第77章

`An't she lively?' whispered Mr. Jonas to the elder sister, with his favourite elbow emphasis.

`Oh I really don't know!' replied Miss Pecksniff, tartly. `I am tired of being asked such ridiculous questions.'

`What's that precious old father of mine about now?' said Mr. Jonas, seeing that his parent was travelling up and down the room instead of taking his seat at table. `What are you looking for?'

`I've lost my glasses, Jonas,' said old Anthony.

`Sit down without your glasses, can't you?' returned his son. `You don't eat or drink out of 'em, I think; and where's that sleepy-headed old Chuffey got to! Now, stupid. Oh! you know your name, do you?'

It would seem that he didn't, for he didn't come until the father called.

As he spoke, the door of a small glass office, which was partitioned off from the rest of the room, was slowly opened, and a little blear-eyed, weazen-faced, ancient man came creeping out. He was of a remote fashion, and dusty, like the rest of the furniture: he was dressed in a decayed suit of black; with breeches garnished at the knees with rusty wisps of ribbon, the very paupers of shoe-strings; on the lower portion of his spindle legs were dingy worsted stockings of the same colour. He looked as if he had been put away and forgotten half a century before, and somebody had just found him in a lumbercloset.

Such as he was, he came slowly creeping on towards the table, until at last he crept into the vacant chair, from which, as his dim faculties became conscious of the presence of strangers, and those strangers ladies, he rose again, apparently intending to make a bow. But he sat down once more without having made it, and breathing on his shrivelled hands to warm them, remained with his poor blue nose immovable about his plate, looking at nothing, with eyes that saw nothing, and a face that meant nothing.

Take him in that state, and he was an embodiment of nothing. Nothing else.

`Our clerk,' said Mr. Jonas, as host and master of the ceremonies: `old Chuffey.'

`Is he deaf?' inquired one of the young ladies.

`No, I don't know that he is. He an't deaf, is he, father?'

`I never heard him say he was,' replied the old man.

`Blind?' inquired the young ladies.

`N-no. I never understood that he was at all blind,' said Jonas, carelessly.

`You don't consider him so, do you, father?'

`Certainly not,' replied Anthony.

`What is he, then?'

`Why, I'll tell you what he is,' said Mr. Jonas, apart to the young ladies, `he's precious old, for one thing; and I an't best pleased with him for that, for I think my father must have caught it of him. He's a strange old chap, for another,' he added in a louder voice, `and don't understand any one hardly, but him! ' He pointed to his honoured parent with the carving-fork, in order that they might know whom he meant.

`How very strange!' cried the sisters.

`Why, you see,' said Mr. Jonas, `he's been addling his old brains with figures and book-keeping all his life; and twenty years ago or so he went and took a fever. All the time he was out of his head (which was three weeks) he never left off casting up; and he got to so many million at last that I don't believe he's ever been quite right since. We don't do much business now though, and he an't a bad clerk.'

`A very good one,' said Anthony.

`Well! He an't a dear one at all events,' observed Jonas; `and he earns his salt, which is enough for our look-out. I was telling you that he hardly understands any one except my father; he always understands him, though, and wakes up quite wonderful. He's been used to his ways so long, you see!

Why, I've seen him play whist, with my father for a partner; and a good rubber too; when he had no more notion what sort of people he was playing against, than you have.'

`Has he no appetite?' asked Merry.

`Oh, yes,' said Jonas, plying his own knife and fork very fast. `He eats -- when he's helped. But he don't care whether he waits a minute or an hour, as long as father's here; so when I'm at all sharp set, as I am to-day, I come to him after I've taken the edge off my own hunger, you know. Now, Chuffey, stupid, are you ready?'

Chuffey remained immovable.

`Always a perverse old file, he was,' said Mr. Jonas, coolly helping himself to another slice. `Ask him, father.'

`Are you ready for your dinner, Chuffey?' asked the old man `Yes, yes,' said Chuffey, lighting up into a sentient human creature at the first sound of the voice, so that it was at once a curious and quite a moving sight to see him. `Yes, yes. Quite ready, Mr. Chuzzlewit. Quite ready, sir. All ready, all ready, all ready.' With that he stopped, smilingly, and listened for some further address; but being spoken to no more, the light forsook his face by little and little, until he was nothing again.

`He'll be very disagreeable, mind,' said Jonas, addressing his cousins as he handed the old man's portion to his father. `He always chokes himself when it an't broth. Look at him, now! Did you ever see a horse with such a wall-eyed expression as he's got? If it hadn't been for the joke of it I wouldn't have let him come in to-day. but I thought he'd amuse you.'

The poor old subject of this humane speech was, happily for himself, as unconscious of its purport as of most other remarks that were made in his presence. But the mutton being tough, and his gums weak, he quickly verified the statement relative to his choking propensities, and underwent so much in his attempts to dine, that Mr Jonas was infinitely amused: protesting that he had seldom seen him better company in all his life, and that he was enough to make a man split his sides with laughing. Indeed, he went so far as to assure the sisters, that in this point of view he considered Chuffey superior to his own father; which, as he significantly added, was saying a great deal.