Our Mutual Friend
‘Oh! HIM!’ said Riderhood, who had craftily worked the schoolmaster into
this corner, that he might again take note of his face under its evil
possession. ‘I’d know HIM among a thousand.’
‘Did you—’ Bradley tried to ask it quietly; but, do what he might
with his voice, he could not subdue his face;—‘did you ever see them
together?’
(The Rogue had got the clue in both hands now.)
‘I see ’em together, T’otherest Governor, on the very day when Gaffer
was towed ashore.’
Bradley could have hidden a reserved piece of information from the sharp
eyes of a whole inquisitive class, but he could not veil from the eyes
of the ignorant Riderhood the withheld question next in his breast.
‘You shall put it plain if you want it answered,’ thought the Rogue,
doggedly; ‘I ain’t a-going a wolunteering.’
‘Well! was he insolent to her too?’ asked Bradley after a struggle. ‘Or
did he make a show of being kind to her?’
‘He made a show of being most uncommon kind to her,’ said Riderhood. ‘By
George! now I—’
His flying off at a tangent was indisputably natural. Bradley looked at
him for the reason.
‘Now I think of it,’ said Mr Riderhood, evasively, for he was
substituting those words for ‘Now I see you so jealous,’ which was the
phrase really in his mind; ‘P’r’aps he went and took me down wrong, a
purpose, on account o’ being sweet upon her!’
The baseness of confirming him in this suspicion or pretence of one (for
he could not have really entertained it), was a line’s breadth beyond
the mark the schoolmaster had reached. The baseness of communing and
intriguing with the fellow who would have set that stain upon her, and
upon her brother too, was attained. The line’s breadth further, lay
beyond. He made no reply, but walked on with a lowering face.
What he might gain by this acquaintance, he could not work out in his
slow and cumbrous thoughts. The man had an injury against the object of
his hatred, and that was something; though it was less than he supposed,
for there dwelt in the man no such deadly rage and resentment as burned
in his own breast. The man knew her, and might by a fortunate chance see
her, or hear of her; that was something, as enlisting one pair of eyes
and ears the more. The man was a bad man, and willing enough to be in
his pay. That was something, for his own state and purpose were as
bad as bad could be, and he seemed to derive a vague support from the
possession of a congenial instrument, though it might never be used.
Suddenly he stood still, and asked Riderhood point-blank if he knew
where she was? Clearly, he did not know. He asked Riderhood if he would
be willing, in case any intelligence of her, or of Wrayburn as seeking
her or associating with her, should fall in his way, to communicate it
if it were paid for? He would be very willing indeed. He was ‘agin ’em
both,’ he said with an oath, and for why? ’Cause they had both stood
betwixt him and his getting his living by the sweat of his brow.
‘It will not be long then,’ said Bradley Headstone, after some more
discourse to this effect, ‘before we see one another again. Here is the
country road, and here is the day. Both have come upon me by surprise.’
‘But, T’otherest Governor,’ urged Mr Riderhood, ‘I don’t know where to
find you.’
‘It is of no consequence. I know where to find you, and I’ll come to
your Lock.’
‘But, T’otherest Governor,’ urged Mr Riderhood again, ‘no luck never
come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let’s wet it, in a mouth-fill of rum and
milk, T’otherest Governor.’
Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house, haunted by
unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts,
farmers’ men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human
nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after
their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering
about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion-wasted
nightbird with respectable feathers, the worst nightbird of all.
An inspiration of affection for a half-drunken carter going his way led
to Mr Riderhood’s being elevated on a high heap of baskets on a waggon,
and pursuing his journey recumbent on his back with his head on his
bundle. Bradley then turned to retrace his steps, and by-and-by struck
off through little-traversed ways, and by-and-by reached school and
home. Up came the sun to find him washed and brushed, methodically
dressed in decent black coat and waistcoat, decent formal black tie, and
pepper-and-salt pantaloons, with his decent silver watch in its pocket,
and its decent hair-guard round his neck: a scholastic huntsman clad for
the field, with his fresh pack yelping and barking around him.
Yet more really bewitched than the miserable creatures of the
much-lamented times, who accused themselves of impossibilities under a
contagion of horror and the strongly suggestive influences of Torture,
he had been ridden hard by Evil Spirits in the night that was newly
gone. He had been spurred and whipped and heavily sweated. If a record
of the sport had usurped the places of the peaceful texts from Scripture
on the wall, the most advanced of the scholars might have taken fright
and run away from the master.
Chapter 12
MEANING MISCHIEF
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