Charles Dickens: Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit

54. Chapter Fifty-four (continued)

Mr Jinkins volunteered to take a cab, and seek him at the newly- furnished house. The strong-minded woman administered comfort to Miss Pecksniff. 'It was a specimen of what she had to expect. It would do her good. It would dispel the romance of the affair.' The red-nosed daughters also administered the kindest comfort. 'Perhaps he'd come,' they said. The sketchy nephew hinted that he might have fallen off a bridge. The wrath of Mr Spottletoe resisted all the entreaties of his wife. Everybody spoke at once, and Miss Pecksniff, with clasped hands, sought consolation everywhere and found it nowhere, when Jinkins, having met the postman at the door, came back with a letter, which he put into her hand.

Miss Pecksniff opened it, uttered a piercing shriek, threw it down upon the ground, and fainted away.

They picked it up; and crowding round, and looking over one another's shoulders, read, in the words and dashes following, this communication:

'OFF GRAVESEND.

'CLIPPER SCHOONER, CUPID

'Wednesday night

'EVER INJURED MISS PECKSNIFF--Ere this reaches you, the undersigned will be--if not a corpse--on the way to Van Dieman's Land. Send not in pursuit. I never will be taken alive!

'The burden--300 tons per register--forgive, if in my distraction, I allude to the ship--on my mind--has been truly dreadful. Frequently --when you have sought to soothe my brow with kisses--has self- destruction flashed across me. Frequently--incredible as it may seem--have I abandoned the idea.

'I love another. She is Another's. Everything appears to be somebody else's. Nothing in the world is mine--not even my Situation--which I have forfeited--by my rash conduct--in running away.

'If you ever loved me, hear my last appeal! The last appeal of a miserable and blighted exile. Forward the inclosed--it is the key of my desk--to the office--by hand. Please address to Bobbs and Cholberry--I mean to Chobbs and Bolberry--but my mind is totally unhinged. I left a penknife--with a buckhorn handle--in your work-box. It will repay the messenger. May it make him happier than ever it did me!