The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit/Chapter 49
CHAPTER XLIX .
IN WHICH MRS. HARRIS, ASSISTED BY A TEAPOT, IS THE CAUSE OF A DIVISION BETWEEN FRIENDS.
Mrs. Gamp's apartment in Kingsgate-street, High Holborn, wore, metaphorically speaking, a robe of state. It was swept and garnished for the reception of a visitor. That visitor was Betsey Prig: Mrs. Prig of Bartlemy's; or as some said Barklemy's, or as some said Bardlemy's: for by all these endearing and familiar appellations, had the hospital of Saint Bartholomew become a household word among the sisterhood which Betsey Prig adorned.
Mrs. Gamp's apartment was not a spacious one, but, to a contented mind a closet is a palace; and the first-floor front at Mr. Sweedlepipe's may have been, in the imagination of Mrs. Gamp, a stately pile. If it were not exactly that, to restless intellects, it at least comprised as much accommodation as any person, not sanguine to insanity, could have looked for, in a room of its dimensions. For only keep the bedstead always in your mind; and you were safe. That was the grand secret. Remembering the bedstead, you might even stoop to look under the little round table for anything you had dropped, without hurting yourself much against the chest of drawers, or qualifying as a patient of Saint Bartholomew, by falling into the fire.
Visitors were much assisted in their cautious efforts to preserve an unflagging recollection of this piece of furniture, by its size: which was great. It was not a turn-up bedstead, nor yet a French bedstead, nor yet a four-post bedstead, but what is poetically called, a tent: the sacking whereof, was low and bulgy, insomuch that Mrs. Gamp's box would not go under it, but stopped half way, in a manner which while it did violence to the reason, likewise endangered the legs, of a stranger. The frame too, which would have supported the canopy and hangings if there had been any, was ornamented with divers pippins carved in timber, which on the slightest provocation and frequently on none at all, came tumbling down; harrassing the peaceful guest with inexplicable terrors.
The bed itself was decorated with a patchwork quilt of great antiquity; and at the upper end, upon the side nearest to the door, hung a scanty curtain of blue check, which prevented the Zephyrs that were abroad in Kingsgate-street from visiting Mrs. Gamp's head too roughly. Some rusty gowns and other articles of that lady's wardrobe depended from the posts; and these had so adapted themselves by long usage to her figure, that more than one impatient husband coming in precipitately, at about the time of twilight, had been for an instant stricken dumb by the supposed discovery that Mrs. Gamp had hanged herself. One gentleman, coming on the usual hasty errand, had said indeed, that they looked like guardian angels "watching of her in her sleep." But that, as Mrs. Gamp said, "was his first;" and he never repeated the sentiment though he often repeated his visit.
The chairs in Mrs. Gamp's apartment were extremely large and broad-backed, which was more than a sufficient reason for their being but two in number. They were both elbow-chairs, of ancient mahogany; and were chiefly valuable for the slippery nature of their seats; which had been originally horse-hair, but were now covered with a shiny substance of a blueish tint, from which the visitor began to slide away with a dismayed countenance, immediately after sitting down. what Mrs. Gamp wanted in chairs she made up in bandboxes; of which she had a great collection, devoted to the reception of various miscellaneous valuables, which were not, however, as well protected as the good woman, by a pleasant fiction, seemed to think: for though every bandbox had a carefully closed lid, not one among them had a bottom; owing to which cause, the property within was merely, as it were, extinguished. The chest of drawers having been originally made to stand upon the top of another chest, had a dwarfish, elfin look, alone; but in regard of its security it had a great advantage over the bandboxes, for as all the handles had been long ago pulled off, it was very difficult to get at its contents. This indeed was only to be done by one of two devices; either by tilting the whole structure forward until all the drawers fell out together, or by opening them singly with knives: like oysters.
Mrs. Gamp stored all her household matters in a little cupboard by the fire-place; beginning below the surface (as in nature) with the coals, and mounting gradually upwards to the spirits, which, from motives of delicacy, she kept in a tea-pot. The chimney-piece was ornamented with a small almanack, marked here and there in Mrs. Gamp's own hand, with a memorandum of the date at which some lady was expected to fall due. It was also embellished with three profiles: one, in colours, of Mrs. Gamp herself in early life; one in bronze of a lady in feathers, supposed to be Mrs. Harris, as she appeared when dressed for a ball; and one in black, of Mr. Gamp, deceased. The last was a full length, in order that the likeness might be rendered more obvious and forcible, by the introduction of the wooden leg.
A pair of bellows, a pair of pattens, a toasting-fork, a kettle, a pap-boat, a spoon for the administration of medicine to the refractory; and lastly, Mrs. Gamp's umbrella, which as something of great price and rarity was displayed with particular ostentation; completed the decorations of the chimney-piece and adjacent wall. Towards these objects, Mrs. Gamp raised her eyes in satisfaction when she had arranged the tea-board, and had concluded her arrangements for the reception of Betsey Prig, even unto the setting forth of two pounds of Newcastle salmon, intensely pickled.
"There! Now drat you, Betsey, don't be long!" said Mrs. Gamp, apostrophising her absent friend. "For I can't abear to wait, I do assure you. To wotever place I goes, I sticks to this one mortar, 'I'm easy pleased; it is but little as I wants; but I must have that little of the best, and to the minit when the clock strikes, else we do not part as I could wish, but bearin' malice in our arts.'"
Her own preparations were of the best, for they comprehended a delicate new loaf, a plate of fresh butter, a basin of fine white sugar and other arrangements on the same scale. Even the snuff with which she now refreshed herself, was so choice in quality, that she took a second pinch.
"There's the little bell a ringing now," said Mrs. Gamp, hurrying to the stair-head and looking over. "Betsy Prig, my—why it's that there disapintin' Sweedlepipes, I do believe."
"Yes, it's me," said the barber, in a faint voice, "I 've just come in."
"You 're always a comin' in, I think," muttered Mrs. Gamp to herself, "except wen you 're a-going out. I ha'n't no patience with that man!"
"Mrs. Gamp!" said the barber. "I say! Mrs. Gamp!"
"Well!" cried Mrs. Gamp, impatiently, as she descended the stairs. "What is it? Is the Thames a-fire, and cooking its own fish, Mr. Sweedlepipes? Why wot's the man gone and been a-doin of to himself? He's as white as chalk!"
She added the latter clause of inquiry, when she got down stairs, and found him seated in the shaving-chair, pale and disconsolate.
"You recollect," said Poll. "You recollect young"
"Not young Wilkins!" cried Mrs. Gamp. "Don't say young Wilkins, wotever you do. If young Wilkins's wife is took"
"It isn't anybody's wife," exclaimed the little barber. "Bailey, Young Bailey!"
"Why, wot do you mean to say that chit's been a-doin of?" retorted Mrs. Gamp, sharply. "Stuff and nonsense, Mr. Sweedlepipes!"
"He hasn't been a doing anything!" exclaimed poor Poll, quite desperate. "What do you catch me up go short for, when you see me put out, to that extent, that I can hardly speak? He 'll never do anything again. He's done for. He's killed. The first time I ever see that boy," said Poll, "I charged him too much for a redpoll. I asked him three-halfpence for a penny one, because I was afraid he'd beat me down. But he did'nt. And now he's dead; and if you was to crowd all the steam-engines and electric fluids that ever was, into this shop, and set 'em every one to work their hardest, they couldn't square the account, though it's only a ha'penny!"
Mr. Sweedlepipe turned aside to the towel, and wiped his eyes with it.
"And what a clever boy he was!" he said. "What a surprising young chap he was! How he talked! and what a deal he know'd? Shaved in this very chair he was; only for fun; it was all his fun; he was full of it. Ah! to think that he 'll never be shaved in earnest! The birds might every one have died, and welcome," cried the little barber, looking round him at the cages, and again applying to the towel, "sooner than I'd have heard this news!"
"How did you ever come to hear it?" said Mrs. Gamp. "Who told you?"
"I went out," returned the little barber, "into the city, to meet a sporting Gent upon the Stock Exchange, that wanted a few slow pigeons to practise at; and when I'd done with him, I went to get a little drop of beer, and there I heard everybody a-talking about it. It's in the papers.
"You are in a nice state of confugion, Mr. Sweedlepipes, you are!" said Mrs. Gamp, shaking her head; "and my opinion is, as half-a-dudgeon fresh young lively leeches on your temples, wouldn't be too much to clear your mind, which so? tell you. Wot were they a-talkin on, and wot was in the papers?"
"All about it!" cried the barber. "What else do you suppose? Him and his master were upset on a journey, and he was carried to Salisbury, and was breathing his last when the account came away. He never spoke afterwards. Not a single word. That's the worst of it to me; but that an't all. His master can't be found. The other manager of their office in the city: Crimple, David Crimple: has gone off with the money, and is advertised for, with a reward, upon the walls. Mr. Montague, poor young Bailey's master (what a boy he was!) is advertised for, too. Some say he's slipped off, to join his friend abroad; some say he mayn't have got away yet; and they 're looking for him high and low. Their office is a smash; a swindle altogether. But what's a Life Insurance Office to a Life! And what a Life Young Bailey's was!"
"He was born into a wale," said Mrs. Gamp, with philosophical coolness; "and he lived in a wale; and he must take the consequences of sech a sitiwation. But don't you hear nothink of Mr. Chuzzlewit in all this?"
"No," said Poll, "nothing to speak of. His name wasn't printed as one of the board, though some people say it was just going to be. Some believe he was took in, and some believe he was one of the takers-in; but however that may be, they can't prove nothing against him. This morning he went up of his own accord afore the Lord Mayor or some of them city big-wigs, and complained that he'd been swindled, and that these two persons had gone off and cheated him, and that he had just found out that Montague's name wasn't even Montague, but something else. And they do say that he looked like Death, owing to his losses. But, Lord forgive me," cried the barber, coming back again to the subject of his individual grief, "what's his looks to me! He might have died and welcome, fifty times, and not been such a loss as Bailey!"
At this juncture the little bell rang, and the deep voice of Mrs. Prig struck into the conversation.
"Oh! You 're a talkin about it, are you!" observed that lady. "Well, I hope you 've got it over, for I an't interested in it myself."
"My precious Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, "how late you are!"
The worthy Mrs. Prig replied, with some asperity, "that if perwerse people went off dead, when they was least expected, it warn't no fault of her'n." And further, "that it was quite aggrawation enough to be made late when one was dropping for one's tea, without hearing on it again."
Mrs. Gamp, deriving from this exhibition of repartee some clue to the state of Mrs. Prig's feelings, instantly conducted her up stairs: deeming that the sight of pickled salmon might work a softening change.
But Betsey Prig expected pickled salmon. It was obvious that she did; for her first words, after glancing at the table, were:
"I know'd she wouldn't have a coucumber?"
Mrs. Gamp changed colour, and sat down upon the bedstead.
"Lord bless you, Betsey Prig, your words is true. I quite forgot it!""
Mrs. Prig, looking steadfastly at her friend, put her hand in her pocket, and, with an air of surly triumph, drew forth either the oldest of lettuces or youngest of cabbages, but at any rate, a green vegetable; of an expansive nature, and of such magnificent proportions that she was obliged to shut it up like an umbrella before she could pull it out. She also produced a handful of mustard and cress, a trifle of the herb called dandelion, three bunches of radishes, an onion rather larger than an average turnip, three substantial slices of beet root, and a short prong or antler of celery; the whole of this garden-stuff having been publicly exhibited but a short time before as a twopenny salad, and purchased by Mrs. Prig, on condition that the vendor could get it all into her pocket. Which had been happily accomplished, in High Holborn: to the breathless interest of a hackney-coach stand. And she laid so little stress on this surprising forethought, that she did not even smile, but returning her pocket into its accustomed sphere, merely recommended that these productions of nature should be sliced up, for immediate consumption, in plenty of vinegar.
"And don't go a dropping none of your snuff in it," said Mrs. Prig. "In gruel, barley-water, apple-tea, mutton-broth, and that, it don't signify. It stimilates a patient. But I don't relish it myself."
"Why, Betsey Prig!" cried Mrs. Gamp, "how can you talk so!"
"What, an't your patients, wotever their diseases is, always a sneezin their wery heads off, along of your snuff!" said Mrs. Prig.
"And wot if they are!" said Mrs. Gamp.
"Nothing if they are," said Mrs. Prig. "But don't deny it, Sairah."
"Who deniges of it?" Mrs. Gamp inquired.
Mrs. Prig returned no answer.
"Who deniges of it, Betsey?" Mrs. Gamp inquired again. Then Mrs. Gamp, by reversing the question, imparted a deeper and more awful character of solemnity to the same. "Betsey, who deniges of it?"
It was the nearest possible approach to a very decided difference of opinion between these ladies; but Mrs. Prig's impatience for the meal being greater at the moment than her impatience of contradiction, she replied, for the present, "Nobody, if you don't, Sairah," and prepared herself for tea. For a quarrel can be taken up at any time, but a limited quantity of salmon can not.
Her toilet was simple. She had merely to "chuck" her bonnet and shawl upon the bed; give her hair two pulls, one upon the right side and one upon the left, as if she were ringing a couple of bells; and all was done. The tea was already made, Mrs. Gamp was not long over the salad, and they were soon at the height of their repast.
The temper of both parties was improved, for the time being, by the enjoyments of the table. When the meal came to a termination (which it was pretty long in doing), and Mrs. Gamp having cleared away, produced the tea-pot from the top shelf, simultaneously with a couple of wine-glasses, they were quite amiable.
"Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, filling her own glass, and passing tho tea-pot, "I will now propoge a toast. My frequent pardner, Betsey Prig!"
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Mrs. Gamp proposes a toast
From this moment, symptoms of inflammation began to lurk in the nose of each lady; and perhaps, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, in the temper also.
"Now Sairah," said Mrs. Prig, "joining business with pleasure, wot is this case in which you wants me?"
Mrs. Gamp betraying in her face some intention of returning an evasive answer, Betsey added:
"Is it Mrs. Harris?"
"No, Betsey Prig, it an't," was Mrs. Gamp's reply.
"Well!" said Mrs. Prig, with a short laugh. "I'm glad of that, at any rate."
"Why should you be glad of that Betsey?" Mrs. Gamp retorted, warmly. "She is unbeknown to you except by hearsay, why should you be glad? If you have anythink to say contrairy to the character of Mrs. Harris, which well I knows behind her back afore her face or anywheres is not to be impeaged, out with it, Betsey. I have know'd that sweetest and best of women," said Mrs. Gamp, shaking her head, and shedding tears, "ever since afore her First, which Mr. Harris who was dreadful timid went and stopped his ears in a empty dog-kennel, and never took his hands away or come out once till he was showed the baby, wen bein took with fits, the doctor collared him and laid him on his back upon the airy stones, and she was told to ease her mind, his owls was organs. And I have know'd her, Betsey Prig, wen he has hurt her feelin art by sayin of his Ninth that it was one too many, if not two, while that dear innocent was cooin in his face, which thrive it did though bandy, but I have never know'd as you had occagion to be glad, Betsey, on accounts of Mrs. Harris not requiring you. Require she never will, depend upon it, for her constant words in sickness is, and will be, 'Send for Sairey!'"
During this touching address, Mrs. Prig adroitly feigning to be the victim of that absence of mind which has its origin in excessive attention to one topic, helped herself from the tea-pot without appearing to observe it. Mrs. Gamp observed it, however, and came to a premature close in consequence.
"Well it an't her, it seems," said Mrs. Prig, coldly: "who is it, then?"
"You have heerd me mention, Betsey," Mrs. Gamp replied, after glancing in an expressive and marked manner at the tea-pot, "a person as I took care on at the time as you and me was pardners off and on, in that there fever at the Bull?"
"Old Snuffey," Mrs. Prig observed.
Sarah Gamp looked at her with an eye of fire, for she saw in this mistake of Mrs. Prig, another wilful and malignant stab at that same weakness or custom of hers, an ungenerous allusion to which, on the part of Betsey, had first disturbed their harmony that evening. And she saw it still more clearly, when, politely but firmly correcting that lady by the distinct enunciation of the word "Chuffey," Mrs. Prig received the correction with a diabolical laugh.
The best among us have their failings, and it must be conceded of Mrs. Prig, that if there were a blemish in the goodness of her disposition, it was a habit she had of not bestowing all its sharp and acid properties upon her patients (as a thoroughly amiable woman would have done), but of keeping a considerable remainder for the service of her friends. Highly pickled salmon, and lettuces chopped up in vinegar, may, as viands possessing some acidity of their own, have encouraged and increased this failing in Mrs. Prig; and every application to the tea-pot, certainly did; for it was often remarked of her by her friends, that she was most contradictory when most elevated. It is certain that her countenance became about this time derisive and defiant, and that she sat with her arms folded, and one eye shut up: in a somewhat offensive, because obtrusively intelligent, manner.
Mrs. Gamp observing this, felt it the more necessary that Mrs. Prig should know her place, and be made sensible of her exact station in society, as well as of her obligations to herself. She therefore assumed an air of greater patronage and importance, as she went on to answer Mrs. Prig a little more in detail.
"Mr. Chuffey, Betsey," said Mrs. Gamp, "is weak in his mind. Excuge me if I makes remark, that he may neither be so weak as people thinks, nor people may not think he is so weak as they pretends, and what I knows, I knows; and what you don't, you don't; so do not ask me, Betsey. But Mr. Chuffey's friends has made propojals for his bein took care on, and has said to me, 'Mrs. Gamp, will you undertake it? We couldn't think,' they says, 'of trustin him to nobody but you, for, Sairey, you are gold as has passed through the furnage. Will you undertake it, at your own price, day and night, and by your own self?' 'No,' I says, 'I will not. Do not reckon on it. There is,' I says, 'but one creetur in the world as I would undertake on sech terms, and her name is Harris. But,' I says, 'I am acquainted with a friend, whose name is Betsey Prig, that I can recommend, and will assist me. Betsey,' I says, 'is always to be trusted, under me, and will be guided as I could desire.'"
Here Mrs. Prig, without any abatement of her offensive manner, again counterfeited abstraction of mind, and stretched out her hand to the tea-pot. It was more than Mrs. Gamp could bear. She stopped the hand of Mrs. Prig with her own, and said, with great feeling:
"No, Betsey! Drink fair, wotever you do!"
Mrs. Prig, thus baffled, threw herself back in her chair, and closing the same eye more emphatically, and folding her arms tighter, suffered her head to roll slowly from side to side, while she surveyed her friend with a contemptuous smile.
Mrs. Gamp resumed:
"Mrs. Harris, Betsey"
"Bother Mrs. Harris!" said Betsey Prig.
Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement, incredulity, and indignation; when Mrs. Prig, shutting her eye still closer, and folding her arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and tremendous words:
"I don't believe there's no sich a person!"
After the utterance of which expressions, she leaned forward, and snapped her fingers once, twice, thrice; each time nearer to the face of Mrs. Gamp; and then rose to put on her bonnet, as one who felt that there was now a gulf between them, which nothing could ever bridge across.
The shock of this blow was so violent and sudden, that Mrs. Gamp sat staring at nothing with uplifted eyes, and her mouth open as if she were gasping for breath, until Betsey Prig had got on her bonnet and her shawl, and was gathering the latter about her throat. Then Mrs. Gamp rose—morally and physically rose—and denounced her.
"What!" said Mrs. Gamp, "you bage creetur, have I know'd Mrs. Harris five and thirty year, to be told at last that there an't no sech a person livin? Have I stood her friend in all her troubles, great and small, for it to come at last to sech a end as this, which her own sweet picter hanging up afore you all the time, to shame your Bragian words! But well you mayn't believe there's no sech a creetur, for she wouldn't demean herself to look at you, and often has she said, when I have made mention of your name, which, to my sinful sorrow, I have done, 'What, Sairey Gamp! debage yourself to her!' Go along with you!"
"I'm a goin, ma'am, ain't I?" said Mrs. Prig, stopping as she said it.
"You had better, ma'am," said Mrs. Gamp.
"Do you know who you 're talking to, ma'am?" inquired her visitor.
"Aperiently," said Mrs. Gamp, surveying her with scorn from head to foot, "to Betsey Prig. Aperiently so. I know her. No one better. Go along with you, do!"
"And you was a going to take me under you!" cried Mrs. Prig, surveying Mrs. Gamp from head to foot in her turn. "You was, was you! Oh, how kind! Why, deuce take your imperence," said Mrs. Prig, with a rapid change from banter to ferocity, "what do you mean!"
"Go along with you!" said Mrs. Gamp. "I blush for you."
"You had better blush a little for yourself, while you are about it!" said Mrs. Prig. "You and your Chuffeys! What, the poor old creetur isn't mad enough, isn't he? Aha!"
"He'd very soon be mad enough, if you had anythink to do with him," said Mrs. Gamp.
"And that's what I was wanted for, is it?" cried Mrs. Prig, triumphantly. "Yes. But you 'll find yourself deceived. I won't go near him. We shall see how you get on without me. I won't have nothink to do with him."
"You never spoke a truer word than that!" said Mrs. Gamp. "Go along with you!"
She was prevented from witnessing the actual retirement of Mrs. Prig from the room, notwithstanding the great desire she had expressed to behold it, by that lady, in her angry withdrawal, coming into contact with the bedstead, and bringing down the previously-mentioned pippins; three or four of which came rattling on the head of Mrs. Gamp so smartly, that when she recovered from this wooden shower-bath, Mrs. Prig was gone.
She had the satisfaction, however, of hearing the deep voice of Betsey, proclaiming her injuries and her determination to have nothing to do with Mr. Chuffey, down the stairs, and along the passage, and even out in Kingsgate-street, Likewise, of seeing in her own apartment, in the place of Mrs. Prig, Mr. Sweedlepipe and two gentlemen.
"Why, bless my life!" exclaimed the little barber, "What's amiss? The noise you ladies have been making, Mrs. Gamp! Why, these two gentlemen have been standing on the stairs, outside the door, nearly all the time, trying to make you hear, while you were pelting away, hammer and tongs! It 'll be the death of the little bulfinch in the shop, that draws his own water. In his fright, he's been a straining himself all to bits, drawing more water than he could drink in a twelvemonth. He must have thought it was Fire!"
Mrs. Gamp had in the meanwhile sunk into her chair, from whence, turning up her overflowing eyes, and clasping her hands, she delivered the following lamentation:
"Oh, Mr. Sweedlepipes, which Mr. Westlock also, if my eyes do not deceive me, and a friend not havin the pleasure of bein beknown, wot I have took from Betsey Prig this blessed night, no mortial creetur knows! If she had abuged me, bein in liquor, which I thought I smelt her wen she come, but could not so believe, not bein used myself"—Mrs. Gamp, by the way, was pretty far gone, and the fragrance of the tea-pot was strong in the room—"I could have bore it with a thankful art. But the words she spoke of Mrs. Harris, lambs could not forgive. No, Betsey?" said Mrs. Gamp, in a violent burst of feeling, "nor worms forget!"
The little barber scratched his head, and shook it, and looked at the teapot, and gradually got out of the room. John Westlock, taking a chair, sat down on one side of Mrs. Gamp. Martin, taking the foot of the bed, supported her on the other.
"You wonder what we want, I dare say," observed John. "I 'll tell you presently, when you have recovered. It's not pressing, for a few minutes or so. How do you find yourself? Better?"
Mrs. Gamp shed more tears, shook her head, and feebly pronounced Mrs. Harris's name.
"Have a little—" John was at a loss what to call it.
"Tea," suggested Martin.
"It ain't tea," said Mrs. Gamp.
"Physic of some sort, I suppose," cried John. "Have a little."
Mrs. Gamp was prevailed upon to take a glassful. "On condition," she passionately observed, "as Betsey never has another stroke of work from me."
"Certainly not," said John. "She shall never help to nurse me."
"To think," said Mrs. Gamp, "as she should ever have helped to nuss that friend of yourn, and been so near of hearing things that—Ah!"
John looked at Martin.
"Yes," he said. "That was a narrow escape, Mrs. Gamp."
"Narrer, in-deed!" she returned. "It was only my having the night, and hearin of him in his wanderins; and her the day, that saved it. Wot would she have said and done, if she had know'd what I know; that perfeejus wretch! Yet, oh good gracious me!" cried Mrs. Gamp, trampling on the floor, in the absence of Mrs. Prig, "that I should hear from that same woman's lips what I have heerd her speak of Mrs. Harris?"
"Never mind," said John. "You know it is not true."
"Isn't true!" cried Mrs. Gamp. "True! Don't I know as that dear woman is expectin of me at this minnit, Mr. Westlock, and is a lookin out of winder down the street, with little Tommy Harris in her arms, as calls me his own Gammy, and truly calls for bless the mottled little legs of that there precious child (like Canterbury Brawn his own dear father says, which so they are) his own. I have been, ever since I found him, Mr. Westlock, with his small red worsted shoe a gurglin in his throat, where he had put it in his play, a chick, wile they was leavin of him on the floor a lookin for it through the ouse and him a choakin sweetly in the parlor! Oh, Betsey Prig, wot wickedness you've shewed this night, but never shall you darken Sairey's doors agen, you twining serpiant?"
"You were always so kind to her, too!" said John, consolingly.
"That's the cuttin part. That's where it hurts me, Mr. Westlock," Mrs. Gamp replied; holding out her glass unconsciously, while Martin filled it.
"Chosen to help you with Mr. Lewsome!" said John. "Chosen to help you with Mr. Chuffey!"
"Chose once, but chose no more," cried Mrs. Gamp. "No pardnership with Betsey Prig agen sir!"
"No no," said John. "That would never do."
"I don't know as it ever would have done, sir," Mrs. Gamp replied, with the solemnity peculiar to a certain stage of intoxication. "Now that the marks," by which Mrs. Gamp is supposed to have meant mask, "is off that creetur's face, I do not think it ever would have done. There are reagions in families for keepin things a secret, Mr. Westlock, and havin only them about you as you knows you can repoge in. Who could repoge in Betsey Prig, arter her words of Mrs. Harris, settin in that chair afore my eyes!"
"Quite true," said John: "quite. I hope you have time to find another assistant, Mrs. Gamp"
Between her indignation and the tea-pot, her powers of comprehending what was said to her began to fail. She looked at John with tearful eyes, and murmuring the well-remembered name which Mrs. Prig had challenged—as if it were a talisman against all earthly sorrows—seemed to wander in her mind.
"I hope," repeated John, "that you have time to find another assistant?"
"Which short it is, indeed," cried Mrs. Gamp, turning up her languid eyes, and clasping Mr. Westlock's wrist with matronly affection. "To-morrow evenin, sir, I waits upon his friends. Mr. Chuzzlewit apinted it from nine to ten."
"From nine to ten," said John, with a significant glance at Martin; "and then Mr. Chuffey retires into safe keeping, does he?"
"He needs to be kep safe, I do assure you," Mrs. Gamp replied, with a mysterious air. "Other people besides me has had a happy deliverance from Betsey Prig. I little know'd that woman. She'd have let it out!"
"Let him out, you mean," said John.
"Do I!" retorted Mrs. Gamp. "Oh!"
The severely ironical character of this reply was strengthened by a very slow nod, and a still slower drawing down of the corners of Mrs. Gamp's mouth. She added with extreme stateliness of manner, after indulging in a short doze:
"But I am a keepin of you gentlemen, and time is precious."
Mingling with that delusion of the tea-pot which inspired her with the belief that they wanted her to go somewhere immediately, a shrewd avoidance of any further reference to the topics into which she had lately strayed, Mrs. Gamp rose; and putting away the tea-pot in its accustomed place, and locking the cupboard with much gravity, proceeded to attire herself for a professional visit.
This preparation was easily made, as it required nothing more than the snuffy black bonnet, the snuffy black shawl, the pattens, and the indispensable umbrella, without which neither a lying-in nor a laying-out could by any possibility be attempted. When Mrs. Gamp had invested herself with these appendages she returned to her chair, and sitting down again, declared herself quite ready.
"It's a appiness to know as one can benefit the poor sweet creetur," she observed, "I'm sure. It isn't all as can. The torters Betsy Prig inflicts is frightful."
Closing her eyes as she made this remark, in the acuteness of her commiseration for Betsy's patients, she forgot to open them again until she dropped a patten. Her nap was also broken at intervals, like the fabled slumbers of Friar Bacon, by the dropping of the other patten, and of the umbrella; but when she had got rid of these incumbrances, her sleep was peaceful.
The two young men looked at each other, ludicrously enough; and Martin, stifling his disposition to laugh, whispered in John Westlock's ear:
"What shall we do now?"
"Stay here," he replied.
Mrs. Gamp was heard to murmur "Mrs. Harris!" in her sleep.
"Rely upon it," whispered John, looking cautiously towards her, "that you shall question this old clerk, though you go as Mrs. Harris herself. We know quite enough to carry her our own way now, at all events; thanks to this quarrel, which confirms the old saying that, when rogues fall out, honest people get what they want. Let Jonas Chuzzlewit look to himself; and let her sleep as long as she likes. We shall gain our end in good time."