Up came the sun, streaming all over London, and in its glorious impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need of some brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously discontented.
Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers, with the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the other, sat moodily observant of the tablecloth. Things looked so gloomy in the breakfast-room, albeit on the sunny side of Sackville Street, that any of the family tradespeople glancing through the blinds might have taken the hint to send in his account and press for it. But this, indeed, most of the family tradespeople had already done, without the hint.
‘It seems to me,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘that you have had no money at all, ever since we have been married.’
‘What seems to you,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘to have been the case, may possibly have been the case. It doesn’t matter.’
Was it the speciality of Mr and Mrs Lammle, or does it ever obtain with other loving couples? In these matrimonial dialogues they never addressed each other, but always some invisible presence that appeared to take a station about midway between them. Perhaps the skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked to, on such domestic occasions?
‘I have never seen any money in the house,’ said Mrs Lammle to the skeleton, ‘except my own annuity. That I swear.’
‘You needn’t take the trouble of swearing,’ said Mr Lammle to the skeleton; ‘once more, it doesn’t matter. You never turned your annuity to so good an account.’
‘Good an account! In what way?’ asked Mrs Lammle.
‘In the way of getting credit, and living well,’ said Mr Lammle. Perhaps the skeleton laughed scornfully on being intrusted with this question and this answer; certainly Mrs Lammle did, and Mr Lammle did.
‘And what is to happen next?’ asked Mrs Lammle of the skeleton.
‘Smash is to happen next,’ said Mr Lammle to the same authority.
After this, Mrs Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton—but without carrying the look on to Mr Lammle—and drooped her eyes. After that, Mr Lammle did exactly the same thing, and drooped his eyes. A servant then entering with toast, the skeleton retired into the closet, and shut itself up.
‘Sophronia,’ said Mr Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn. And then, very much louder: ‘Sophronia!’
‘Well?’
‘Attend to me, if you please.’ He eyed her sternly until she did attend, and then went on. ‘I want to take counsel with you. Come, come; no more trifling. You know our league and covenant. We are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a hand as I am. We shouldn’t be together, if you were not. What’s to be done? We are hemmed into a corner. What shall we do?’
‘Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?’
Mr Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out hopeless: ‘No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against us.’
She was resuming, ‘Have you nothing—’ when he stopped her.
‘We, Sophronia. We, we, we.’
‘Have we nothing to sell?’
‘Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and he could take it to-morrow, to-day, now. He would have taken it before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.’
‘What has Fledgeby to do with him?’
‘Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws. Couldn’t persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.’
‘Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?’
‘Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.’
‘Towards us?’
‘I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his hand.’
‘Do you believe Fledgeby?’
‘Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I believed you. But it looks like it.’
Having given her this back-handed reminder of her mutinous observations to the skeleton, Mr Lammle rose from table—perhaps, the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose—and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.
‘If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;—but however; that’s spilled milk.’
As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown with his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she turned pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of disloyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger—for she was afraid of him—even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot, though he had never done her violence—she hastened to put herself right in his eyes.
‘If we could borrow money, Alfred—’
‘Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to us, Sophronia,’ her husband struck in.
‘—Then, we could weather this?’
‘No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark, Sophronia, two and two make four.’
But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he gathered up the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking them under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers in his other hand, kept his eye upon her, silently.
‘It is natural, Alfred,’ she said, looking up with some timidity into his face, ‘to think in such an emergency of the richest people we know, and the simplest.’
‘Just so, Sophronia.’
‘The Boffins.’
‘Just so, Sophronia.’
‘Is there nothing to be done with them?’
‘What is there to be done with them, Sophronia?’
She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her as before.
‘Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Boffins, Sophronia,’ he resumed, after a fruitless silence; ‘but I have seen my way to nothing. They are well guarded. That infernal Secretary stands between them and—people of merit.’
‘If he could be got rid of?’ said she, brightening a little, after more casting about.
‘Take time, Sophronia,’ observed her watchful husband, in a patronizing manner.
‘If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of a service to Mr Boffin?’
‘Take time, Sophronia.’
‘We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning very suspicious and distrustful.’
‘Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us. Nevertheless, take time, Sophronia, take time.’
She took time and then said:
‘Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of which we have made ourselves quite sure. Suppose my conscience—’
‘And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?’
‘Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself any longer what that upstart girl told me of the Secretary’s having made a declaration to her. Suppose my conscience should oblige me to repeat it to Mr Boffin.’
‘I rather like that,’ said Lammle.
‘Suppose I so repeated it to Mr Boffin, as to insinuate that my sensitive delicacy and honour—’
‘Very good words, Sophronia.’
‘—As to insinuate that our sensitive delicacy and honour,’ she resumed, with a bitter stress upon the phrase, ‘would not allow us to be silent parties to so mercenary and designing a speculation on the Secretary’s part, and so gross a breach of faith towards his confiding employer. Suppose I had imparted my virtuous uneasiness to my excellent husband, and he had said, in his integrity, “Sophronia, you must immediately disclose this to Mr Boffin.”’
‘Once more, Sophronia,’ observed Lammle, changing the leg on which he stood, ‘I rather like that.’
‘You remark that he is well guarded,’ she pursued. ‘I think so too. But if this should lead to his discharging his Secretary, there would be a weak place made.’
‘Go on expounding, Sophronia. I begin to like this very much.’
‘Having, in our unimpeachable rectitude, done him the service of opening his eyes to the treachery of the person he trusted, we shall have established a claim upon him and a confidence with him. Whether it can be made much of, or little of, we must wait—because we can’t help it—to see. Probably we shall make the most of it that is to be made.’
‘Probably,’ said Lammle.
‘Do you think it impossible,’ she asked, in the same cold plotting way, ‘that you might replace the Secretary?’
‘Not impossible, Sophronia. It might be brought about. At any rate it might be skilfully led up to.’
She nodded her understanding of the hint, as she looked at the fire. ‘Mr Lammle,’ she said, musingly: not without a slight ironical touch: ‘Mr Lammle would be so delighted to do anything in his power. Mr Lammle, himself a man of business as well as a capitalist. Mr Lammle, accustomed to be intrusted with the most delicate affairs. Mr Lammle, who has managed my own little fortune so admirably, but who, to be sure, began to make his reputation with the advantage of being a man of property, above temptation, and beyond suspicion.’
Mr Lammle smiled, and even patted her on the head. In his sinister relish of the scheme, as he stood above her, making it the subject of his cogitations, he seemed to have twice as much nose on his face as he had ever had in his life.
He stood pondering, and she sat looking at the dusty fire without moving, for some time. But, the moment he began to speak again she looked up with a wince and attended to him, as if that double-dealing of hers had been in her mind, and the fear were revived in her of his hand or his foot.
‘It appears to me, Sophronia, that you have omitted one branch of the subject. Perhaps not, for women understand women. We might oust the girl herself?’
Mrs Lammle shook her head. ‘She has an immensely strong hold upon them both, Alfred. Not to be compared with that of a paid secretary.’
‘But the dear child,’ said Lammle, with a crooked smile, ‘ought to have been open with her benefactor and benefactress. The darling love ought to have reposed unbounded confidence in her benefactor and benefactress.’
Sophronia shook her head again.
‘Well! Women understand women,’ said her husband, rather disappointed. ‘I don’t press it. It might be the making of our fortune to make a clean sweep of them both. With me to manage the property, and my wife to manage the people—Whew!’
Again shaking her head, she returned: ‘They will never quarrel with the girl. They will never punish the girl. We must accept the girl, rely upon it.’
‘Well!’ cried Lammle, shrugging his shoulders, ‘so be it: only always remember that we don’t want her.’
‘Now, the sole remaining question is,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘when shall I begin?’
‘You cannot begin too soon, Sophronia. As I have told you, the condition of our affairs is desperate, and may be blown upon at any moment.’
‘I must secure Mr Boffin alone, Alfred. If his wife was present, she would throw oil upon the waters. I know I should fail to move him to an angry outburst, if his wife was there. And as to the girl herself—as I am going to betray her confidence, she is equally out of the question.’
‘It wouldn’t do to write for an appointment?’ said Lammle.
‘No, certainly not. They would wonder among themselves why I wrote, and I want to have him wholly unprepared.’
‘Call, and ask to see him alone?’ suggested Lammle.
‘I would rather not do that either. Leave it to me. Spare me the little carriage for to-day, and for to-morrow (if I don’t succeed to-day), and I’ll lie in wait for him.’
It was barely settled when a manly form was seen to pass the windows and heard to knock and ring. ‘Here’s Fledgeby,’ said Lammle. ‘He admires you, and has a high opinion of you. I’ll be out. Coax him to use his influence with the Jew. His name is Riah, of the House of Pubsey and Co.’ Adding these words under his breath, lest he should be audible in the erect ears of Mr Fledgeby, through two keyholes and the hall, Lammle, making signals of discretion to his servant, went softly up stairs.
‘Mr Fledgeby,’ said Mrs Lammle, giving him a very gracious reception, ‘so glad to see you! My poor dear Alfred, who is greatly worried just now about his affairs, went out rather early. Dear Mr Fledgeby, do sit down.’
Dear Mr Fledgeby did sit down, and satisfied himself (or, judging from the expression of his countenance, dissatisfied himself) that nothing new had occurred in the way of whisker-sprout since he came round the corner from the Albany.
‘Dear Mr Fledgeby, it was needless to mention to you that my poor dear Alfred is much worried about his affairs at present, for he has told me what a comfort you are to him in his temporary difficulties, and what a great service you have rendered him.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Fledgeby.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Lammle.
‘I didn’t know,’ remarked Mr Fledgeby, trying a new part of his chair, ‘but that Lammle might be reserved about his affairs.’
‘Not to me,’ said Mrs Lammle, with deep feeling.
‘Oh, indeed?’ said Fledgeby.
‘Not to me, dear Mr Fledgeby. I am his wife.’
‘Yes. I—I always understood so,’ said Mr Fledgeby.
‘And as the wife of Alfred, may I, dear Mr Fledgeby, wholly without his authority or knowledge, as I am sure your discernment will perceive, entreat you to continue that great service, and once more use your well-earned influence with Mr Riah for a little more indulgence? The name I have heard Alfred mention, tossing in his dreams, is Riah; is it not?’
‘The name of the Creditor is Riah,’ said Mr Fledgeby, with a rather uncompromising accent on his noun-substantive. ‘Saint Mary Axe. Pubsey and Co.’
‘Oh yes!’ exclaimed Mrs Lammle, clasping her hands with a certain gushing wildness. ‘Pubsey and Co.!’
‘The pleading of the feminine—’ Mr Fledgeby began, and there stuck so long for a word to get on with, that Mrs Lammle offered him sweetly, ‘Heart?’
‘No,’ said Mr Fledgeby, ‘Gender—is ever what a man is bound to listen to, and I wish it rested with myself. But this Riah is a nasty one, Mrs Lammle; he really is.’
‘Not if you speak to him, dear Mr Fledgeby.’
‘Upon my soul and body he is!’ said Fledgeby.
‘Try. Try once more, dearest Mr Fledgeby. What is there you cannot do, if you will!’
‘Thank you,’ said Fledgeby, ‘you’re very complimentary to say so. I don’t mind trying him again, at your request. But of course I can’t answer for the consequences. Riah is a tough subject, and when he says he’ll do a thing, he’ll do it.’
‘Exactly so,’ cried Mrs Lammle, ‘and when he says to you he’ll wait, he’ll wait.’
(‘She is a devilish clever woman,’ thought Fledgeby. ‘I didn’t see that opening, but she spies it out and cuts into it as soon as it’s made.’)
‘In point of fact, dear Mr Fledgeby,’ Mrs Lammle went on in a very interesting manner, ‘not to affect concealment of Alfred’s hopes, to you who are so much his friend, there is a distant break in his horizon.’
This figure of speech seemed rather mysterious to Fascination Fledgeby, who said, ‘There’s a what in his—eh?’
‘Alfred, dear Mr Fledgeby, discussed with me this very morning before he went out, some prospects he has, which might entirely change the aspect of his present troubles.’
‘Really?’ said Fledgeby.
‘O yes!’ Here Mrs Lammle brought her handkerchief into play. ‘And you know, dear Mr Fledgeby—you who study the human heart, and study the world—what an affliction it would be to lose position and to lose credit, when ability to tide over a very short time might save all appearances.’
‘Oh!’ said Fledgeby. ‘Then you think, Mrs Lammle, that if Lammle got time, he wouldn’t burst up?—To use an expression,’ Mr Fledgeby apologetically explained, ‘which is adopted in the Money Market.’
‘Indeed yes. Truly, truly, yes!’
‘That makes all the difference,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I’ll make a point of seeing Riah at once.’
‘Blessings on you, dearest Mr Fledgeby!’
‘Not at all,’ said Fledgeby. She gave him her hand. ‘The hand,’ said Mr Fledgeby, ‘of a lovely and superior-minded female is ever the repayment of a—’
‘Noble action!’ said Mrs Lammle, extremely anxious to get rid of him.
‘It wasn’t what I was going to say,’ returned Fledgeby, who never would, under any circumstances, accept a suggested expression, ‘but you’re very complimentary. May I imprint a—a one—upon it? Good morning!’
‘I may depend upon your promptitude, dearest Mr Fledgeby?’
Said Fledgeby, looking back at the door and respectfully kissing his hand, ‘You may depend upon it.’
In fact, Mr Fledgeby sped on his errand of mercy through the streets, at so brisk a rate that his feet might have been winged by all the good spirits that wait on Generosity. They might have taken up their station in his breast, too, for he was blithe and merry. There was quite a fresh trill in his voice, when, arriving at the counting-house in St Mary Axe, and finding it for the moment empty, he trolled forth at the foot of the staircase: ‘Now, Judah, what are you up to there?’
The old man appeared, with his accustomed deference.
‘Halloa!’ said Fledgeby, falling back, with a wink. ‘You mean mischief, Jerusalem!’
The old man raised his eyes inquiringly.
‘Yes you do,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Oh, you sinner! Oh, you dodger! What! You’re going to act upon that bill of sale at Lammle’s, are you? Nothing will turn you, won’t it? You won’t be put off for another single minute, won’t you?’
Ordered to immediate action by the master’s tone and look, the old man took up his hat from the little counter where it lay.
‘You have been told that he might pull through it, if you didn’t go in to win, Wide-Awake; have you?’ said Fledgeby. ‘And it’s not your game that he should pull through it; ain’t it? You having got security, and there being enough to pay you? Oh, you Jew!’
The old man stood irresolute and uncertain for a moment, as if there might be further instructions for him in reserve.
‘Do I go, sir?’ he at length asked in a low voice.
‘Asks me if he is going!’ exclaimed Fledgeby. ‘Asks me, as if he didn’t know his own purpose! Asks me, as if he hadn’t got his hat on ready! Asks me, as if his sharp old eye—why, it cuts like a knife—wasn’t looking at his walking-stick by the door!’
‘Do I go, sir?’
‘Do you go?’ sneered Fledgeby. ‘Yes, you do go. Toddle, Judah!’
Fascination Fledgeby, left alone in the counting-house, strolled about with his hat on one side, whistling, and investigating the drawers, and prying here and there for any small evidences of his being cheated, but could find none. ‘Not his merit that he don’t cheat me,’ was Mr Fledgeby’s commentary delivered with a wink, ‘but my precaution.’ He then with a lazy grandeur asserted his rights as lord of Pubsey and Co. by poking his cane at the stools and boxes, and spitting in the fireplace, and so loitered royally to the window and looked out into the narrow street, with his small eyes just peering over the top of Pubsey and Co.‘s blind. As a blind in more senses than one, it reminded him that he was alone in the counting-house with the front door open. He was moving away to shut it, lest he should be injudiciously identified with the establishment, when he was stopped by some one coming to the door.
This some one was the dolls’ dressmaker, with a little basket on her arm, and her crutch stick in her hand. Her keen eyes had espied Mr Fledgeby before Mr Fledgeby had espied her, and he was paralysed in his purpose of shutting her out, not so much by her approaching the door, as by her favouring him with a shower of nods, the instant he saw her. This advantage she improved by hobbling up the steps with such despatch that before Mr Fledgeby could take measures for her finding nobody at home, she was face to face with him in the counting-house.
‘Hope I see you well, sir,’ said Miss Wren. ‘Mr Riah in?’
Fledgeby had dropped into a chair, in the attitude of one waiting wearily. ‘I suppose he will be back soon,’ he replied; ‘he has cut out and left me expecting him back, in an odd way. Haven’t I seen you before?’
‘Once before—if you had your eyesight,’ replied Miss Wren; the conditional clause in an under-tone.
‘When you were carrying on some games up at the top of the house. I remember. How’s your friend?’
‘I have more friends than one, sir, I hope,’ replied Miss Wren. ‘Which friend?’
‘Never mind,’ said Mr Fledgeby, shutting up one eye, ‘any of your friends, all your friends. Are they pretty tolerable?’
Somewhat confounded, Miss Wren parried the pleasantry, and sat down in a corner behind the door, with her basket in her lap. By-and-by, she said, breaking a long and patient silence:
‘I beg your pardon, sir, but I am used to find Mr Riah at this time, and so I generally come at this time. I only want to buy my poor little two shillings’ worth of waste. Perhaps you’ll kindly let me have it, and I’ll trot off to my work.’
‘I let you have it?’ said Fledgeby, turning his head towards her; for he had been sitting blinking at the light, and feeling his cheek. ‘Why, you don’t really suppose that I have anything to do with the place, or the business; do you?’
‘Suppose?’ exclaimed Miss Wren. ‘He said, that day, you were the master!’
‘The old cock in black said? Riah said? Why, he’d say anything.’
‘Well; but you said so too,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘Or at least you took on like the master, and didn’t contradict him.’
‘One of his dodges,’ said Mr Fledgeby, with a cool and contemptuous shrug. ‘He’s made of dodges. He said to me, “Come up to the top of the house, sir, and I’ll show you a handsome girl. But I shall call you the master.” So I went up to the top of the house and he showed me the handsome girl (very well worth looking at she was), and I was called the master. I don’t know why. I dare say he don’t. He loves a dodge for its own sake; being,’ added Mr Fledgeby, after casting about for an expressive phrase, ‘the dodgerest of all the dodgers.’
‘Oh my head!’ cried the dolls’ dressmaker, holding it with both her hands, as if it were cracking. ‘You can’t mean what you say.’
‘I can, my little woman, retorted Fledgeby, ‘and I do, I assure you.’
This repudiation was not only an act of deliberate policy on Fledgeby’s part, in case of his being surprised by any other caller, but was also a retort upon Miss Wren for her over-sharpness, and a pleasant instance of his humour as regarded the old Jew. ‘He has got a bad name as an old Jew, and he is paid for the use of it, and I’ll have my money’s worth out of him.’ This was Fledgeby’s habitual reflection in the way of business, and it was sharpened just now by the old man’s presuming to have a secret from him: though of the secret itself, as annoying somebody else whom he disliked, he by no means disapproved.
Miss Wren with a fallen countenance sat behind the door looking thoughtfully at the ground, and the long and patient silence had again set in for some time, when the expression of Mr Fledgeby’s face betokened that through the upper portion of the door, which was of glass, he saw some one faltering on the brink of the counting-house. Presently there was a rustle and a tap, and then some more rustling and another tap. Fledgeby taking no notice, the door was at length softly opened, and the dried face of a mild little elderly gentleman looked in.
‘Mr Riah?’ said this visitor, very politely.
‘I am waiting for him, sir,’ returned Mr Fledgeby. ‘He went out and left me here. I expect him back every minute. Perhaps you had better take a chair.’
The gentleman took a chair, and put his hand to his forehead, as if he were in a melancholy frame of mind. Mr Fledgeby eyed him aside, and seemed to relish his attitude.
‘A fine day, sir,’ remarked Fledgeby.
The little dried gentleman was so occupied with his own depressed reflections that he did not notice the remark until the sound of Mr Fledgeby’s voice had died out of the counting-house. Then he started, and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I fear you spoke to me?’
‘I said,’ remarked Fledgeby, a little louder than before, ‘it was a fine day.’
‘I beg your pardon. I beg your pardon. Yes.’
Again the little dried gentleman put his hand to his forehead, and again Mr Fledgeby seemed to enjoy his doing it. When the gentleman changed his attitude with a sigh, Fledgeby spake with a grin.
‘Mr Twemlow, I think?’
The dried gentleman seemed much surprised.
‘Had the pleasure of dining with you at Lammle’s,’ said Fledgeby. ‘Even have the honour of being a connexion of yours. An unexpected sort of place this to meet in; but one never knows, when one gets into the City, what people one may knock up against. I hope you have your health, and are enjoying yourself.’
There might have been a touch of impertinence in the last words; on the other hand, it might have been but the native grace of Mr Fledgeby’s manner. Mr Fledgeby sat on a stool with a foot on the rail of another stool, and his hat on. Mr Twemlow had uncovered on looking in at the door, and remained so. Now the conscientious Twemlow, knowing what he had done to thwart the gracious Fledgeby, was particularly disconcerted by this encounter. He was as ill at ease as a gentleman well could be. He felt himself bound to conduct himself stiffly towards Fledgeby, and he made him a distant bow. Fledgeby made his small eyes smaller in taking special note of his manner. The dolls’ dressmaker sat in her corner behind the door, with her eyes on the ground and her hands folded on her basket, holding her crutch-stick between them, and appearing to take no heed of anything.
‘He’s a long time,’ muttered Mr Fledgeby, looking at his watch. ‘What time may you make it, Mr Twemlow?’
Mr Twemlow made it ten minutes past twelve, sir.
‘As near as a toucher,’ assented Fledgeby. ‘I hope, Mr Twemlow, your business here may be of a more agreeable character than mine.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mr Twemlow.
Fledgeby again made his small eyes smaller, as he glanced with great complacency at Twemlow, who was timorously tapping the table with a folded letter.
‘What I know of Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby, with a very disparaging utterance of his name, ‘leads me to believe that this is about the shop for disagreeable business. I have always found him the bitingest and tightest screw in London.’
Mr Twemlow acknowledged the remark with a little distant bow. It evidently made him nervous.
‘So much so,’ pursued Fledgeby, ‘that if it wasn’t to be true to a friend, nobody should catch me waiting here a single minute. But if you have friends in adversity, stand by them. That’s what I say and act up to.’
The equitable Twemlow felt that this sentiment, irrespective of the utterer, demanded his cordial assent. ‘You are very right, sir,’ he rejoined with spirit. ‘You indicate the generous and manly course.’
‘Glad to have your approbation,’ returned Fledgeby. ‘It’s a coincidence, Mr Twemlow;’ here he descended from his perch, and sauntered towards him; ‘that the friends I am standing by to-day are the friends at whose house I met you! The Lammles. She’s a very taking and agreeable woman?’
Conscience smote the gentle Twemlow pale. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She is.’
‘And when she appealed to me this morning, to come and try what I could do to pacify their creditor, this Mr Riah—that I certainly have gained some little influence with in transacting business for another friend, but nothing like so much as she supposes—and when a woman like that spoke to me as her dearest Mr Fledgeby, and shed tears—why what could I do, you know?’
Twemlow gasped ‘Nothing but come.’
‘Nothing but come. And so I came. But why,’ said Fledgeby, putting his hands in his pockets and counterfeiting deep meditation, ‘why Riah should have started up, when I told him that the Lammles entreated him to hold over a Bill of Sale he has on all their effects; and why he should have cut out, saying he would be back directly; and why he should have left me here alone so long; I cannot understand.’
The chivalrous Twemlow, Knight of the Simple Heart, was not in a condition to offer any suggestion. He was too penitent, too remorseful. For the first time in his life he had done an underhanded action, and he had done wrong. He had secretly interposed against this confiding young man, for no better real reason than because the young man’s ways were not his ways.
But, the confiding young man proceeded to heap coals of fire on his sensitive head.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr Twemlow; you see I am acquainted with the nature of the affairs that are transacted here. Is there anything I can do for you here? You have always been brought up as a gentleman, and never as a man of business;’ another touch of possible impertinence in this place; ‘and perhaps you are but a poor man of business. What else is to be expected!’
‘I am even a poorer man of business than I am a man, sir,’ returned Twemlow, ‘and I could hardly express my deficiency in a stronger way. I really do not so much as clearly understand my position in the matter on which I am brought here. But there are reasons which make me very delicate of accepting your assistance. I am greatly, greatly, disinclined to profit by it. I don’t deserve it.’
Good childish creature! Condemned to a passage through the world by such narrow little dimly-lighted ways, and picking up so few specks or spots on the road!
‘Perhaps,’ said Fledgeby, ‘you may be a little proud of entering on the topic,—having been brought up as a gentleman.’
‘It’s not that, sir,’ returned Twemlow, ‘it’s not that. I hope I distinguish between true pride and false pride.’
‘I have no pride at all, myself,’ said Fledgeby, ‘and perhaps I don’t cut things so fine as to know one from t’other. But I know this is a place where even a man of business needs his wits about him; and if mine can be of any use to you here, you’re welcome to them.’
‘You are very good,’ said Twemlow, faltering. ‘But I am most unwilling—’
‘I don’t, you know,’ proceeded Fledgeby with an ill-favoured glance, ‘entertain the vanity of supposing that my wits could be of any use to you in society, but they might be here. You cultivate society and society cultivates you, but Mr Riah’s not society. In society, Mr Riah is kept dark; eh, Mr Twemlow?’
Twemlow, much disturbed, and with his hand fluttering about his forehead, replied: ‘Quite true.’
The confiding young man besought him to state his case. The innocent Twemlow, expecting Fledgeby to be astounded by what he should unfold, and not for an instant conceiving the possibility of its happening every day, but treating of it as a terrible phenomenon occurring in the course of ages, related how that he had had a deceased friend, a married civil officer with a family, who had wanted money for change of place or change of post, and how he, Twemlow, had ‘given him his name,’ with the usual, but in the eyes of Twemlow almost incredible result that he had been left to repay what he had never had. How, in the course of years, he had reduced the principal by trifling sums, ‘having,’ said Twemlow, ‘always to observe great economy, being in the enjoyment of a fixed income limited in extent, and that depending on the munificence of a certain nobleman,’ and had always pinched the full interest out of himself with punctual pinches. How he had come, in course of time, to look upon this one only debt of his life as a regular quarterly drawback, and no worse, when ‘his name’ had some way fallen into the possession of Mr Riah, who had sent him notice to redeem it by paying up in full, in one plump sum, or take tremendous consequences. This, with hazy remembrances of how he had been carried to some office to ‘confess judgment’ (as he recollected the phrase), and how he had been carried to another office where his life was assured for somebody not wholly unconnected with the sherry trade whom he remembered by the remarkable circumstance that he had a Straduarius violin to dispose of, and also a Madonna, formed the sum and substance of Mr Twemlow’s narrative. Through which stalked the shadow of the awful Snigsworth, eyed afar off by money-lenders as Security in the Mist, and menacing Twemlow with his baronial truncheon.
To all, Mr Fledgeby listened with the modest gravity becoming a confiding young man who knew it all beforehand, and, when it was finished, seriously shook his head. ‘I don’t like, Mr Twemlow,’ said Fledgeby, ‘I don’t like Riah’s calling in the principal. If he’s determined to call it in, it must come.’
‘But supposing, sir,’ said Twemlow, downcast, ‘that it can’t come?’
‘Then,’ retorted Fledgeby, ‘you must go, you know.’
‘Where?’ asked Twemlow, faintly.
‘To prison,’ returned Fledgeby. Whereat Mr Twemlow leaned his innocent head upon his hand, and moaned a little moan of distress and disgrace.
‘However,’ said Fledgeby, appearing to pluck up his spirits, ‘we’ll hope it’s not so bad as that comes to. If you’ll allow me, I’ll mention to Mr Riah when he comes in, who you are, and I’ll tell him you’re my friend, and I’ll say my say for you, instead of your saying it for yourself; I may be able to do it in a more business-like way. You won’t consider it a liberty?’
‘I thank you again and again, sir,’ said Twemlow. ‘I am strong, strongly, disinclined to avail myself of your generosity, though my helplessness yields. For I cannot but feel that I—to put it in the mildest form of speech—that I have done nothing to deserve it.’
‘Where can he be?’ muttered Fledgeby, referring to his watch again. ‘What can he have gone out for? Did you ever see him, Mr Twemlow?’
‘Never.’
‘He is a thorough Jew to look at, but he is a more thorough Jew to deal with. He’s worst when he’s quiet. If he’s quiet, I shall take it as a very bad sign. Keep your eye upon him when he comes in, and, if he’s quiet, don’t be hopeful. Here he is!—He looks quiet.’
With these words, which had the effect of causing the harmless Twemlow painful agitation, Mr Fledgeby withdrew to his former post, and the old man entered the counting-house.
‘Why, Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby, ‘I thought you were lost!’
The old man, glancing at the stranger, stood stock-still. He perceived that his master was leading up to the orders he was to take, and he waited to understand them.
‘I really thought,’ repeated Fledgeby slowly, ‘that you were lost, Mr Riah. Why, now I look at you—but no, you can’t have done it; no, you can’t have done it!’
Hat in hand, the old man lifted his head, and looked distressfully at Fledgeby as seeking to know what new moral burden he was to bear.
‘You can’t have rushed out to get the start of everybody else, and put in that bill of sale at Lammle’s?’ said Fledgeby. ‘Say you haven’t, Mr Riah.’
‘Sir, I have,’ replied the old man in a low voice.
‘Oh my eye!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘Tut, tut, tut! Dear, dear, dear! Well! I knew you were a hard customer, Mr Riah, but I never thought you were as hard as that.’
‘Sir,’ said the old man, with great uneasiness, ‘I do as I am directed. I am not the principal here. I am but the agent of a superior, and I have no choice, no power.’
‘Don’t say so,’ retorted Fledgeby, secretly exultant as the old man stretched out his hands, with a shrinking action of defending himself against the sharp construction of the two observers. ‘Don’t play the tune of the trade, Mr Riah. You’ve a right to get in your debts, if you’re determined to do it, but don’t pretend what every one in your line regularly pretends. At least, don’t do it to me. Why should you, Mr Riah? You know I know all about you.’
The old man clasped the skirt of his long coat with his disengaged hand, and directed a wistful look at Fledgeby.
‘And don’t,’ said Fledgeby, ‘don’t, I entreat you as a favour, Mr Riah, be so devilish meek, for I know what’ll follow if you are. Look here, Mr Riah. This gentleman is Mr Twemlow.’
The Jew turned to him and bowed. That poor lamb bowed in return; polite, and terrified.
‘I have made such a failure,’ proceeded Fledgeby, ‘in trying to do anything with you for my friend Lammle, that I’ve hardly a hope of doing anything with you for my friend (and connexion indeed) Mr Twemlow. But I do think that if you would do a favour for anybody, you would for me, and I won’t fail for want of trying, and I’ve passed my promise to Mr Twemlow besides. Now, Mr Riah, here is Mr Twemlow. Always good for his interest, always coming up to time, always paying his little way. Now, why should you press Mr Twemlow? You can’t have any spite against Mr Twemlow! Why not be easy with Mr Twemlow?’
The old man looked into Fledgeby’s little eyes for any sign of leave to be easy with Mr Twemlow; but there was no sign in them.
‘Mr Twemlow is no connexion of yours, Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby; ‘you can’t want to be even with him for having through life gone in for a gentleman and hung on to his Family. If Mr Twemlow has a contempt for business, what can it matter to you?’
‘But pardon me,’ interposed the gentle victim, ‘I have not. I should consider it presumption.’
‘There, Mr Riah!’ said Fledgeby, ‘isn’t that handsomely said? Come! Make terms with me for Mr Twemlow.’
The old man looked again for any sign of permission to spare the poor little gentleman. No. Mr Fledgeby meant him to be racked.
‘I am very sorry, Mr Twemlow,’ said Riah. ‘I have my instructions. I am invested with no authority for diverging from them. The money must be paid.’
‘In full and slap down, do you mean, Mr Riah?’ asked Fledgeby, to make things quite explicit.
‘In full, sir, and at once,’ was Riah’s answer.
Mr Fledgeby shook his head deploringly at Twemlow, and mutely expressed in reference to the venerable figure standing before him with eyes upon the ground: ‘What a Monster of an Israelite this is!’
‘Mr Riah,’ said Fledgeby.
The old man lifted up his eyes once more to the little eyes in Mr Fledgeby’s head, with some reviving hope that the sign might be coming yet.
‘Mr Riah, it’s of no use my holding back the fact. There’s a certain great party in the background in Mr Twemlow’s case, and you know it.’
‘I know it,’ the old man admitted.
‘Now, I’ll put it as a plain point of business, Mr Riah. Are you fully determined (as a plain point of business) either to have that said great party’s security, or that said great party’s money?’
‘Fully determined,’ answered Riah, as he read his master’s face, and learnt the book.
‘Not at all caring for, and indeed as it seems to me rather enjoying,’ said Fledgeby, with peculiar unction, ‘the precious kick-up and row that will come off between Mr Twemlow and the said great party?’
This required no answer, and received none. Poor Mr Twemlow, who had betrayed the keenest mental terrors since his noble kinsman loomed in the perspective, rose with a sigh to take his departure. ‘I thank you very much, sir,’ he said, offering Fledgeby his feverish hand. ‘You have done me an unmerited service. Thank you, thank you!’
‘Don’t mention it,’ answered Fledgeby. ‘It’s a failure so far, but I’ll stay behind, and take another touch at Mr Riah.’
‘Do not deceive yourself Mr Twemlow,’ said the Jew, then addressing him directly for the first time. ‘There is no hope for you. You must expect no leniency here. You must pay in full, and you cannot pay too promptly, or you will be put to heavy charges. Trust nothing to me, sir. Money, money, money.’ When he had said these words in an emphatic manner, he acknowledged Mr Twemlow’s still polite motion of his head, and that amiable little worthy took his departure in the lowest spirits.
Fascination Fledgeby was in such a merry vein when the counting-house was cleared of him, that he had nothing for it but to go to the window, and lean his arms on the frame of the blind, and have his silent laugh out, with his back to his subordinate. When he turned round again with a composed countenance, his subordinate still stood in the same place, and the dolls’ dressmaker sat behind the door with a look of horror.
‘Halloa!’ cried Mr Fledgeby, ‘you’re forgetting this young lady, Mr Riah, and she has been waiting long enough too. Sell her her waste, please, and give her good measure if you can make up your mind to do the liberal thing for once.’
He looked on for a time, as the Jew filled her little basket with such scraps as she was used to buy; but, his merry vein coming on again, he was obliged to turn round to the window once more, and lean his arms on the blind.
‘There, my Cinderella dear,’ said the old man in a whisper, and with a worn-out look, ‘the basket’s full now. Bless you! And get you gone!’
‘Don’t call me your Cinderella dear,’ returned Miss Wren. ‘O you cruel godmother!’
She shook that emphatic little forefinger of hers in his face at parting, as earnestly and reproachfully as she had ever shaken it at her grim old child at home.
‘You are not the godmother at all!’ said she. ‘You are the Wolf in the Forest, the wicked Wolf! And if ever my dear Lizzie is sold and betrayed, I shall know who sold and betrayed her!’
Having assisted at a few more expositions of the lives of Misers, Mr Venus became almost indispensable to the evenings at the Bower. The circumstance of having another listener to the wonders unfolded by Wegg, or, as it were, another calculator to cast up the guineas found in teapots, chimneys, racks and mangers, and other such banks of deposit, seemed greatly to heighten Mr Boffin’s enjoyment; while Silas Wegg, for his part, though of a jealous temperament which might under ordinary circumstances have resented the anatomist’s getting into favour, was so very anxious to keep his eye on that gentleman—lest, being too much left to himself, he should be tempted to play any tricks with the precious document in his keeping—that he never lost an opportunity of commending him to Mr Boffin’s notice as a third party whose company was much to be desired. Another friendly demonstration towards him Mr Wegg now regularly gratified. After each sitting was over, and the patron had departed, Mr Wegg invariably saw Mr Venus home. To be sure, he as invariably requested to be refreshed with a sight of the paper in which he was a joint proprietor; but he never failed to remark that it was the great pleasure he derived from Mr Venus’s improving society which had insensibly lured him round to Clerkenwell again, and that, finding himself once more attracted to the spot by the social powers of Mr V., he would beg leave to go through that little incidental procedure, as a matter of form. ‘For well I know, sir,’ Mr Wegg would add, ‘that a man of your delicate mind would wish to be checked off whenever the opportunity arises, and it is not for me to baulk your feelings.’
A certain rustiness in Mr Venus, which never became so lubricated by the oil of Mr Wegg but that he turned under the screw in a creaking and stiff manner, was very noticeable at about this period. While assisting at the literary evenings, he even went so far, on two or three occasions, as to correct Mr Wegg when he grossly mispronounced a word, or made nonsense of a passage; insomuch that Mr Wegg took to surveying his course in the day, and to making arrangements for getting round rocks at night instead of running straight upon them. Of the slightest anatomical reference he became particularly shy, and, if he saw a bone ahead, would go any distance out of his way rather than mention it by name.
The adverse destinies ordained that one evening Mr Wegg’s labouring bark became beset by polysyllables, and embarrassed among a perfect archipelago of hard words. It being necessary to take soundings every minute, and to feel the way with the greatest caution, Mr Wegg’s attention was fully employed. Advantage was taken of this dilemma by Mr Venus, to pass a scrap of paper into Mr Boffin’s hand, and lay his finger on his own lip.
When Mr Boffin got home at night he found that the paper contained Mr Venus’s card and these words: ‘Should be glad to be honoured with a call respecting business of your own, about dusk on an early evening.’
The very next evening saw Mr Boffin peeping in at the preserved frogs in Mr Venus’s shop-window, and saw Mr Venus espying Mr Boffin with the readiness of one on the alert, and beckoning that gentleman into his interior. Responding, Mr Boffin was invited to seat himself on the box of human miscellanies before the fire, and did so, looking round the place with admiring eyes. The fire being low and fitful, and the dusk gloomy, the whole stock seemed to be winking and blinking with both eyes, as Mr Venus did. The French gentleman, though he had no eyes, was not at all behind-hand, but appeared, as the flame rose and fell, to open and shut his no eyes, with the regularity of the glass-eyed dogs and ducks and birds. The big-headed babies were equally obliging in lending their grotesque aid to the general effect.
‘You see, Mr Venus, I’ve lost no time,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘Here I am.’
‘Here you are, sir,’ assented Mr Venus.
‘I don’t like secrecy,’ pursued Mr Boffin—‘at least, not in a general way I don’t—but I dare say you’ll show me good reason for being secret so far.’
‘I think I shall, sir,’ returned Venus.
‘Good,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘You don’t expect Wegg, I take it for granted?’
‘No, sir. I expect no one but the present company.’
Mr Boffin glanced about him, as accepting under that inclusive denomination the French gentleman and the circle in which he didn’t move, and repeated, ‘The present company.’
‘Sir,’ said Mr Venus, ‘before entering upon business, I shall have to ask you for your word and honour that we are in confidence.’
‘Let’s wait a bit and understand what the expression means,’ answered Mr Boffin. ‘In confidence for how long? In confidence for ever and a day?’
‘I take your hint, sir,’ said Venus; ‘you think you might consider the business, when you came to know it, to be of a nature incompatible with confidence on your part?’
‘I might,’ said Mr Boffin with a cautious look.
‘True, sir. Well, sir,’ observed Venus, after clutching at his dusty hair, to brighten his ideas, ‘let us put it another way. I open the business with you, relying upon your honour not to do anything in it, and not to mention me in it, without my knowledge.’
‘That sounds fair,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘I agree to that.’
‘I have your word and honour, sir?’
‘My good fellow,’ retorted Mr Boffin, ‘you have my word; and how you can have that, without my honour too, I don’t know. I’ve sorted a lot of dust in my time, but I never knew the two things go into separate heaps.’
This remark seemed rather to abash Mr Venus. He hesitated, and said, ‘Very true, sir;’ and again, ‘Very true, sir,’ before resuming the thread of his discourse.
‘Mr Boffin, if I confess to you that I fell into a proposal of which you were the subject, and of which you oughtn’t to have been the subject, you will allow me to mention, and will please take into favourable consideration, that I was in a crushed state of mind at the time.’
The Golden Dustman, with his hands folded on the top of his stout stick, with his chin resting upon them, and with something leering and whimsical in his eyes, gave a nod, and said, ‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘That proposal, sir, was a conspiring breach of your confidence, to such an extent, that I ought at once to have made it known to you. But I didn’t, Mr Boffin, and I fell into it.’
Without moving eye or finger, Mr Boffin gave another nod, and placidly repeated, ‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘Not that I was ever hearty in it, sir,’ the penitent anatomist went on, ‘or that I ever viewed myself with anything but reproach for having turned out of the paths of science into the paths of—’ he was going to say ‘villany,’ but, unwilling to press too hard upon himself, substituted with great emphasis—‘Weggery.’
Placid and whimsical of look as ever, Mr Boffin answered:
‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘And now, sir,’ said Venus, ‘having prepared your mind in the rough, I will articulate the details.’ With which brief professional exordium, he entered on the history of the friendly move, and truly recounted it. One might have thought that it would have extracted some show of surprise or anger, or other emotion, from Mr Boffin, but it extracted nothing beyond his former comment:
‘Quite so, Venus.’
‘I have astonished you, sir, I believe?’ said Mr Venus, pausing dubiously.
Mr Boffin simply answered as aforesaid: ‘Quite so, Venus.’
By this time the astonishment was all on the other side. It did not, however, so continue. For, when Venus passed to Wegg’s discovery, and from that to their having both seen Mr Boffin dig up the Dutch bottle, that gentleman changed colour, changed his attitude, became extremely restless, and ended (when Venus ended) by being in a state of manifest anxiety, trepidation, and confusion.
‘Now, sir,’ said Venus, finishing off; ‘you best know what was in that Dutch bottle, and why you dug it up, and took it away. I don’t pretend to know anything more about it than I saw. All I know is this: I am proud of my calling after all (though it has been attended by one dreadful drawback which has told upon my heart, and almost equally upon my skeleton), and I mean to live by my calling. Putting the same meaning into other words, I do not mean to turn a single dishonest penny by this affair. As the best amends I can make you for having ever gone into it, I make known to you, as a warning, what Wegg has found out. My opinion is, that Wegg is not to be silenced at a modest price, and I build that opinion on his beginning to dispose of your property the moment he knew his power. Whether it’s worth your while to silence him at any price, you will decide for yourself, and take your measures accordingly. As far as I am concerned, I have no price. If I am ever called upon for the truth, I tell it, but I want to do no more than I have now done and ended.’
‘Thank’ee, Venus!’ said Mr Boffin, with a hearty grip of his hand; ‘thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus!’ And then walked up and down the little shop in great agitation. ‘But look here, Venus,’ he by-and-by resumed, nervously sitting down again; ‘if I have to buy Wegg up, I shan’t buy him any cheaper for your being out of it. Instead of his having half the money—it was to have been half, I suppose? Share and share alike?’
‘It was to have been half, sir,’ answered Venus.
‘Instead of that, he’ll now have all. I shall pay the same, if not more. For you tell me he’s an unconscionable dog, a ravenous rascal.’
‘He is,’ said Venus.
‘Don’t you think, Venus,’ insinuated Mr Boffin, after looking at the fire for a while—‘don’t you feel as if—you might like to pretend to be in it till Wegg was bought up, and then ease your mind by handing over to me what you had made believe to pocket?’
‘No I don’t, sir,’ returned Venus, very positively.
‘Not to make amends?’ insinuated Mr Boffin.
‘No, sir. It seems to me, after maturely thinking it over, that the best amends for having got out of the square is to get back into the square.’
‘Humph!’ mused Mr Boffin. ‘When you say the square, you mean—’
‘I mean,’ said Venus, stoutly and shortly, ‘the right.’
‘It appears to me,’ said Mr Boffin, grumbling over the fire in an injured manner, ‘that the right is with me, if it’s anywhere. I have much more right to the old man’s money than the Crown can ever have. What was the Crown to him except the King’s Taxes? Whereas, me and my wife, we was all in all to him.’
Mr Venus, with his head upon his hands, rendered melancholy by the contemplation of Mr Boffin’s avarice, only murmured to steep himself in the luxury of that frame of mind: ‘She did not wish so to regard herself, nor yet to be so regarded.’
‘And how am I to live,’ asked Mr Boffin, piteously, ‘if I’m to be going buying fellows up out of the little that I’ve got? And how am I to set about it? When am I to get my money ready? When am I to make a bid? You haven’t told me when he threatens to drop down upon me.’
Venus explained under what conditions, and with what views, the dropping down upon Mr Boffin was held over until the Mounds should be cleared away. Mr Boffin listened attentively. ‘I suppose,’ said he, with a gleam of hope, ‘there’s no doubt about the genuineness and date of this confounded will?’
‘None whatever,’ said Mr Venus.
‘Where might it be deposited at present?’ asked Mr Boffin, in a wheedling tone.
‘It’s in my possession, sir.’
‘Is it?’ he cried, with great eagerness. ‘Now, for any liberal sum of money that could be agreed upon, Venus, would you put it in the fire?’
‘No, sir, I wouldn’t,’ interrupted Mr Venus.
‘Nor pass it over to me?’
‘That would be the same thing. No, sir,’ said Mr Venus.
The Golden Dustman seemed about to pursue these questions, when a stumping noise was heard outside, coming towards the door. ‘Hush! here’s Wegg!’ said Venus. ‘Get behind the young alligator in the corner, Mr Boffin, and judge him for yourself. I won’t light a candle till he’s gone; there’ll only be the glow of the fire; Wegg’s well acquainted with the alligator, and he won’t take particular notice of him. Draw your legs in, Mr Boffin, at present I see a pair of shoes at the end of his tail. Get your head well behind his smile, Mr Boffin, and you’ll lie comfortable there; you’ll find plenty of room behind his smile. He’s a little dusty, but he’s very like you in tone. Are you right, sir?’
Mr Boffin had but whispered an affirmative response, when Wegg came stumping in. ‘Partner,’ said that gentleman in a sprightly manner, ‘how’s yourself?’
‘Tolerable,’ returned Mr Venus. ‘Not much to boast of.’
‘In-deed!’ said Wegg: ‘sorry, partner, that you’re not picking up faster, but your soul’s too large for your body, sir; that’s where it is. And how’s our stock in trade, partner? Safe bind, safe find, partner? Is that about it?’
‘Do you wish to see it?’ asked Venus.
‘If you please, partner,’ said Wegg, rubbing his hands. ‘I wish to see it jintly with yourself. Or, in similar words to some that was set to music some time back:
“I wish you to see it with your eyes,
And I will pledge with mine.”’
Turning his back and turning a key, Mr Venus produced the document, holding on by his usual corner. Mr Wegg, holding on by the opposite corner, sat down on the seat so lately vacated by Mr Boffin, and looked it over. ‘All right, sir,’ he slowly and unwillingly admitted, in his reluctance to loose his hold, ‘all right!’ And greedily watched his partner as he turned his back again, and turned his key again.
‘There’s nothing new, I suppose?’ said Venus, resuming his low chair behind the counter.
‘Yes there is, sir,’ replied Wegg; ‘there was something new this morning. That foxey old grasper and griper—’
‘Mr Boffin?’ inquired Venus, with a glance towards the alligator’s yard or two of smile.
‘Mister be blowed!’ cried Wegg, yielding to his honest indignation. ‘Boffin. Dusty Boffin. That foxey old grunter and grinder, sir, turns into the yard this morning, to meddle with our property, a menial tool of his own, a young man by the name of Sloppy. Ecod, when I say to him, “What do you want here, young man? This is a private yard,” he pulls out a paper from Boffin’s other blackguard, the one I was passed over for. “This is to authorize Sloppy to overlook the carting and to watch the work.” That’s pretty strong, I think, Mr Venus?’
‘Remember he doesn’t know yet of our claim on the property,’ suggested Venus.
‘Then he must have a hint of it,’ said Wegg, ‘and a strong one that’ll jog his terrors a bit. Give him an inch, and he’ll take an ell. Let him alone this time, and what’ll he do with our property next? I tell you what, Mr Venus; it comes to this; I must be overbearing with Boffin, or I shall fly into several pieces. I can’t contain myself when I look at him. Every time I see him putting his hand in his pocket, I see him putting it into my pocket. Every time I hear him jingling his money, I hear him taking liberties with my money. Flesh and blood can’t bear it. No,’ said Mr Wegg, greatly exasperated, ‘and I’ll go further. A wooden leg can’t bear it!’
‘But, Mr Wegg,’ urged Venus, ‘it was your own idea that he should not be exploded upon, till the Mounds were carted away.’
‘But it was likewise my idea, Mr Venus,’ retorted Wegg, ‘that if he came sneaking and sniffing about the property, he should be threatened, given to understand that he has no right to it, and be made our slave. Wasn’t that my idea, Mr Venus?’
‘It certainly was, Mr Wegg.’
‘It certainly was, as you say, partner,’ assented Wegg, put into a better humour by the ready admission. ‘Very well. I consider his planting one of his menial tools in the yard, an act of sneaking and sniffing. And his nose shall be put to the grindstone for it.’
‘It was not your fault, Mr Wegg, I must admit,’ said Venus, ‘that he got off with the Dutch bottle that night.’
‘As you handsomely say again, partner! No, it was not my fault. I’d have had that bottle out of him. Was it to be borne that he should come, like a thief in the dark, digging among stuff that was far more ours than his (seeing that we could deprive him of every grain of it, if he didn’t buy us at our own figure), and carrying off treasure from its bowels? No, it was not to be borne. And for that, too, his nose shall be put to the grindstone.’
‘How do you propose to do it, Mr Wegg?’
‘To put his nose to the grindstone? I propose,’ returned that estimable man, ‘to insult him openly. And, if looking into this eye of mine, he dares to offer a word in answer, to retort upon him before he can take his breath, “Add another word to that, you dusty old dog, and you’re a beggar.”’
‘Suppose he says nothing, Mr Wegg?’
‘Then,’ replied Wegg, ‘we shall have come to an understanding with very little trouble, and I’ll break him and drive him, Mr Venus. I’ll put him in harness, and I’ll bear him up tight, and I’ll break him and drive him. The harder the old Dust is driven, sir, the higher he’ll pay. And I mean to be paid high, Mr Venus, I promise you.’
‘You speak quite revengefully, Mr Wegg.’
‘Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled, night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over, set up and knocked over, by whatever balls—or books—he chose to bring against me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!’
Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst that Mr Venus looked as if he doubted that.
‘What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace, by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,’ said Wegg, falling back upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the counter, ‘that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I was selling halfpenny ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for him to walk over? No!’
There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman under the influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many thousand slanderers and traitors array themselves against the fortunate, on premises exactly answering to those of Mr Wegg. One might have fancied that the big-headed babies were toppling over with their hydrocephalic attempts to reckon up the children of men who transform their benefactors into their injurers by the same process. The yard or two of smile on the part of the alligator might have been invested with the meaning, ‘All about this was quite familiar knowledge down in the depths of the slime, ages ago.’
‘But,’ said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the foregoing effect, ‘your speaking countenance remarks, Mr Venus, that I’m duller and savager than usual. Perhaps I have allowed myself to brood too much. Begone, dull Care! ‘Tis gone, sir. I’ve looked in upon you, and empire resumes her sway. For, as the song says—subject to your correction, sir—
“When the heart of a man is depressed with cares,
The mist is dispelled if Venus appears.
Like the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly,
Raises our spirits and charms our ears.”
Good-night, sir.’
‘I shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr Wegg, before long,’ remarked Venus, ‘respecting my share in the project we’ve been speaking of.’
‘My time, sir,’ returned Wegg, ‘is yours. In the meanwhile let it be fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin’s nose to it. His nose once brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr Venus, till the sparks flies out in showers.’
With this agreeable promise Wegg stumped out, and shut the shop-door after him. ‘Wait till I light a candle, Mr Boffin,’ said Venus, ‘and you’ll come out more comfortable.’ So, he lighting a candle and holding it up at arm’s length, Mr Boffin disengaged himself from behind the alligator’s smile, with an expression of countenance so very downcast that it not only appeared as if the alligator had the whole of the joke to himself, but further as if it had been conceived and executed at Mr Boffin’s expense.
‘That’s a treacherous fellow,’ said Mr Boffin, dusting his arms and legs as he came forth, the alligator having been but musty company. ‘That’s a dreadful fellow.’
‘The alligator, sir?’ said Venus.
‘No, Venus, no. The Serpent.’
‘You’ll have the goodness to notice, Mr Boffin,’ remarked Venus, ‘that I said nothing to him about my going out of the affair altogether, because I didn’t wish to take you anyways by surprise. But I can’t be too soon out of it for my satisfaction, Mr Boffin, and I now put it to you when it will suit your views for me to retire?’
‘Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus; but I don’t know what to say,’ returned Mr Boffin, ‘I don’t know what to do. He’ll drop down on me any way. He seems fully determined to drop down; don’t he?’
Mr Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.
‘You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,’ said Mr Boffin; ‘you might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off him. Don’t you feel as if you could make a show of remaining in it, Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?’
Venus naturally inquired how long Mr Boffin thought it might take him to turn himself round?
‘I am sure I don’t know,’ was the answer, given quite at a loss. ‘Everything is so at sixes and sevens. If I had never come into the property, I shouldn’t have minded. But being in it, it would be very trying to be turned out; now, don’t you acknowledge that it would, Venus?’
Mr Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr Boffin to arrive at his own conclusions on that delicate question.
‘I am sure I don’t know what to do,’ said Mr Boffin. ‘If I ask advice of any one else, it’s only letting in another person to be bought out, and then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have given up the property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy him out. Sooner or later, of course, he’d drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.’
Mr Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr Boffin jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.
‘After all, you haven’t said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?’
Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed it to him, it was his intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the declaration that he himself would have nothing to say to it, or do with it, and that Wegg must act as he chose, and take the consequences.
‘And then he drops down with his whole weight upon me!’ cried Mr Boffin, ruefully. ‘I’d sooner be dropped upon by you than by him, or even by you jintly, than by him alone!’
Mr Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to betake himself to the paths of science, and to walk in the same all the days of his life; not dropping down upon his fellow-creatures until they were deceased, and then only to articulate them to the best of his humble ability.
‘How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of remaining in it?’ asked Mr Boffin, retiring on his other idea. ‘Could you be got to do so, till the Mounds are gone?’
No. That would protract the mental uneasiness of Mr Venus too long, he said.
‘Not if I was to show you reason now?’ demanded Mr Boffin; ‘not if I was to show you good and sufficient reason?’
If by good and sufficient reason Mr Boffin meant honest and unimpeachable reason, that might weigh with Mr Venus against his personal wishes and convenience. But he must add that he saw no opening to the possibility of such reason being shown him.
‘Come and see me, Venus,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘at my house.’
‘Is the reason there, sir?’ asked Mr Venus, with an incredulous smile and blink.
‘It may be, or may not be,’ said Mr Boffin, ‘just as you view it. But in the meantime don’t go out of the matter. Look here. Do this. Give me your word that you won’t take any steps with Wegg, without my knowledge, just as I have given you my word that I won’t without yours.’
‘Done, Mr Boffin!’ said Venus, after brief consideration.
‘Thank’ee, Venus, thank’ee, Venus! Done!’
‘When shall I come to see you, Mr Boffin.’
‘When you like. The sooner the better. I must be going now. Good-night, Venus.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
‘And good-night to the rest of the present company,’ said Mr Boffin, glancing round the shop. ‘They make a queer show, Venus, and I should like to be better acquainted with them some day. Good-night, Venus, good-night! Thankee, Venus, thankee, Venus!’ With that he jogged out into the street, and jogged upon his homeward way.
‘Now, I wonder,’ he meditated as he went along, nursing his stick, ‘whether it can be, that Venus is setting himself to get the better of Wegg? Whether it can be, that he means, when I have bought Wegg out, to have me all to himself and to pick me clean to the bones!’
It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets. More than once or twice, more than twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head. Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit with intense satisfaction.
He was within a few streets of his own house, when a little private carriage, coming in the contrary direction, passed him, turned round, and passed him again. It was a little carriage of eccentric movement, for again he heard it stop behind him and turn round, and again he saw it pass him. Then it stopped, and then went on, out of sight. But, not far out of sight, for, when he came to the corner of his own street, there it stood again.
There was a lady’s face at the window as he came up with this carriage, and he was passing it when the lady softly called to him by his name.
‘I beg your pardon, Ma’am?’ said Mr Boffin, coming to a stop.
‘It is Mrs Lammle,’ said the lady.
Mr Boffin went up to the window, and hoped Mrs Lammle was well.
‘Not very well, dear Mr Boffin; I have fluttered myself by being—perhaps foolishly—uneasy and anxious. I have been waiting for you some time. Can I speak to you?’
Mr Boffin proposed that Mrs Lammle should drive on to his house, a few hundred yards further.
‘I would rather not, Mr Boffin, unless you particularly wish it. I feel the difficulty and delicacy of the matter so much that I would rather avoid speaking to you at your own home. You must think this very strange?’
Mr Boffin said no, but meant yes.
‘It is because I am so grateful for the good opinion of all my friends, and am so touched by it, that I cannot bear to run the risk of forfeiting it in any case, even in the cause of duty. I have asked my husband (my dear Alfred, Mr Boffin) whether it is the cause of duty, and he has most emphatically said Yes. I wish I had asked him sooner. It would have spared me much distress.’
(‘Can this be more dropping down upon me!’ thought Mr Boffin, quite bewildered.)
‘It was Alfred who sent me to you, Mr Boffin. Alfred said, “Don’t come back, Sophronia, until you have seen Mr Boffin, and told him all. Whatever he may think of it, he ought certainly to know it.” Would you mind coming into the carriage?’
Mr Boffin answered, ‘Not at all,’ and took his seat at Mrs Lammle’s side.
‘Drive slowly anywhere,’ Mrs Lammle called to her coachman, ‘and don’t let the carriage rattle.’
‘It must be more dropping down, I think,’ said Mr Boffin to himself. ‘What next?’
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