Our Mutual Friend
are not sorry to see me, Ma dear,’ kissing her; ‘and I hope you are not
sorry to see me, Lavvy,’ kissing her too; ‘and as I notice the lettuce
Ma mentioned, on the table, I’ll make the salad.’
Bella playfully setting herself about the task, Mrs Wilfer’s impressive
countenance followed her with glaring eyes, presenting a combination
of the once popular sign of the Saracen’s Head, with a piece of
Dutch clock-work, and suggesting to an imaginative mind that from the
composition of the salad, her daughter might prudently omit the vinegar.
But no word issued from the majestic matron’s lips. And this was more
terrific to her husband (as perhaps she knew) than any flow of eloquence
with which she could have edified the company.
‘Now, Ma dear,’ said Bella in due course, ‘the salad’s ready, and it’s
past supper-time.’
Mrs Wilfer rose, but remained speechless. ‘George!’ said Miss Lavinia
in her voice of warning, ‘Ma’s chair!’ Mr Sampson flew to the excellent
lady’s back, and followed her up close chair in hand, as she stalked
to the banquet. Arrived at the table, she took her rigid seat, after
favouring Mr Sampson with a glare for himself, which caused the young
gentleman to retire to his place in much confusion.
The cherub not presuming to address so tremendous an object, transacted
her supper through the agency of a third person, as ‘Mutton to your Ma,
Bella, my dear’; and ‘Lavvy, I dare say your Ma would take some lettuce
if you were to put it on her plate.’ Mrs Wilfer’s manner of receiving
those viands was marked by petrified absence of mind; in which state,
likewise, she partook of them, occasionally laying down her knife and
fork, as saying within her own spirit, ‘What is this I am doing?’ and
glaring at one or other of the party, as if in indignant search of
information. A magnetic result of such glaring was, that the person
glared at could not by any means successfully pretend to be ignorant of
the fact: so that a bystander, without beholding Mrs Wilfer at all, must
have known at whom she was glaring, by seeing her refracted from the
countenance of the beglared one.
Miss Lavinia was extremely affable to Mr Sampson on this special
occasion, and took the opportunity of informing her sister why.
‘It was not worth troubling you about, Bella, when you were in a sphere
so far removed from your family as to make it a matter in which you
could be expected to take very little interest,’ said Lavinia with a
toss of her chin; ‘but George Sampson is paying his addresses to me.’
Bella was glad to hear it. Mr Sampson became thoughtfully red, and
felt called upon to encircle Miss Lavinia’s waist with his arm; but,
encountering a large pin in the young lady’s belt, scarified a finger,
uttered a sharp exclamation, and attracted the lightning of Mrs Wilfer’s
glare.
‘George is getting on very well,’ said Miss Lavinia which might not have
been supposed at the moment—‘and I dare say we shall be married, one of
these days. I didn’t care to mention it when you were with your Bof—’
here Miss Lavinia checked herself in a bounce, and added more placidly,
‘when you were with Mr and Mrs Boffin; but now I think it sisterly to
name the circumstance.’
‘Thank you, Lavvy dear. I congratulate you.’
‘Thank you, Bella. The truth is, George and I did discuss whether
I should tell you; but I said to George that you wouldn’t be much
interested in so paltry an affair, and that it was far more likely you
would rather detach yourself from us altogether, than have him added to
the rest of us.’
‘That was a mistake, dear Lavvy,’ said Bella.
‘It turns out to be,’ replied Miss Lavinia; ‘but circumstances have
changed, you know, my dear. George is in a new situation, and his
prospects are very good indeed. I shouldn’t have had the courage to tell
you so yesterday, when you would have thought his prospects poor, and
not worth notice; but I feel quite bold tonight.’
‘When did you begin to feel timid, Lavvy?’ inquired Bella, with a smile.
‘I didn’t say that I ever felt timid, Bella,’ replied the Irrepressible.
‘But perhaps I might have said, if I had not been restrained by delicacy
towards a sister’s feelings, that I have for some time felt independent;
too independent, my dear, to subject myself to have my intended match
(you’ll prick yourself again, George) looked down upon. It is not that I
could have blamed you for looking down upon it, when you were looking up
to a rich and great match, Bella; it is only that I was independent.’
Whether the Irrepressible felt slighted by Bella’s declaration that she
would not quarrel, or whether her spitefulness was evoked by Bella’s
return to the sphere of Mr George Sampson’s courtship, or whether it was
a necessary fillip to her spirits that she should come into collision
with somebody on the present occasion,—anyhow she made a dash at her
stately parent now, with the greatest impetuosity.
‘Ma, pray don’t sit staring at me in that intensely aggravating manner!
If you see a black on my nose, tell me so; if you don’t, leave me
alone.’
‘Do you address Me in those words?’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘Do you presume?’
‘Don’t talk about presuming, Ma, for goodness’ sake. A girl who is old
enough to be engaged, is quite old enough to object to be stared at as
if she was a Clock.’
‘Audacious one!’ said Mrs Wilfer. ‘Your grandmamma, if so addressed by
one of her daughters, at any age, would have insisted on her retiring to
a dark apartment.’
‘My grandmamma,’ returned Lavvy, folding her arms and leaning back
in her chair, ‘wouldn’t have sat staring people out of countenance, I
think.’
‘She would!’ said Mrs Wilfer.
‘Then it’s a pity she didn’t know better,’ said Lavvy. ‘And if my
grandmamma wasn’t in her dotage when she took to insisting on people’s
retiring to dark apartments, she ought to have been. A pretty exhibition
my grandmamma must have made of herself! I wonder whether she ever
insisted on people’s retiring into the ball of St Paul’s; and if she
did, how she got them there!’
‘Silence!’ proclaimed Mrs Wilfer. ‘I command silence!’
‘I have not the slightest intention of being silent, Ma,’ returned
Lavinia coolly, ‘but quite the contrary. I am not going to be eyed as if
I had come from the Boffins, and sit silent under it. I am not going
to have George Sampson eyed as if HE had come from the Boffins, and sit
silent under it. If Pa thinks proper to be eyed as if HE had come from
the Boffins also, well and good. I don’t choose to. And I won’t!’
Lavinia’s engineering having made this crooked opening at Bella, Mrs
Wilfer strode into it.
‘You rebellious spirit! You mutinous child! Tell me this, Lavinia. If
in violation of your mother’s sentiments, you had condescended to allow
yourself to be patronized by the Boffins, and if you had come from those
halls of slavery—’
‘That’s mere nonsense, Ma,’ said Lavinia.
‘How!’ exclaimed Mrs Wilfer, with sublime severity.
‘Halls of slavery, Ma, is mere stuff and nonsense,’ returned the unmoved
Irrepressible.
‘I say, presumptuous child, if you had come from the neighbourhood of
Portland Place, bending under the yoke of patronage and attended by its
domestics in glittering garb to visit me, do you think my deep-seated
feelings could have been expressed in looks?’
‘All I think about it, is,’ returned Lavinia, ‘that I should wish them
expressed to the right person.’
‘And if,’ pursued her mother, ‘if making light of my warnings that the
face of Mrs Boffin alone was a face teeming with evil, you had clung to
Mrs Boffin instead of to me, and had after all come home rejected by Mrs
Boffin, trampled under foot by Mrs Boffin, and cast out by Mrs Boffin,
do you think my feelings could have been expressed in looks?’
Lavinia was about replying to her honoured parent that she might as well
have dispensed with her looks altogether then, when Bella rose and said,
‘Good night, dear Ma. I have had a tiring day, and I’ll go to bed.’ This
broke up the agreeable party. Mr George Sampson shortly afterwards took
his leave, accompanied by Miss Lavinia with a candle as far as the hall,
and without a candle as far as the garden gate; Mrs Wilfer, washing her
hands of the Boffins, went to bed after the manner of Lady Macbeth; and
R. W. was left alone among the dilapidations of the supper table, in a
melancholy attitude.
But, a light footstep roused him from his meditations, and it was
Bella’s. Her pretty hair was hanging all about her, and she had tripped
down softly, brush in hand, and barefoot, to say good-night to him.
‘My dear, you most unquestionably ARE a lovely woman,’ said the cherub,
taking up a tress in his hand.
‘Look here, sir,’ said Bella; ‘when your lovely woman marries, you shall
have that piece if you like, and she’ll make you a chain of it. Would
you prize that remembrance of the dear creature?’
‘Yes, my precious.’
‘Then you shall have it if you’re good, sir. I am very, very sorry,
dearest Pa, to have brought home all this trouble.’
‘My pet,’ returned her father, in the simplest good faith, ‘don’t make
yourself uneasy about that. It really is not worth mentioning, because
things at home would have taken pretty much the same turn any way. If
your mother and sister don’t find one subject to get at times a little
wearing on, they find another. We’re never out of a wearing subject,
my dear, I assure you. I am afraid you find your old room with Lavvy,
dreadfully inconvenient, Bella?’
‘No I don’t, Pa; I don’t mind. Why don’t I mind, do you think, Pa?’
‘Well, my child, you used to complain of it when it wasn’t such a
contrast as it must be now. Upon my word, I can only answer, because you
are so much improved.’
‘No, Pa. Because I am so thankful and so happy!’
Here she choked him until her long hair made him sneeze, and then she
laughed until she made him laugh, and then she choked him again that
they might not be overheard.
‘Listen, sir,’ said Bella. ‘Your lovely woman was told her fortune
to night on her way home. It won’t be a large fortune, because if the
lovely woman’s Intended gets a certain appointment that he hopes to get
soon, she will marry on a hundred and fifty pounds a year. But that’s at
first, and even if it should never be more, the lovely woman will make
it quite enough. But that’s not all, sir. In the fortune there’s a
certain fair man—a little man, the fortune-teller said—who, it seems,
will always find himself near the lovely woman, and will always have
kept, expressly for him, such a peaceful corner in the lovely woman’s
little house as never was. Tell me the name of that man, sir.’
‘Is he a Knave in the pack of cards?’ inquired the cherub, with a
twinkle in his eyes.
‘Yes!’ cried Bella, in high glee, choking him again. ‘He’s the Knave of
Wilfers! Dear Pa, the lovely woman means to look forward to this fortune
that has been told for her, so delightfully, and to cause it to make her
a much better lovely woman than she ever has been yet. What the little
fair man is expected to do, sir, is to look forward to it also, by
saying to himself when he is in danger of being over-worried, “I see
land at last!”
‘I see land at last!’ repeated her father.
‘There’s a dear Knave of Wilfers!’ exclaimed Bella; then putting out her
small white bare foot, ‘That’s the mark, sir. Come to the mark. Put your
boot against it. We keep to it together, mind! Now, sir, you may kiss
the lovely woman before she runs away, so thankful and so happy. O yes,
fair little man, so thankful and so happy!’
Chapter 17
A SOCIAL CHORUS
Amazement sits enthroned upon the countenances of Mr and Mrs Alfred
Lammle’s circle of acquaintance, when the disposal of their first-class
furniture and effects (including a Billiard Table in capital letters),
‘by auction, under a bill of sale,’ is publicly announced on a waving