the street; windows and doors were opened; thieves and beggars took their usual posts; workmen bestirred themselves; tradesmen set forth their shops; bailiffs and constables were on the watch; all kinds of human creatures strove, in their several ways, as hard to live, as the one sick old man who combated for every grain of sand in his fast-emptying glass, as eagerly as if it were an empire.
"If anything happens, Pecksniff'," said Jonas, "you must promise me to stop here till it's all over. You shall see that I do what's right."
"I know that you will do what's right, Mr. Jonas," said Pecksniff.
"Yes, yes, but I won't be doubted. No one shall have it in his power to say a syllable against me," he returned. "I know how people will talk.—Just as if he wasn't old, or I had the secret of keeping him alive!"
Mr. Pecksniff promised that he would remain, if circumstances should render it in his esteemed friend's opinion desirable; and they were finishing their meal in silence, when suddenly an apparition stood before them, so ghastly to the view, that Jonas shrieked aloud, and both recoiled in horror.
Old Anthony, dressed in his usual clothes, was in the room—beside the table. He leaned upon the shoulder of his solitary friend; and on his livid face, and on his horny hands, and in his glassy eyes, and traced by an eternal finger in the very drops of sweat upon his brow, was one word—Death.
He spoke to them—in something of his own voice too, but sharpened and made hollow, like a dead man's face. What he would have said, God knows. He seemed to utter words, but they were such as man had never heard. And this was the most fearful circumstance of all, to see him standing there, gabbling in an unearthly tongue.
"He's better now," said Chuffey. "Better now. Let him sit in his old chair, and he'll be well again. I told him not to mind. I said so, yesterday."
They put him in his easy-chair, and wheeled it near the window; then setting open the door, exposed him to the free current of morning air. But not all the air that is, nor all the winds that ever blew 'twixt Heaven and Earth, could have brought new life to him. Plunge him to the throat in golden pieces now, and his heavy fingers should not close on one.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE READER IS BROUGHT INTO COMMUNICATION WITH SOME PROFESSIONAL PERSONS, AND SHEDS A TEAR OVER THE FILIAL PIETY OF GOOD MR. JONAS.
Mr. Pecksniff was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit had said "Spare no expense." Mankind is evil in its thoughts and in its base constructions, and Jonas was resolved it should not have an inch to stretch into an ell against him. It never should be charged upon his father's son that he had grudged the money for his father's funeral.
