Our Mutual Friend
disdain, ‘how like men are to one another in some things, though their
characters are as different as can be! No two men can have less affinity
between them, one would say, than Mr Twemlow and my husband. Yet my
husband replies to me “You have no proof,” and Mr Twemlow replies to me
with the very same words!’
‘But why, madam?’ Twemlow ventures gently to argue. ‘Consider why
the very same words? Because they state the fact. Because you HAVE no
proof.’
‘Men are very wise in their way,’ quoth Mrs Lammle, glancing haughtily
at the Snigsworth portrait, and shaking out her dress before departing;
‘but they have wisdom to learn. My husband, who is not over-confiding,
ingenuous, or inexperienced, sees this plain thing no more than Mr
Twemlow does—because there is no proof! Yet I believe five women out of
six, in my place, would see it as clearly as I do. However, I will never
rest (if only in remembrance of Mr Fledgeby’s having kissed my hand)
until my husband does see it. And you will do well for yourself to see
it from this time forth, Mr Twemlow, though I CAN give you no proof.’
As she moves towards the door, Mr Twemlow, attending on her, expresses
his soothing hope that the condition of Mr Lammle’s affairs is not
irretrievable.
‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Lammle answers, stopping, and sketching out the
pattern of the paper on the wall with the point of her parasol; ‘it
depends. There may be an opening for him dawning now, or there may be
none. We shall soon find out. If none, we are bankrupt here, and must go
abroad, I suppose.’
Mr Twemlow, in his good-natured desire to make the best of it, remarks
that there are pleasant lives abroad.
‘Yes,’ returns Mrs Lammle, still sketching on the wall; ‘but I doubt
whether billiard-playing, card-playing, and so forth, for the means to
live under suspicion at a dirty table-d’hote, is one of them.’
It is much for Mr Lammle, Twemlow politely intimates (though greatly
shocked), to have one always beside him who is attached to him in all
his fortunes, and whose restraining influence will prevent him from
courses that would be discreditable and ruinous. As he says it, Mrs
Lammle leaves off sketching, and looks at him.
‘Restraining influence, Mr Twemlow? We must eat and drink, and dress,
and have a roof over our heads. Always beside him and attached in all
his fortunes? Not much to boast of in that; what can a woman at my age
do? My husband and I deceived one another when we married; we must bear
the consequences of the deception—that is to say, bear one another, and
bear the burden of scheming together for to-day’s dinner and to-morrow’s
breakfast—till death divorces us.’
With those words, she walks out into Duke Street, Saint James’s. Mr
Twemlow returning to his sofa, lays down his aching head on its slippery
little horsehair bolster, with a strong internal conviction that a
painful interview is not the kind of thing to be taken after the dinner
pills which are so highly salutary in connexion with the pleasures of
the table.
But, six o’clock in the evening finds the worthy little gentleman
getting better, and also getting himself into his obsolete little silk
stockings and pumps, for the wondering dinner at the Veneerings. And
seven o’clock in the evening finds him trotting out into Duke Street, to
trot to the corner and save a sixpence in coach-hire.
Tippins the divine has dined herself into such a condition by this time,
that a morbid mind might desire her, for a blessed change, to sup
at last, and turn into bed. Such a mind has Mr Eugene Wrayburn, whom
Twemlow finds contemplating Tippins with the moodiest of visages,
while that playful creature rallies him on being so long overdue at the
woolsack. Skittish is Tippins with Mortimer Lightwood too, and has raps
to give him with her fan for having been best man at the nuptials of
these deceiving what’s-their-names who have gone to pieces. Though,
indeed, the fan is generally lively, and taps away at the men in
all directions, with something of a grisly sound suggestive of the
clattering of Lady Tippins’s bones.
A new race of intimate friends has sprung up at Veneering’s since he
went into Parliament for the public good, to whom Mrs Veneering is very
attentive. These friends, like astronomical distances, are only to be
spoken of in the very largest figures. Boots says that one of them is a
Contractor who (it has been calculated) gives employment, directly and
indirectly, to five hundred thousand men. Brewer says that another of
them is a Chairman, in such request at so many Boards, so far apart,
that he never travels less by railway than three thousand miles a week.
Buffer says that another of them hadn’t a sixpence eighteen months ago,
and, through the brilliancy of his genius in getting those shares issued
at eighty-five, and buying them all up with no money and selling them
at par for cash, has now three hundred and seventy-five thousand
pounds—Buffer particularly insisting on the odd seventy-five, and
declining to take a farthing less. With Buffer, Boots, and Brewer, Lady
Tippins is eminently facetious on the subject of these Fathers of the
Scrip-Church: surveying them through her eyeglass, and inquiring whether
Boots and Brewer and Buffer think they will make her fortune if she
makes love to them? with other pleasantries of that nature. Veneering,
in his different way, is much occupied with the Fathers too, piously
retiring with them into the conservatory, from which retreat the word
‘Committee’ is occasionally heard, and where the Fathers instruct
Veneering how he must leave the valley of the piano on his left,
take the level of the mantelpiece, cross by an open cutting at the
candelabra, seize the carrying-traffic at the console, and cut up the
opposition root and branch at the window curtains.
Mr and Mrs Podsnap are of the company, and the Fathers descry in Mrs
Podsnap a fine woman. She is consigned to a Father—Boots’s Father,
who employs five hundred thousand men—and is brought to anchor on
Veneering’s left; thus affording opportunity to the sportive Tippins on
his right (he, as usual, being mere vacant space), to entreat to be told
something about those loves of Navvies, and whether they really do live
on raw beefsteaks, and drink porter out of their barrows. But, in spite
of such little skirmishes it is felt that this was to be a wondering
dinner, and that the wondering must not be neglected. Accordingly,
Brewer, as the man who has the greatest reputation to sustain, becomes
the interpreter of the general instinct.
‘I took,’ says Brewer in a favourable pause, ‘a cab this morning, and I
rattled off to that Sale.’
Boots (devoured by envy) says, ‘So did I.’
Buffer says, ‘So did I’; but can find nobody to care whether he did or
not.
‘And what was it like?’ inquires Veneering.
‘I assure you,’ replies Brewer, looking about for anybody else to
address his answer to, and giving the preference to Lightwood; ‘I assure
you, the things were going for a song. Handsome things enough, but
fetching nothing.’
‘So I heard this afternoon,’ says Lightwood.
Brewer begs to know now, would it be fair to ask a professional man
how—on—earth—these—people—ever—did—come—TO—such—A—total
smash? (Brewer’s divisions being for emphasis.)
Lightwood replies that he was consulted certainly, but could give no
opinion which would pay off the Bill of Sale, and therefore violates no
confidence in supposing that it came of their living beyond their means.
‘But how,’ says Veneering, ‘CAN people do that!’
Hah! That is felt on all hands to be a shot in the bull’s eye. How CAN
people do that! The Analytical Chemist going round with champagne, looks
very much as if HE could give them a pretty good idea how people did
that, if he had a mind.
‘How,’ says Mrs Veneering, laying down her fork to press her aquiline
hands together at the tips of the fingers, and addressing the Father who
travels the three thousand miles per week: ‘how a mother can look at
her baby, and know that she lives beyond her husband’s means, I cannot
imagine.’
Eugene suggests that Mrs Lammle, not being a mother, had no baby to look
at.
‘True,’ says Mrs Veneering, ‘but the principle is the same.’
Boots is clear that the principle is the same. So is Buffer. It is the
unfortunate destiny of Buffer to damage a cause by espousing it. The
rest of the company have meekly yielded to the proposition that the
principle is the same, until Buffer says it is; when instantly a general
murmur arises that the principle is not the same.
‘But I don’t understand,’ says the Father of the three hundred and
seventy-five thousand pounds, ‘—if these people spoken of, occupied the
position of being in society—they were in society?’
Veneering is bound to confess that they dined here, and were even
married from here.
‘Then I don’t understand,’ pursues the Father, ‘how even their living
beyond their means could bring them to what has been termed a total
smash. Because, there is always such a thing as an adjustment of
affairs, in the case of people of any standing at all.’
Eugene (who would seem to be in a gloomy state of suggestiveness),
suggests, ‘Suppose you have no means and live beyond them?’
This is too insolvent a state of things for the Father to entertain. It
is too insolvent a state of things for any one with any self-respect
to entertain, and is universally scouted. But, it is so amazing how any
people can have come to a total smash, that everybody feels bound to
account for it specially. One of the Fathers says, ‘Gaming table.’
Another of the Fathers says, ‘Speculated without knowing that
speculation is a science.’ Boots says ‘Horses.’ Lady Tippins says to her
fan, ‘Two establishments.’ Mr Podsnap, saying nothing, is referred
to for his opinion; which he delivers as follows; much flushed and
extremely angry:
‘Don’t ask me. I desire to take no part in the discussion of these
people’s affairs. I abhor the subject. It is an odious subject, an
offensive subject, a subject that makes me sick, and I—’ And with his
favourite right-arm flourish which sweeps away everything and settles it
for ever, Mr Podsnap sweeps these inconveniently unexplainable wretches
who have lived beyond their means and gone to total smash, off the face
of the universe.
Eugene, leaning back in his chair, is observing Mr Podsnap with an
irreverent face, and may be about to offer a new suggestion, when
the Analytical is beheld in collision with the Coachman; the Coachman
manifesting a purpose of coming at the company with a silver salver,
as though intent upon making a collection for his wife and family; the
Analytical cutting him off at the sideboard. The superior stateliness,
if not the superior generalship, of the Analytical prevails over a man
who is as nothing off the box; and the Coachman, yielding up his salver,
retires defeated.
Then, the Analytical, perusing a scrap of paper lying on the salver,
with the air of a literary Censor, adjusts it, takes his time about
going to the table with it, and presents it to Mr Eugene Wrayburn.
Whereupon the pleasant Tippins says aloud, ‘The Lord Chancellor has
resigned!’
With distracting coolness and slowness—for he knows the curiosity of
the Charmer to be always devouring—Eugene makes a pretence of getting
out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper with difficulty,
long after he has seen what is written on it. What is written on it in
wet ink, is:
‘Young Blight.’
‘Waiting?’ says Eugene over his shoulder, in confidence, with the
Analytical.
‘Waiting,’ returns the Analytical in responsive confidence.
Eugene looks ‘Excuse me,’ towards Mrs Veneering, goes out, and finds
Young Blight, Mortimer’s clerk, at the hall-door.
‘You told me to bring him, sir, to wherever you was, if he come while