第139章

`PECKSNIFF,' said JONAS, TAKING OFF

HIS HAT, to see that the black crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on again, complacently; `what do you mean to give your daughters when they marry?'

`My dear Mr. Jonas,' cried the affectionate parent, with an ingenuous smile, `what a very singular inquiry!'

`Now, don't you mind whether it's a singular inquiry or a plural one,' retorted Jonas, eyeing Mr. Pecksniff with no great favour, `but answer it, or let it alone. One or the other.'

`Hum! The question, my dear friend,' said Mr. Pecksniff, laying his hand tenderly upon his kinsman's knee, `is involved with many considerations.

What would I give them? Eh?'

`Ah! what would you give 'em?' repeated Jonas.

`Why, that, 'said Mr. Pecksniff, 'would naturally depend in a great measure upon the kind of husbands they might choose, my dear young friend.'

Mr. Jonas was evidently disconcerted, and at a loss how to proceed.

It was a good answer. It seemed a deep one, but such is the wisdom of simplicity!'

`My standard for the merits I would require in a son-in-law,' said Mr. Pecksniff, after a short silence, `is a high one. Forgive me, my dear Mr. Jonas,' he added, greatly moved, `if I say that you have spoiled me, and made it a fanciful one; an imaginative one; a prismatically tinged one, if I may be permitted to call it so.'

`What do you mean by that?' growled Jonas, looking at him with increased disfavour.

`Indeed, my dear friend,' said Mr. Pecksniff, `you may well inquire.

The heart is not always a royal mint, with patent machinery to work its metal into current coin. Sometimes it throws it out in strange forms, not easily recognised as coin at all. But it is sterling gold. It has at least that merit. It is sterling gold.'

`Is it?' grumbled Jonas, with a doubtful shake of the head.

`Aye!' said Mr. Pecksniff, warming with his subject `it is. To be plain with you, Mr. Jonas, if I could find two such sons-in-law as you will one day make to some deserving man, capable of appreciating a nature such as yours, I would -- forgetful of myself -- bestow upon my daughters portions reaching to the very utmost limit of my means.'

This was strong language, and it was earnestly delivered. But who can wonder that such a man as Mr. Pecksniff, after all he had seen and heard of Mr. Jonas, should be strong and earnest upon such a theme; a theme that touched even the worldly lips of undertakers with the honey of eloquence!

Mr. Jonas was silent, and looked thoughtfully at the landscape. For they were seated on the outside of the coach, at the back, and were travelling down into the country. He accompanied Mr. Pecksniff home for a few days' change of air and scene after his recent trials.

`Well,' he said, at last, with captivating bluntness, `suppose you got one such son-in-law as me, what then?'

Mr. Pecksniff regarded him at first with inexpressible surprise; then gradually breaking into a sort of dejected vivacity, said:

`Then well I know whose husband he would be!'

`Whose?' asked Jonas, drily.

`My eldest girl's, Mr. Jonas,' replied Pecksniff, with moistening eyes.

`My dear Cherry's: my staff, my scrip, my treasure, Mr. Jonas. A hard struggle, but it is in the nature of things! I must one day part with her to a husband.

I know it, my dear friend. I am prepared for it.'

`Ecod! you've been prepared for that a pretty long time, I should think,' said Jonas.

`Many have sought to bear her from me,' said Mr. Pecksniff. `All have failed. "I never will give my hand, papa:" those were her words: "unless my heart is won." She has not been quite so happy as she used to be, of late. I don't know why.'

Again Mr. Jonas looked at the landscape; then at the coachman; then at the luggage on the roof; finally at Mr. Pecksniff.

`I suppose you'll have to part with the other one, some of these days?' he observed, as he caught that gentleman's eye.

`Probably,' said the parent. `Years will tame down the wildness of my foolish bird, and then it will be caged. But Cherry, Mr. Jonas, Cherry.'

`Oh, ah!' interrupted Jonas. `Years have made her all right enough.

Nobody doubts that. But you haven't answered what I asked you. Of course, you're not obliged to do it, you know, if you don't like. You're the best judge.'

There was a warning sulkiness in the manner of this speech, which admonished Mr. Pecksniff that his dear friend was not to be trifled with or fenced off, and that he must either return a straight-forward reply to his question, or plainly give him to understand that he declined to enlighten him upon the subject to which it referred. Mindful in this dilemma of the caution old Anthony had given him almost with his latest breath, he resolved to speak to the point, and so told Mr. Jonas (enlarging upon the communication as a proof of his great attachment and confidence), that in the case he had put; to wit, in the event of such a man as he proposing for his daughter's hand: he would endow her with a fortune of four thousand pounds.

`I should sadly pinch and cramp myself to do so,' was his fatherly remark;

`but that would be my duty, and my conscience would reward me. For myself, my conscience is my bank. I have a trifle invested there, a mere trifle, Mr. Jonas; but I prize it as a store of value, I assure you.'

The good man's enemies would have divided upon this question into two parties. One would have asserted without scruple that if Mr. Pecksniff's conscience were his bank, and he kept a running account there, he must have overdrawn it beyond all mortal means of computation. The other would have contended that it was a mere fictitious form; a perfectly blank book; or one in which entries were only made with a peculiar kind of invisible ink to become legible at some indefinite time and that he never troubled it at all.

`It would sadly pinch and cramp me, my dear friend,' repeated Mr. Pecksniff, `but Providence, perhaps I may be permitted to say a special Providence, has blessed my endeavours, and I could guarantee to make the sacrifice.'