LITMIR.BIZ

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enough, he says this morning to me, in his usual captivating way, “We’re going to-night, my man.” “Are you, sir?” says I. “Perhaps you’d like the bill got ready, sir?” “Oh no, my man,” he says; “you needn’t mind that. I’ll give Pecksniff orders to see to that.” In reply to which, the Dragon makes answer, “Thankee, sir, you’re very kind to honour us so far, but as we don’t know any particular good of you, and you don’t travel with luggage, and Mr Pecksniff an’t at home (which perhaps you mayn’t happen to be aware of, sir), we should prefer something more satisfactory;” and that’s where the matter stands. And I ask,’ said Mr Tapley, pointing, in conclusion, to Mr Tigg, with his hat, ‘any lady or gentleman, possessing ordinary strength of mind, to say whether he’s a disagreeable-looking chap or not!’

      ‘Let me inquire,’ said Martin, interposing between this candid speech and the delivery of some blighting anathema by Mr Tigg, ‘what the amount of this debt may be?’

      ‘In point of money, sir, very little,’ answered Mark. ‘Only just turned of three pounds. But it an’t that; it’s the – ’

      ‘Yes, yes, you told us so before,’ said Martin. ‘Pinch, a word with you.’

      ‘What is it?’ asked Tom, retiring with him to a corner of the room.

      ‘Why, simply – I am ashamed to say – that this Mr Slyme is a relation of mine, of whom I never heard anything pleasant; and that I don’t want him here just now, and think he would be cheaply got rid of, perhaps, for three or four pounds. You haven’t enough money to pay this bill, I suppose?’

      Tom shook his head to an extent that left no doubt of his entire sincerity.

      ‘That’s unfortunate, for I am poor too; and in case you had had it, I’d have borrowed it of you. But if we told this landlady we would see her paid, I suppose that would answer the same purpose?’

      ‘Oh dear, yes!’ said Tom. ‘She knows me, bless you!’

      ‘Then let us go down at once and tell her so; for the sooner we are rid of their company the better. As you have conducted the conversation with this gentleman hitherto, perhaps you’ll tell him what we purpose doing; will you?’

      Mr Pinch, complying, at once imparted the intelligence to Mr Tigg, who shook him warmly by the hand in return, assuring him that his faith in anything and everything was again restored. It was not so much, he said, for the temporary relief of this assistance that he prized it, as for its vindication of the high principle that Nature’s Nobs felt with Nature’s Nobs, and that true greatness of soul sympathized with true greatness of soul, all the world over. It proved to him, he said, that like him they admired genius, even when it was coupled with the alloy occasionally visible in the metal of his friend Slyme; and on behalf of that friend, he thanked them; as warmly and heartily as if the cause were his own. Being cut short in these speeches by a general move towards the stairs, he took possession at the street door of the lapel of Mr Pinch’s coat, as a security against further interruption; and entertained that gentleman with some highly improving discourse until they reached the Dragon, whither they were closely followed by Mark and the new pupil.

      The rosy hostess scarcely needed Mr Pinch’s word as a preliminary to the release of her two visitors, of whom she was glad to be rid on any terms; indeed, their brief detention had originated mainly with Mr Tapley, who entertained a constitutional dislike to gentleman out-at-elbows who flourished on false pretences; and had conceived a particular aversion to Mr Tigg and his friend, as choice specimens of the species. The business in hand thus easily settled, Mr Pinch and Martin would have withdrawn immediately, but for the urgent entreaties of Mr Tigg that they would allow him the honour of presenting them to his friend Slyme, which were so very difficult of resistance that, yielding partly to these persuasions and partly to their own curiosity, they suffered themselves to be ushered into the presence of that distinguished gentleman.

      He was brooding over the remains of yesterday’s decanter of brandy, and was engaged in the thoughtful occupation of making a chain of rings on the top of the table with the wet foot of his drinking-glass. Wretched and forlorn as he looked, Mr Slyme had once been in his way, the choicest of swaggerers; putting forth his pretensions boldly, as a man of infinite taste and most undoubted promise. The stock-in-trade requisite to set up an amateur in this department of business is very slight, and easily got together; a trick of the nose and a curl of the lip sufficient to compound a tolerable sneer, being ample provision for any exigency. But, in an evil hour, this off-shoot of the Chuzzlewit trunk, being lazy, and ill qualified for any regular pursuit and having dissipated such means as he ever possessed, had formally established himself as a professor of Taste for a livelihood; and finding, too late, that something more than his old amount of qualifications was necessary to sustain him in this calling, had quickly fallen to his present level, where he retained nothing of his old self but his boastfulness and his bile, and seemed to have no existence separate or apart from his friend Tigg. And now so abject and so pitiful was he – at once so maudlin, insolent, beggarly, and proud – that even his friend and parasite, standing erect beside him, swelled into a Man by contrast.

      ‘Chiv,’ said Mr Tigg, clapping him on the back, ‘my friend Pecksniff not being at home, I have arranged our trifling piece of business with Mr Pinch and friend. Mr Pinch and friend, Mr Chevy Slyme! Chiv, Mr Pinch and friend!’

      ‘These are agreeable circumstances in which to be introduced to strangers,’ said Chevy Slyme, turning his bloodshot eyes towards Tom Pinch. ‘I am the most miserable man in the world, I believe!’

      Tom begged he wouldn’t mention it; and finding him in this condition, retired, after an awkward pause, followed by Martin. But Mr Tigg so urgently conjured them, by coughs and signs, to remain in the shadow of the door, that they stopped there.

      ‘I swear,’ cried Mr Slyme, giving the table an imbecile blow with his fist, and then feebly leaning his head upon his hand, while some drunken drops oozed from his eyes, ‘that I am the wretchedest creature on record. Society is in a conspiracy against me. I’m the most literary man alive. I’m full of scholarship. I’m full of genius; I’m full of information; I’m full of novel views on every subject; yet look at my condition! I’m at this moment obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill!’

      Mr Tigg replenished his friend’s glass, pressed it into his hand, and nodded an intimation to the visitors that they would see him in a better aspect immediately.

      ‘Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill, eh!’ repeated Mr Slyme, after a sulky application to his glass. ‘Very pretty! And crowds of impostors, the while, becoming famous; men who are no more on a level with me than – Tigg, I take you to witness that I am the most persecuted hound on the face of the earth.’

      With a whine, not unlike the cry of the animal he named, in its lowest state of humiliation, he raised his glass to his mouth again. He found some encouragement in it; for when he set it down he laughed scornfully. Upon that Mr Tigg gesticulated to the visitors once more, and with great expression, implying that now the time was come when they would see Chiv in his greatness.

      ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed Mr Slyme. ‘Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill! Yet I think I’ve a rich uncle, Tigg, who could buy up the uncles of fifty strangers! Have I, or have I not? I come of a good family, I believe! Do I, or do I not? I’m not a man of common capacity or accomplishments, I think! Am I, or am I not?’

      ‘You are the American aloe of the human race, my dear Chiv,’ said Mr Tigg, ‘which only blooms once in a hundred years!’

      ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ laughed Mr Slyme again. ‘Obliged to two strangers for a tavern bill! I obliged to two architect’s apprentices. Fellows who measure earth with iron chains, and build houses like bricklayers. Give me the names of those two apprentices. How dare they oblige me!’

      Mr Tigg was quite lost in admiration of this noble trait in his friend’s character; as he made known to Mr Pinch in a neat little ballet of action, spontaneously invented for the purpose.

      ‘I’ll let ‘em know, and I’ll let all men know,’ cried Chevy Slyme, ‘that I’m none of the mean, grovelling, tame characters they meet with commonly. I have an independent spirit. I have a heart

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