Our Mutual Friend
walking-stick.’
‘I am willing, Wegg, to come to terms.’
‘Willing won’t do, Boffin. I won’t take willing. Are you desirous to
come to terms? Do you ask to be allowed as a favour to come to terms?’
Mr Wegg again planted his arm, and put his head on one side.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’ said the inexorable Wegg: ‘I won’t take yes. I’ll have it
out of you in full, Boffin.’
‘Dear me!’ cried that unfortunate gentleman. ‘I am so worrited! I ask to
be allowed to come to terms, supposing your document is all correct.’
‘Don’t you be afraid of that,’ said Silas, poking his head at him. ‘You
shall be satisfied by seeing it. Mr Venus will show it you, and I’ll
hold you the while. Then you want to know what the terms are. Is
that about the sum and substance of it? Will you or won’t you answer,
Boffin?’ For he had paused a moment.
‘Dear me!’ cried that unfortunate gentleman again, ‘I am worrited to
that degree that I’m almost off my head. You hurry me so. Be so good as
name the terms, Wegg.’
‘Now, mark, Boffin,’ returned Silas: ‘Mark ’em well, because they’re
the lowest terms and the only terms. You’ll throw your Mound (the little
Mound as comes to you any way) into the general estate, and then you’ll
divide the whole property into three parts, and you’ll keep one and hand
over the others.’
Mr Venus’s mouth screwed itself up, as Mr Boffin’s face lengthened
itself, Mr Venus not having been prepared for such a rapacious demand.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin,’ Wegg proceeded, ‘there’s something more.
You’ve been a squandering this property—laying some of it out on
yourself. _That_ won’t do. You’ve bought a house. You’ll be charged for
it.’
‘I shall be ruined, Wegg!’ Mr Boffin faintly protested.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. You’ll leave me in
sole custody of these Mounds till they’re all laid low. If any waluables
should be found in ’em, I’ll take care of such waluables. You’ll produce
your contract for the sale of the Mounds, that we may know to a penny
what they’re worth, and you’ll make out likewise an exact list of
all the other property. When the Mounds is cleared away to the last
shovel-full, the final diwision will come off.’
‘Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful! I shall die in a workhouse!’ cried the
Golden Dustman, with his hands to his head.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. You’ve been unlawfully
ferreting about this yard. You’ve been seen in the act of ferreting
about this yard. Two pair of eyes at the present moment brought to bear
upon you, have seen you dig up a Dutch bottle.’
‘It was mine, Wegg,’ protested Mr Boffin. ‘I put it there myself.’
‘What was in it, Boffin?’ inquired Silas.
‘Not gold, not silver, not bank notes, not jewels, nothing that you
could turn into money, Wegg; upon my soul!’
‘Prepared, Mr Venus,’ said Wegg, turning to his partner with a knowing
and superior air, ‘for an ewasive answer on the part of our dusty friend
here, I have hit out a little idea which I think will meet your views.
We charge that bottle against our dusty friend at a thousand pound.’
Mr Boffin drew a deep groan.
‘Now, wait a bit, Boffin; there’s something more. In your employment
is an under-handed sneak, named Rokesmith. It won’t answer to have HIM
about, while this business of ours is about. He must be discharged.’
‘Rokesmith is already discharged,’ said Mr Boffin, speaking in a muffled
voice, with his hands before his face, as he rocked himself on the
settle.
‘Already discharged, is he?’ returned Wegg, surprised. ‘Oh! Then,
Boffin, I believe there’s nothing more at present.’
The unlucky gentleman continuing to rock himself to and fro, and to
utter an occasional moan, Mr Venus besought him to bear up against his
reverses, and to take time to accustom himself to the thought of his new
position. But, his taking time was exactly the thing of all others that
Silas Wegg could not be induced to hear of. ‘Yes or no, and no half
measures!’ was the motto which that obdurate person many times repeated;
shaking his fist at Mr Boffin, and pegging his motto into the floor with
his wooden leg, in a threatening and alarming manner.
At length, Mr Boffin entreated to be allowed a quarter of an hour’s
grace, and a cooling walk of that duration in the yard. With some
difficulty Mr Wegg granted this great favour, but only on condition
that he accompanied Mr Boffin in his walk, as not knowing what he might
fraudulently unearth if he were left to himself. A more absurd sight
than Mr Boffin in his mental irritation trotting very nimbly, and Mr
Wegg hopping after him with great exertion, eager to watch the slightest
turn of an eyelash, lest it should indicate a spot rich with some
secret, assuredly had never been seen in the shadow of the Mounds. Mr
Wegg was much distressed when the quarter of an hour expired, and came
hopping in, a very bad second.
‘I can’t help myself!’ cried Mr Boffin, flouncing on the settle in a
forlorn manner, with his hands deep in his pockets, as if his pockets
had sunk. ‘What’s the good of my pretending to stand out, when I can’t
help myself? I must give in to the terms. But I should like to see the
document.’
Wegg, who was all for clinching the nail he had so strongly driven home,
announced that Boffin should see it without an hour’s delay. Taking him
into custody for that purpose, or overshadowing him as if he really were
his Evil Genius in visible form, Mr Wegg clapped Mr Boffin’s hat
upon the back of his head, and walked him out by the arm, asserting a
proprietorship over his soul and body that was at once more grim and
more ridiculous than anything in Mr Venus’s rare collection. That
light-haired gentleman followed close upon their heels, at least backing
up Mr Boffin in a literal sense, if he had not had recent opportunities
of doing so spiritually; while Mr Boffin, trotting on as hard as he
could trot, involved Silas Wegg in frequent collisions with the public,
much as a pre-occupied blind man’s dog may be seen to involve his
master.
Thus they reached Mr Venus’s establishment, somewhat heated by the
nature of their progress thither. Mr Wegg, especially, was in a flaming
glow, and stood in the little shop, panting and mopping his head with
his pocket-handkerchief, speechless for several minutes.
Meanwhile, Mr Venus, who had left the duelling frogs to fight it out in
his absence by candlelight for the public delectation, put the shutters
up. When all was snug, and the shop-door fastened, he said to the
perspiring Silas: ‘I suppose, Mr Wegg, we may now produce the paper?’
‘Hold on a minute, sir,’ replied that discreet character; ‘hold on a
minute. Will you obligingly shove that box—which you mentioned on a
former occasion as containing miscellanies—towards me in the midst of
the shop here?’
Mr Venus did as he was asked.
‘Very good,’ said Silas, looking about: ‘ve—ry good. Will you hand me
that chair, sir, to put a-top of it?’
Venus handed him the chair.
‘Now, Boffin,’ said Wegg, ‘mount up here and take your seat, will you?’
Mr Boffin, as if he were about to have his portrait painted, or to be
electrified, or to be made a Freemason, or to be placed at any other
solitary disadvantage, ascended the rostrum prepared for him.
‘Now, Mr Venus,’ said Silas, taking off his coat, ‘when I catches our
friend here round the arms and body, and pins him tight to the back of
the chair, you may show him what he wants to see. If you’ll open it and
hold it well up in one hand, sir, and a candle in the other, he can read
it charming.’
Mr Boffin seemed rather inclined to object to these precautionary
arrangements, but, being immediately embraced by Wegg, resigned himself.
Venus then produced the document, and Mr Boffin slowly spelt it out
aloud: so very slowly, that Wegg, who was holding him in the chair
with the grip of a wrestler, became again exceedingly the worse for his
exertions. ‘Say when you’ve put it safe back, Mr Venus,’ he uttered with
difficulty, ‘for the strain of this is terrimenjious.’
At length the document was restored to its place; and Wegg, whose
uncomfortable attitude had been that of a very persevering man
unsuccessfully attempting to stand upon his head, took a seat to recover
himself. Mr Boffin, for his part, made no attempt to come down, but
remained aloft disconsolate.
‘Well, Boffin!’ said Wegg, as soon as he was in a condition to speak.
‘Now, you know.’
‘Yes, Wegg,’ said Mr Boffin, meekly. ‘Now, I know.’
‘You have no doubts about it, Boffin.’
‘No, Wegg. No, Wegg. None,’ was the slow and sad reply.
‘Then, take care, you,’ said Wegg, ‘that you stick to your conditions.
Mr Venus, if on this auspicious occasion, you should happen to have a
drop of anything not quite so mild as tea in the ’ouse, I think I’d take
the friendly liberty of asking you for a specimen of it.’
Mr Venus, reminded of the duties of hospitality, produced some rum.
In answer to the inquiry, ‘Will you mix it, Mr Wegg?’ that gentleman
pleasantly rejoined, ‘I think not, sir. On so auspicious an occasion, I
prefer to take it in the form of a Gum-Tickler.’
Mr Boffin, declining rum, being still elevated on his pedestal, was in
a convenient position to be addressed. Wegg having eyed him with an
impudent air at leisure, addressed him, therefore, while refreshing
himself with his dram.
‘Bof—fin!’
‘Yes, Wegg,’ he answered, coming out of a fit of abstraction, with a
sigh.
‘I haven’t mentioned one thing, because it’s a detail that comes of
course. You must be followed up, you know. You must be kept under
inspection.’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ said Mr Boffin.
‘Don’t you?’ sneered Wegg. ‘Where’s your wits, Boffin? Till the Mounds
is down and this business completed, you’re accountable for all the
property, recollect. Consider yourself accountable to me. Mr Venus here
being too milk and watery with you, I am the boy for you.’
‘I’ve been a-thinking,’ said Mr Boffin, in a tone of despondency, ‘that
I must keep the knowledge from my old lady.’
‘The knowledge of the diwision, d’ye mean?’ inquired Wegg, helping
himself to a third Gum-Tickler—for he had already taken a second.
‘Yes. If she was to die first of us two she might then think all her
life, poor thing, that I had got the rest of the fortune still, and was
saving it.’
‘I suspect, Boffin,’ returned Wegg, shaking his head sagaciously, and
bestowing a wooden wink upon him, ‘that you’ve found out some account
of some old chap, supposed to be a Miser, who got himself the credit of
having much more money than he had. However, I don’t mind.’
‘Don’t you see, Wegg?’ Mr Boffin feelingly represented to him: ‘don’t
you see? My old lady has got so used to the property. It would be such a
hard surprise.’
‘I don’t see it at all,’ blustered Wegg. ‘You’ll have as much as I
shall. And who are you?’
‘But then, again,’ Mr Boffin gently represented; ‘my old lady has very
upright principles.’
‘Who’s your old lady,’ returned Wegg, ‘to set herself up for having
uprighter principles than mine?’
Mr Boffin seemed a little less patient at this point than at any other
of the negotiations. But he commanded himself, and said tamely enough:
‘I think it must be kept from my old lady, Wegg.’
‘Well,’ said Wegg, contemptuously, though, perhaps, perceiving some hint
of danger otherwise, ‘keep it from your old lady. I ain’t going to tell
her. I can have you under close inspection without that. I’m as good a
man as you, and better. Ask me to dinner. Give me the run of your ’ouse.
I was good enough for you and your old lady once, when I helped you out
with your weal and hammers. Was there no Miss Elizabeth, Master George,
Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, before YOU two?’
‘Gently, Mr Wegg, gently,’ Venus urged.
‘Milk and water-erily you mean, sir,’ he returned, with some little