Our Mutual Friend
her place at his side, and tenderly touching his hands and his head, she
said:
‘Eugene, dear, you made me go out, but I ought to have stayed with you.
You are more flushed than you have been for many days. What have you
been doing?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Eugene, ‘but looking forward to your coming back.’
‘And talking to Mr Lightwood,’ said Lizzie, turning to him with a smile.
‘But it cannot have been Society that disturbed you.’
‘Faith, my dear love!’ retorted Eugene, in his old airy manner, as he
laughed and kissed her, ‘I rather think it WAS Society though!’
The word ran so much in Mortimer Lightwood’s thoughts as he went home to
the Temple that night, that he resolved to take a look at Society, which
he had not seen for a considerable period.
Chapter 17
THE VOICE OF SOCIETY
Behoves Mortimer Lightwood, therefore, to answer a dinner card from Mr
and Mrs Veneering requesting the honour, and to signify that Mr Mortimer
Lightwood will be happy to have the other honour. The Veneerings have
been, as usual, indefatigably dealing dinner cards to Society, and
whoever desires to take a hand had best be quick about it, for it is
written in the Books of the Insolvent Fates that Veneering shall make a
resounding smash next week. Yes. Having found out the clue to that great
mystery how people can contrive to live beyond their means, and having
over-jobbed his jobberies as legislator deputed to the Universe by the
pure electors of Pocket-Breaches, it shall come to pass next week that
Veneering will accept the Chiltern Hundreds, that the legal gentleman in
Britannia’s confidence will again accept the Pocket-Breaches Thousands,
and that the Veneerings will retire to Calais, there to live on Mrs
Veneering’s diamonds (in which Mr Veneering, as a good husband, has from
time to time invested considerable sums), and to relate to Neptune and
others, how that, before Veneering retired from Parliament, the House
of Commons was composed of himself and the six hundred and fifty-seven
dearest and oldest friends he had in the world. It shall likewise come
to pass, at as nearly as possible the same period, that Society will
discover that it always did despise Veneering, and distrust Veneering,
and that when it went to Veneering’s to dinner it always had
misgivings—though very secretly at the time, it would seem, and in a
perfectly private and confidential manner.
The next week’s books of the Insolvent Fates, however, being not yet
opened, there is the usual rush to the Veneerings, of the people who go
to their house to dine with one another and not with them. There is Lady
Tippins. There are Podsnap the Great, and Mrs Podsnap. There is Twemlow.
There are Buffer, Boots, and Brewer. There is the Contractor, who
is Providence to five hundred thousand men. There is the Chairman,
travelling three thousand miles per week. There is the brilliant genius
who turned the shares into that remarkably exact sum of three hundred
and seventy five thousand pounds, no shillings, and nopence.
To whom, add Mortimer Lightwood, coming in among them with a
reassumption of his old languid air, founded on Eugene, and belonging to
the days when he told the story of the man from Somewhere.
That fresh fairy, Tippins, all but screams at sight of her false
swain. She summons the deserter to her with her fan; but the deserter,
predetermined not to come, talks Britain with Podsnap. Podsnap always
talks Britain, and talks as if he were a sort of Private Watchman
employed, in the British interests, against the rest of the world. ‘We
know what Russia means, sir,’ says Podsnap; ‘we know what France wants;
we see what America is up to; but we know what England is. That’s enough
for us.’
However, when dinner is served, and Lightwood drops into his old place
over against Lady Tippins, she can be fended off no longer. ‘Long
banished Robinson Crusoe,’ says the charmer, exchanging salutations,
‘how did you leave the Island?’
‘Thank you,’ says Lightwood. ‘It made no complaint of being in pain
anywhere.’
‘Say, how did you leave the savages?’ asks Lady Tippins.
‘They were becoming civilized when I left Juan Fernandez,’ says
Lightwood. ‘At least they were eating one another, which looked like
it.’
‘Tormentor!’ returns the dear young creature. ‘You know what I mean, and
you trifle with my impatience. Tell me something, immediately, about the
married pair. You were at the wedding.’
‘Was I, by-the-by?’ Mortimer pretends, at great leisure, to consider.
‘So I was!’
‘How was the bride dressed? In rowing costume?’
Mortimer looks gloomy, and declines to answer.
‘I hope she steered herself, skiffed herself, paddled herself,
larboarded and starboarded herself, or whatever the technical term may
be, to the ceremony?’ proceeds the playful Tippins.
‘However she got to it, she graced it,’ says Mortimer.
Lady Tippins with a skittish little scream, attracts the general
attention. ‘Graced it! Take care of me if I faint, Veneering. He means
to tell us, that a horrid female waterman is graceful!’
‘Pardon me. I mean to tell you nothing, Lady Tippins,’ replies
Lightwood. And keeps his word by eating his dinner with a show of the
utmost indifference.
‘You shall not escape me in this way, you morose backwoodsman,’ retorts
Lady Tippins. ‘You shall not evade the question, to screen your friend
Eugene, who has made this exhibition of himself. The knowledge shall be
brought home to you that such a ridiculous affair is condemned by the
voice of Society. My dear Mrs Veneering, do let us resolve ourselves
into a Committee of the whole House on the subject.’
Mrs Veneering, always charmed by this rattling sylph, cries. ‘Oh yes!
Do let us resolve ourselves into a Committee of the whole House!
So delicious!’ Veneering says, ‘As many as are of that opinion, say
Aye,—contrary, No—the Ayes have it.’ But nobody takes the slightest
notice of his joke.
‘Now, I am Chairwoman of Committees!’ cries Lady Tippins.
(‘What spirits she has!’ exclaims Mrs Veneering; to whom likewise nobody
attends.)
‘And this,’ pursues the sprightly one, ‘is a Committee of the whole
House to what-you-may-call-it—elicit, I suppose—the voice of Society.
The question before the Committee is, whether a young man of very fair
family, good appearance, and some talent, makes a fool or a wise man of
himself in marrying a female waterman, turned factory girl.’
‘Hardly so, I think,’ the stubborn Mortimer strikes in. ‘I take the
question to be, whether such a man as you describe, Lady Tippins, does
right or wrong in marrying a brave woman (I say nothing of her beauty),
who has saved his life, with a wonderful energy and address; whom he
knows to be virtuous, and possessed of remarkable qualities; whom he has
long admired, and who is deeply attached to him.’
‘But, excuse me,’ says Podsnap, with his temper and his shirt-collar
about equally rumpled; ‘was this young woman ever a female waterman?’
‘Never. But she sometimes rowed in a boat with her father, I believe.’
General sensation against the young woman. Brewer shakes his head. Boots
shakes his head. Buffer shakes his head.
‘And now, Mr Lightwood, was she ever,’ pursues Podsnap, with his
indignation rising high into those hair-brushes of his, ‘a factory
girl?’
‘Never. But she had some employment in a paper mill, I believe.’
General sensation repeated. Brewer says, ‘Oh dear!’ Boots says, ‘Oh
dear!’ Buffer says, ‘Oh dear!’ All, in a rumbling tone of protest.
‘Then all I have to say is,’ returns Podsnap, putting the thing away
with his right arm, ‘that my gorge rises against such a marriage—that
it offends and disgusts me—that it makes me sick—and that I desire to
know no more about it.’
(‘Now I wonder,’ thinks Mortimer, amused, ‘whether YOU are the Voice of
Society!’)
‘Hear, hear, hear!’ cries Lady Tippins. ‘Your opinion of this
MESALLIANCE, honourable colleagues of the honourable member who has just
sat down?’
Mrs Podsnap is of opinion that in these matters there should be an
equality of station and fortune, and that a man accustomed to Society
should look out for a woman accustomed to Society and capable of bearing
her part in it with—an ease and elegance of carriage—that.’ Mrs
Podsnap stops there, delicately intimating that every such man should
look out for a fine woman as nearly resembling herself as he may hope to
discover.
(‘Now I wonder,’ thinks Mortimer, ‘whether you are the Voice!’)
Lady Tippins next canvasses the Contractor, of five hundred thousand
power. It appears to this potentate, that what the man in question
should have done, would have been, to buy the young woman a boat and a
small annuity, and set her up for herself. These things are a question
of beefsteaks and porter. You buy the young woman a boat. Very good. You
buy her, at the same time, a small annuity. You speak of that annuity in
pounds sterling, but it is in reality so many pounds of beefsteaks and
so many pints of porter. On the one hand, the young woman has the boat.
On the other hand, she consumes so many pounds of beefsteaks and so many
pints of porter. Those beefsteaks and that porter are the fuel to that
young woman’s engine. She derives therefrom a certain amount of power to
row the boat; that power will produce so much money; you add that to the
small annuity; and thus you get at the young woman’s income. That (it
seems to the Contractor) is the way of looking at it.
The fair enslaver having fallen into one of her gentle sleeps during the
last exposition, nobody likes to wake her. Fortunately, she comes
awake of herself, and puts the question to the Wandering Chairman. The
Wanderer can only speak of the case as if it were his own. If such a
young woman as the young woman described, had saved his own life, he
would have been very much obliged to her, wouldn’t have married her, and
would have got her a berth in an Electric Telegraph Office, where young
women answer very well.
What does the Genius of the three hundred and seventy-five thousand
pounds, no shillings, and nopence, think? He can’t say what he thinks,
without asking: Had the young woman any money?
‘No,’ says Lightwood, in an uncompromising voice; ‘no money.’
‘Madness and moonshine,’ is then the compressed verdict of the Genius.
‘A man may do anything lawful, for money. But for no money!—Bosh!’
What does Boots say?
Boots says he wouldn’t have done it under twenty thousand pound.
What does Brewer say?
Brewer says what Boots says.
What does Buffer say?
Buffer says he knows a man who married a bathing-woman, and bolted.
Lady Tippins fancies she has collected the suffrages of the whole
Committee (nobody dreaming of asking the Veneerings for their opinion),
when, looking round the table through her eyeglass, she perceives Mr
Twemlow with his hand to his forehead.
Good gracious! My Twemlow forgotten! My dearest! My own! What is his
vote?
Twemlow has the air of being ill at ease, as he takes his hand from his
forehead and replies.
‘I am disposed to think,’ says he, ‘that this is a question of the
feelings of a gentleman.’
‘A gentleman can have no feelings who contracts such a marriage,’
flushes Podsnap.
‘Pardon me, sir,’ says Twemlow, rather less mildly than usual, ‘I don’t
agree with you. If this gentleman’s feelings of gratitude, of respect,
of admiration, and affection, induced him (as I presume they did) to
marry this lady—’
‘This lady!’ echoes Podsnap.
‘Sir,’ returns Twemlow, with his wristbands bristling a little, ‘YOU
repeat the word; I repeat the word. This lady. What else would you call
her, if the gentleman were present?’
This being something in the nature of a poser for Podsnap, he merely
waves it away with a speechless wave.
‘I say,’ resumes Twemlow, ‘if such feelings on the part of this