A long pause succeeded. The old man, with increased restlessness, changed his posture several times. Mrs Lupin and the young lady gazed in silence at the counterpane. Mr Pecksniff toyed abstractedly with his eye-glass, and kept his eyes shut, that he might ruminate the better.
′Eh?′ he said at last, opening them suddenly, and looking towards the bed. ′I beg your pardon. I thought you spoke. Mrs Lupin,′ he continued, slowly rising ′I am not aware that I can be of any service to you here. The gentleman is better, and you are as good a nurse as he can have. Eh?′
This last note of interrogation bore reference to another change of posture on the old man′s part, which brought his face towards Mr Pecksniff for the first time since he had turned away from him.
′If you desire to speak to me before I go, sir,′ continued that gentleman, after another pause, ′you may command my leisure; but I must stipulate, in justice to myself, that you do so as to a stranger, strictly as to a stranger.′
Now if Mr Pecksniff knew, from anything Martin Chuzzlewit had expressed in gestures, that he wanted to speak to him, he could only have found it out on some such principle as prevails in melodramas, and in virtue of which the elderly farmer with the comic son always knows what the dumb girl means when she takes refuge in his garden, and relates her personal memoirs in incomprehensible pantomime. But without stopping to make any inquiry on this point, Martin Chuzzlewit signed to his young companion to withdraw, which she immediately did, along with the landlady leaving him and Mr Pecksniff alone together. For some time they looked at each other in silence; or rather the old man looked at Mr Pecksniff, and Mr Pecksniff again closing his eyes on all outward objects, took an inward survey of his own breast. That it amply repaid him for his trouble, and afforded a delicious and enchanting prospect, was clear from the expression of his face.
′You wish me to speak to you as to a total stranger,′ said the old man, ′do you?′
Mr Pecksniff replied, by a shrug of his shoulders and an apparent turning round of his eyes in their sockets before he opened them, that he was still reduced to the necessity of entertaining that desire.
′You shall be gratified,′ said Martin. ′Sir, I am a rich man. Not so rich as some suppose, perhaps, but yet wealthy. I am not a miser sir, though even that charge is made against me, as I hear, and currently believed. I have no pleasure in hoarding. I have no pleasure in the possession of money, The devil that we call by that name can give me nothing but unhappiness.′
It would be no description of Mr Pecksniff′s gentleness of manner to adopt the common parlance, and say that he looked at this moment as if butter wouldn′t melt in his mouth. He rather looked as if any quantity of butter might have been made out of him, by churning the milk of human kindness, as it spouted upwards from his heart.
′For the same reason that I am not a hoarder of money,′ said the old man, ′I am not lavish of it. Some people find their gratification in storing it up; and others theirs in parting with it; but I have no gratification connected with the thing. Pain and bitterness are the only goods it ever could procure for me. I hate it. It is a spectre walking before me through the world, and making every social pleasure hideous.
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