Our Mutual Friend
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