheated in a furnace, and were growing cold. These had been advancingsteadily and slowly, but they were now motionless, or nearly so. As thecarriage clattered round the corners of the streets, it passed at everyone a knot of persons who had come there--many from their houses closeat hand, without hats--to look up at that quarter of the sky. And now avery few large drops of rain began to fall, and thunder rumbled in thedistance.
Jonas sat in a corner of the carriage with his bottle resting on hisknee, and gripped as tightly in his hand as if he would have ground itsneck to powder if he could. Instinctively attracted by the night, hehad laid aside the pack of cards upon the cushion; and with the sameinvoluntary impulse, so intelligible to both of them as not to occasiona remark on either side, his companion had extinguished the lamp. Thefront glasses were down; and they sat looking silently out upon thegloomy scene before them.
They were clear of London, or as clear of it as travellers can be whoseway lies on the Western Road, within a stage of that enormous city.Occasionally they encountered a foot-passenger, hurrying to the nearestplace of shelter; or some unwieldy cart proceeding onward at a heavytrot, with the same end in view. Little clusters of such vehicles weregathered round the stable-yard or baiting-place of every wayside tavern;while their drivers watched the weather from the doors and open windows,or made merry within. Everywhere the people were disposed to bear eachother company rather than sit alone; so that groups of watchful facesseemed to be looking out upon the night AND THEM, from almost everyhouse they passed.
It may appear strange that this should have disturbed Jonas, or renderedhim uneasy; but it did. After muttering to himself, and often changinghis position, he drew up the blind on his side of the carriage, andturned his shoulder sulkily towards it. But he neither looked at hiscompanion, nor broke the silence which prevailed between them, and whichhad fallen so suddenly upon himself, by addressing a word to him.
The thunder rolled, the lightning flashed; the rain poured down likeHeaven's wrath. Surrounded at one moment by intolerable light, andat the next by pitchy darkness, they still pressed forward on theirjourney. Even when they arrived at the end of the stage, and might havetarried, they did not; but ordered horses out immediately. Nor had thisany reference to some five minutes' lull, which at that time seemed topromise a cessation of the storm. They held their course as if they wereimpelled and driven by its fury. Although they had not exchanged a dozenwords, and might have tarried very well, they seemed to feel, by jointconsent, that onward they must go.
Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled, as through the myriadhalls of some vast temple in the sky; fiercer and brighter became thelightning, more and more heavily the rain poured down. The horses (theywere travelling now with a single pair) plunged and started from therills of quivering fire that seemed to wind along the ground beforethem; but there these two men sat, and forward they went as if they wereled on by an invisible attraction.
The eye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in itsevery gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noonin fifty times that period. Bells in steeples, with the rope and wheelthat moved them; ragged nests of birds in cornices and nooks; faces fullof consternation in the tilted waggons that came tearing past; theirfrightened teams ringing out a warning which the thunder drowned;harrows and ploughs left out in fields; miles upon miles ofhedge-divided country, with the distant fringe of trees as obvious asthe scarecrow in the bean-field close at hand; in a trembling, vivid,flickering instant, everything was clear and plain; then came a flushof red into the yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness sointense that there was nothing else but light; and then the deepest andprofoundest darkness.
The lightning being very crooked and very dazzling may have presentedor assisted a curious optical illusion, which suddenly rose before thestartled eyes of Montague in the carriage, and as rapidly disappeared.He thought he saw Jonas with his hand lifted, and the bottle clenched init like a hammer, making as if he would aim a blow at his head. At thesame time he observed (or so believed) an expression in his face--acombination of the unnatural excitement he had shown all day, with awild hatred and fear--which might have rendered a wolf a less terriblecompanion.
He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and called to the driver, whobrought his horses to a stop with all speed.
It could hardly have been as he supposed, for although he had not takenhis eyes off his companion, and had not seen him move, he sat recliningin his corner as before.
'What's the matter?' said Jonas. 'Is that your general way of waking outof your sleep?'
'I could swear,' returned the other, 'that I have not closed my eyes!'
'When you have sworn it,' said Jonas, composedly, 'we had better go onagain, if you have only stopped for that.'
He uncorked the bottle with the help of his teeth; and putting it to hislips, took a long draught.
'I wish we had never started on this journey. This is not,' saidMontague, recoiling instinctively, and speaking in a voice that betrayedhis agitation; 'this is not a night to travel in.'
'Ecod! you're right there,' returned Jonas, 'and we shouldn't be outin it but for you. If you hadn't kept me waiting all day, we might havebeen at Salisbury by this time; snug abed and fast asleep. What are westopping for?'
His companion put his head out of window for a moment, and drawing it inagain, observed (as if that were his cause of anxiety), that the boy wasdrenched to the skin.
'Serve him right,' said Jonas. 'I'm glad of it. What the devil are westopping for? Are you going to spread him out to dry?'
'I have half a mind to take him inside,' observed the other with somehesitation.
'Oh! thankee!' said Jonas. 'We don't want any damp boys here; especiallya young imp like him. Let him be where he is. He ain't afraid of alittle thunder and lightning, I dare say; whoever else is. Go on,driver. We had better have HIM inside perhaps,' he muttered with alaugh; 'and the horses!'
'Don't go too fast,' cried Montague to the postillion; 'and take carehow you go. You were nearly in the ditch when I called to you.'
This was not true; and Jonas bluntly said so, as they moved forwardagain. Montague took little or no heed of what he said, but repeatedthat it was not a night for travelling, and showed himself, both thenand afterwards, unusually anxious.
From this time Jonas recovered his former spirits, if such a term may beemployed to express the state in which he had left the city. He had hisbottle often at his mouth; roared out snatches of songs, without theleast regard to time or tune or voice, or anything but loud discordance;and urged his silent friend to be merry with h
im.
'You're the best company in the world, my good fellow,' said Montaguewith an effort, 'and in general irresistible; but to-night--do you hearit?'
'Ecod! I hear and see it too,' cried Jonas, shading his eyes, for themoment, from the lightning which was flashing, not in any one direction,but all around them. 'What of that? It don't change you, nor me, nor ouraffairs. Chorus, chorus,
It may lighten and storm, Till it hunt the red worm From the grass where the gibbet is driven; But it can't hurt the dead, And it won't save the head That is doom'd to be rifled and riven.
That must be a precious old song,' he added with an oath, as he stoppedshort in a kind of wonder at himself. 'I haven't heard it since I wasa boy, and how it comes into my head now, unless the lightning put itthere, I don't know. "Can't hurt the dead"! No, no. "And won't save thehead"! No, no. No! Ha, ha, ha!'
His mirth was of such a savage and extraordinary character, and was,in an inexplicable way, at once so suited to the night, and yet sucha coarse intrusion on its terrors, that his fellow-traveller, alwaysa coward, shrunk from him in positive fear. Instead of Jonas being histool and instrument, their places seemed to be reversed. But there wasreason for this too, Montague thought; since the sense of his debasementmight naturally inspire such a man with the wish to assert a noisyindependence, and in that licence to forget his real condition. Beingquick enough, in reference to such subjects of contemplation, he was notlong in taking this argument into account and giving it its full weight.But still, he felt a vague sense of alarm, and was depressed and uneasy.
He was certain he had not been asleep; but his eyes might have deceivedhim; for, looking at Jonas now in any interval of darkness, he couldrepresent his figure to himself in any attitude his state of mindsuggested. On the other hand, he knew full well that Jonas had noreason to love him; and even taking the piece of pantomime which hadso impressed his mind to be a real gesture, and not the working ofhis fancy, the most that could be said of it was, that it was quite inkeeping with the rest of his diabolical fun, and had the same impotentexpression of truth in it. 'If he could kill me with a wish,' thoughtthe swindler, 'I should not live long.'
He resolved that when he should have had his use of Jonas, he wouldrestrain him with an iron curb; in the meantime, that he could not dobetter than leave him to take his own way, and preserve his own peculiardescription of good-humour, after his own uncommon manner. It was nogreat sacrifice to bear with him; 'for when all is got that can be got,'thought Montague, 'I shall decamp across the water, and have the laughon my side--and the gains.'
Such were his reflections from hour to hour; his state of mind being onein which the same thoughts constantly present themselves over andover again in wearisome repetition; while Jonas, who appeared to havedismissed reflection altogether, entertained himself as before.They agreed that they would go to Salisbury, and would cross to MrPecksniff's in the morning; and at the prospect of deluding that worthygentleman, the spirits of his amiable son-in-law became more boisterousthan ever.
As the night wore on, the thunder died away, but still rolledgloomily and mournfully in the distance. The lightning too, though nowcomparatively harmless, was yet bright and frequent. The rain was quiteas violent as it had ever been.
It was their ill-fortune, at about the time of dawn and in the laststage of their journey, to have a restive pair of horses. These animalshad been greatly terrified in their stable by the tempest; and comingout into the dreary interval between night and morning, when the glareof the lightning was yet unsubdued by day, and the various objects intheir view were presented in indistinct and exaggerated shapes whichthey would not have worn by night, they gradually became less and lesscapable of control; until, taking a sudden fright at something by theroadside, they dashed off wildly down a steep hill, flung the driverfrom his saddle, drew the carriage to the brink of a ditch, stumbledheadlong down, and threw it crashing over.
The travellers had opened the carriage door, and had either jumped orfallen out. Jonas was the first to stagger to his feet. He felt sick andweak, and very giddy, and reeling to a five-barred gate, stood holdingby it; looking drowsily about as the whole landscape swam before hiseyes. But, by degrees, he grew more conscious, and presently observedthat Montague was lying senseless in the road, within a few feet of thehorses.
In an instant, as if his own faint body were suddenly animated by ademon, he ran to the horses' heads; and pulling at their bridles withall his force, set them struggling and plunging with such mad violenceas brought their hoofs at every effort nearer to the skull of theprostrate man; and must have led in half a minute to his brains beingdashed out on the highway.
As he did this, he fought and contended with them like a man possessed,making them wilder by his cries.
'Whoop!' cried Jonas. 'Whoop! again! another! A little more, a littlemore! Up, ye devils! Hillo!'
As he heard the driver, who had risen and was hurrying up, crying to himto desist, his violence increased.
'Hiilo! Hillo!' cried Jonas.
'For God's sake!' cried the driver. 'The gentleman--in the road--he'llbe killed!'
The same shouts and the same struggles were his only answer. But the mandarting in at the peril of his own life, saved Montague's, by dragginghim through the mire and water out of the reach of present harm. Thatdone, he ran to Jonas; and with the aid of his knife they very shortlydisengaged the horses from the broken chariot, and got them, cut andbleeding, on their legs again. The postillion and Jonas had now leisureto look at each other, which they had not had yet.
'Presence of mind, presence of mind!' cried Jonas, throwing up his handswildly. 'What would you have done without me?'
'The other gentleman would have done badly without ME,' returned theman, shaking his head. 'You should have moved him first. I gave him upfor dead.'
'Presence of mind, you croaker, presence of mind' cried Jonas with aharsh loud laugh. 'Was he struck, do you think?'
They both turned to look at him. Jonas muttered something to himself,when he saw him sitting up beneath the hedge, looking vacantly around.
'What's the matter?' asked Montague. 'Is anybody hurt?'
'Ecod!' said Jonas, 'it don't seem so. There are no bones broken, afterall.'
They raised him, and he tried to walk. He was a good deal shaken, andtrembled very much. But with the exception of a few cuts and bruisesthis was all the damage he had sustained.
'Cuts and bruises, eh?' said Jonas. 'We've all got them. Only cuts andbruises, eh?'
'I wouldn't have given sixpence for the gentleman's head in half-a-dozenseconds more, for all he's only cut and bruised,' observed the post-boy.'If ever you're in an accident of this sort again, sir; which I hopeyou won't be; never you pull at the bridle of a horse that's down, whenthere's a man's head in the way. That can't be done twice without therebeing a dead man in the case; it would have ended in that, this time, assure as ever you were born, if I hadn't come up just when I did.'
Jonas replied by advising him with a curse to hold his tongue, and to gosomewhere, whither he was not very likely to go of his own accord. ButMontague, who had listened eagerly to every word, himself diverted thesubject, by exclaiming: 'Where's the boy?'
'Ecod! I forgot that monkey,' said Jonas. 'What's become of him?' A verybrief search settled that question. The unfortunate Mr Bailey had beenthrown sheer over the hedge or the five-barred gate; and was lying inthe neighbouring field, to all appearance dead.
'When I said to-night, that I wished I had never started on thisjourney,' cried his master, 'I knew it was an ill-fated one. Look atthis boy!'
'Is that all?' growled Jonas. 'If you call THAT a sign of it--'
'Why, what should I call a sign of it?' asked Montague, hurriedly. 'Whatdo you mean?'
'I mean,' said Jonas, stooping down over the body, 'that I never heardyou were his father, or had any particular reason to care much abouthim. Halloa. Hold up there!'
But the boy w
as past holding up, or being held up, or giving any othersign of life than a faint and fitful beating of the heart. After somediscussion the driver mounted the horse which had been least injured,and took the lad in his arms as well as he could; while Montague andJonas, leading the other horse, and carrying a trunk between them,walked by his side towards Salisbury.
'You'd get there in a few minutes, and be able to send assistance tomeet us, if you went forward, post-boy,' said Jonas. 'Trot on!'
'No, no,' cried Montague; 'we'll keep together.'
'Why, what a chicken you are! You are not afraid of being robbed; areyou?' said Jonas.
'I am not afraid of anything,' replied the other, whose looks and mannerwere in flat contradiction to his words. 'But we'll keep together.'
'You were mighty anxious about the boy, a minute ago,' said Jonas. 'Isuppose you know that he may die in the meantime?'
'Aye, aye. I know. But we'll keep together.'
As it was clear that he was not to be moved from this determination,Jonas made no other rejoinder than such as his face expressed; and theyproceeded in company. They had three or four good miles to travel; andthe way was not made easier by the state of the road, the burden bywhich they were embarrassed, or their own stiff and sore condition.After a sufficiently long and painful walk, they arrived at the Inn; andhaving knocked the people up (it being yet very early in the morning),sent out messengers to see to the carriage and its contents, and rouseda surgeon from his bed to tend the chief sufferer. All the service hecould render, he rendered promptly and skillfully. But he gave it ashis opinion that the boy was labouring under a severe concussion of thebrain, and that Mr Bailey's mortal course was run.
If Montague's strong interest in the announcement could have beenconsidered as unselfish in any degree, it might have been a redeemingtrait in a character that had no such lineaments to spare. But it wasnot difficult to see that, for some unexpressed reason best appreciatedby himself, he attached a strange value to the company and presence ofthis mere child. When, after receiving some assistance from the surgeonhimself, he retired to the bedroom prepared for him, and it was broadday, his mind was still dwelling on this theme.
'I would rather have lost,' he said, 'a thousand pounds than lost theboy just now. But I'll return home alone. I am resolved upon that.Chuzzlewit shall go forward first, and I will follow in my own time.I'll have no more of this,' he added, wiping his damp forehead.'Twenty-four hours of this would turn my hair grey!'
After examining his chamber, and looking under the bed, and in thecupboards, and even behind the curtains, with unusual caution (althoughit was, as has been said, broad day), he double-locked the door by whichhe had entered, and retired to rest. There was another door in theroom, but it was locked on the outer side; and with what place itcommunicated, he knew not.
His fears or evil conscience reproduced this door in all his dreams. Hedreamed that a dreadful secret was connected with it; a secret which heknew, and yet did not know, for although he was heavily responsiblefor it, and a party to it, he was harassed even in his vision bya distracting uncertainty in reference to its import. Incoherentlyentwined with this dream was another, which represented it as thehiding-place of an enemy, a shadow, a phantom; and made it the businessof his life to keep the terrible creature closed up, and prevent itfrom forcing its way in upon him. With this view Nadgett, and he, and astrange man with a bloody smear upon his head (who told him that hehad been his playfellow, and told him, too, the real name of an oldschoolmate, forgotten until then), worked with iron plates and nails tomake the door secure; but though they worked never so hard, it was allin vain, for the nails broke, or changed to soft twigs, or what wasworse, to worms, between their fingers; the wood of the door splinteredand crumbled, so that even nails would not remain in it; and the ironplates curled up like hot paper. All this time the creature on the otherside--whether it was in the shape of man, or beast, he neither knew norsought to know--was gaining on them. But his greatest terror was whenthe man with the bloody smear upon his head demanded of him if he knewthis creatures name, and said that he would whisper it. At this thedreamer fell upon his knees, his whole blood thrilling with inexplicablefear, and held his ears. But looking at the speaker's lips, he saw thatthey formed the utterance of the letter 'J'; and crying out aloud thatthe secret was discovered, and they were all lost, he awoke.
Awoke to find Jonas standing at his bedside watching him. And that verydoor wide open.
As their eyes met, Jonas retreated a few paces, and Montague sprang outof bed.
'Heyday!' said Jonas. 'You're all alive this morning.'
'Alive!' the other stammered, as he pulled the bell-rope violently.'What are you doing here?'
'It's your room to be sure,' said Jonas; 'but I'm almost inclined to askyou what YOU are doing here? My room is on the other side of thatdoor. No one told me last night not to open it. I thought it led into apassage, and was coming out to order breakfast. There's--there's no bellin my room.'
Montague had in the meantime admitted the man with his hot water andboots, who hearing this, said, yes, there was; and passed into theadjoining room to point it out, at the head of the bed.
'I couldn't find it, then,' said Jonas; 'it's all the same. Shall Iorder breakfast?'
Montague answered in the affirmative. When Jonas had retired, whistling,through his own room, he opened the door of communication, to take outthe key and fasten it on the inner side. But it was taken out already.
He dragged a table against the door, and sat down to collect himself, asif his dreams still had some influence upon his mind.
'An evil journey,' he repeated several times. 'An evil journey. But I'lltravel home alone. I'll have no more of this.'
His presentiment, or superstition, that it was an evil journey, didnot at all deter him from doing the evil for which the journey wasundertaken. With this in view, he dressed himself more carefully thanusual to make a favourable impression on Mr Pecksniff; and, reassured byhis own appearance, the beauty of the morning, and the flashing ofthe wet boughs outside his window in the merry sunshine, was soonsufficiently inspirited to swear a few round oaths, and hum the fag-endof a song.
But he still muttered to himself at intervals, for all that: 'I'lltravel home alone!'