`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 m 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 conditions 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 that swells in my bosom. I have a soul that rises superior to base considerations.'
`Oh Chiv, Chiv,' murmured Mr. Tigg, `you have a nobly independent nature, Chiv!'
`You go and do your duty, sir,' said Mr. Slyme, angrily, `and borrow money for travelling expenses; and whoever you borrow it of, let 'em know that I possess a haughty spirit, and a proud spirit, and have infernally finely-touched chords in my nature, which won't brook patronage. Do you hear? Tell 'em I hate 'em, and that that's the way I preserve my self-respect; and tell 'em that no man ever respected himself more than I do!'
He might have added that he hated two sorts of men; all those who did him favours, and all those who were better off than himself; as in either case their position was an insult to a man of his stupendous merits. But he did not; for with the apt closing words above recited, Mr. Slyme; of too haughty a stomach to work, to beg, to borrow, or to steal; yet mean enough to be worked or borrowed, begged or stolen for, by any catspaw that would serve his turn; too insolent to lick the hand that fed him in his need, yet cur enough to bite and tear it in the dark; with these apt closing words Mr. Slyme fell forward with his head upon the table, and so declined into a sodden sleep.
`Was there ever,' cried Mr. Tigg, joining the young men at the door, and shutting it carefully behind him, `such an independent spirit as is possessed by that extraordinary creature? Was there ever such a Roman as our friend Chiv? Was there ever a man of such a purely classical turn of thought, and of such a toga-like simplicity of nature? Was there ever a man with such a flow of eloquence? Might he not, gents both, I ask, have sat upon a tripod in the ancient times, and prophesied to a perfectly unlimited extent, if previously supplied with gin-and-water at the public cost?'
Mr. Pinch was about to contest this latter position with his usual mildness, when, observing that his companion had already gone down-stairs, he prepared to follow him.
`You are not going, Mr. Pinch?' said Tigg.
`Thank you,' answered Tom. `Yes. Don't come down.'
`Do you know that I should like one little word in private with you Mr. Pinch?' said Tigg, following him. `One minute of your company in the skittle-ground would very much relieve my mind. Might I beseech that favour?'
`Oh, certainly,' replied Tom, `if you really wish it.' So he accompanied Mr. Tigg to the retreat in question: on arriving at which place that gentleman took from his hat what seemed to be the fossil remains of an antediluvian pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes therewith.
`You have not beheld me this day,' said Mr. Tigg, `in a favourable light.'
`Don't mention that,' said Tom, `I beg.'
`But you have not,' cried Tigg. `I must persist in that opinion.