‘Shall I tell you how?’ returned
the other.
‘I think you had better,’ said Jonas.
’Strange things have been done in the Assurance
way before now, by strange sorts of men, and I mean
to take care of myself.’
‘Chuzzlewit!’ replied Montague, leaning
forward, with his arms upon his knees, and looking
full into his face. ’Strange things have
been done, and are done every day; not only in our
way, but in a variety of other ways; and no one suspects
them. But ours, as you say, my good friend, is
a strange way; and we strangely happen, sometimes,
to come into the knowledge of very strange events.’
He beckoned to Jonas to bring his chair nearer; and
looking slightly round, as if to remind him of the
presence of Nadgett, whispered in his ear.
From red to white; from white to red again; from red
to yellow; then to a cold, dull, awful, sweat-bedabbled
blue. In that short whisper, all these changes
fell upon the face of Jonas Chuzzlewit; and when at
last he laid his hand upon the whisperer’s mouth,
appalled, lest any syllable of what he said should
reach the ears of the third person present, it was
as bloodless and as heavy as the hand of Death.
He drew his chair away, and sat a spectacle of terror,
misery, and rage. He was afraid to speak, or
look, or move, or sit still. Abject, crouching,
and miserable, he was a greater degradation to the
form he bore, than if he had been a loathsome wound
from head to heel.
His companion leisurely resumed his dressing, and
completed it, glancing sometimes with a smile at the
transformation he had effected, but never speaking
once.
‘You’ll not object,’ he said, when
he was quite equipped, ’to venture further with
us, Chuzzlewit, my friend?’
His pale lips faintly stammered out a ‘No.’
’Well said! That’s like yourself.
Do you know I was thinking yesterday that your father-in-law,
relying on your advice as a man of great sagacity
in money matters, as no doubt you are, would join us,
if the thing were well presented to him. He has
money?’
‘Yes, he has money.’
’Shall I leave Mr Pecksniff to you? Will
you undertake for Mr Pecksniff.’
‘I’ll try. I’ll do my best.’
‘A thousand thanks,’ replied the other,
clapping him upon the shoulder. ‘Shall
we walk downstairs? Mr Nadgett! Follow us,
if you please.’
They went down in that order. Whatever Jonas
felt in reference to Montague; whatever sense he had
of being caged, and barred, and trapped, and having
fallen down into a pit of deepest ruin; whatever thoughts
came crowding on his mind even at that early time,
of one terrible chance of escape, of one red glimmer
in a sky of blackness; he no more thought that the
slinking figure half-a-dozen stairs behind him was
his pursuing Fate, than that the other figure at his
side was his Good Angel.
