Our Mutual Friend
Boffin to the gate, she as closely watched what followed.
‘How are you, sir, how are you?’ said Mr Boffin. ‘This is Mrs Boffin. Mr
Rokesmith, that I told you of; my dear.’
She gave him good day, and he bestirred himself and helped her to her
seat, and the like, with a ready hand.
‘Good-bye for the present, Miss Bella,’ said Mrs Boffin, calling out a
hearty parting. ‘We shall meet again soon! And then I hope I shall have
my little John Harmon to show you.’
Mr Rokesmith, who was at the wheel adjusting the skirts of her dress,
suddenly looked behind him, and around him, and then looked up at her,
with a face so pale that Mrs Boffin cried:
‘Gracious!’ And after a moment, ‘What’s the matter, sir?’
‘How can you show her the Dead?’ returned Mr Rokesmith.
‘It’s only an adopted child. One I have told her of. One I’m going to
give the name to!’
‘You took me by surprise,’ said Mr Rokesmith, ‘and it sounded like an
omen, that you should speak of showing the Dead to one so young and
blooming.’
Now, Bella suspected by this time that Mr Rokesmith admired her. Whether
the knowledge (for it was rather that than suspicion) caused her to
incline to him a little more, or a little less, than she had done at
first; whether it rendered her eager to find out more about him, because
she sought to establish reason for her distrust, or because she sought
to free him from it; was as yet dark to her own heart. But at most
times he occupied a great amount of her attention, and she had set her
attention closely on this incident.
That he knew it as well as she, she knew as well as he, when they were
left together standing on the path by the garden gate.
‘Those are worthy people, Miss Wilfer.’
‘Do you know them well?’ asked Bella.
He smiled, reproaching her, and she coloured, reproaching herself—both,
with the knowledge that she had meant to entrap him into an answer not
true—when he said ‘I know OF them.’
‘Truly, he told us he had seen you but once.’
‘Truly, I supposed he did.’
Bella was nervous now, and would have been glad to recall her question.
‘You thought it strange that, feeling much interested in you, I should
start at what sounded like a proposal to bring you into contact with the
murdered man who lies in his grave. I might have known—of course in a
moment should have known—that it could not have that meaning. But my
interest remains.’
Re-entering the family-room in a meditative state, Miss Bella was
received by the irrepressible Lavinia with:
‘There, Bella! At last I hope you have got your wishes realized—by your
Boffins. You’ll be rich enough now—with your Boffins. You can have as
much flirting as you like—at your Boffins. But you won’t take ME to
your Boffins, I can tell you—you and your Boffins too!’
‘If,’ quoth Mr George Sampson, moodily pulling his stopper out, ‘Miss
Bella’s Mr Boffin comes any more of his nonsense to ME, I only wish him
to understand, as betwixt man and man, that he does it at his per—’ and
was going to say peril; but Miss Lavinia, having no confidence in his
mental powers, and feeling his oration to have no definite application
to any circumstances, jerked his stopper in again, with a sharpness that
made his eyes water.
And now the worthy Mrs Wilfer, having used her youngest daughter as a
lay-figure for the edification of these Boffins, became bland to her,
and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of character,
which was still in reserve. This was, to illuminate the family with her
remarkable powers as a physiognomist; powers that terrified R. W. when
ever let loose, as being always fraught with gloom and evil which no
inferior prescience was aware of. And this Mrs Wilfer now did, be it
observed, in jealousy of these Boffins, in the very same moments when
she was already reflecting how she would flourish these very same
Boffins and the state they kept, over the heads of her Boffinless
friends.
‘Of their manners,’ said Mrs Wilfer, ‘I say nothing. Of their
appearance, I say nothing. Of the disinterestedness of their intentions
towards Bella, I say nothing. But the craft, the secrecy, the dark
deep underhanded plotting, written in Mrs Boffin’s countenance, make me
shudder.’
As an incontrovertible proof that those baleful attributes were all
there, Mrs Wilfer shuddered on the spot.
Chapter 10
A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
There is excitement in the Veneering mansion. The mature young lady is
going to be married (powder and all) to the mature young gentleman, and
she is to be married from the Veneering house, and the Veneerings are to
give the breakfast. The Analytical, who objects as a matter of principle
to everything that occurs on the premises, necessarily objects to the
match; but his consent has been dispensed with, and a spring-van is
delivering its load of greenhouse plants at the door, in order that
to-morrow’s feast may be crowned with flowers.
The mature young lady is a lady of property. The mature young gentleman
is a gentleman of property. He invests his property. He goes, in
a condescending amateurish way, into the City, attends meetings of
Directors, and has to do with traffic in Shares. As is well known to the
wise in their generation, traffic in Shares is the one thing to have to
do with in this world. Have no antecedents, no established character, no
cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to
be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious
business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come
from? Shares. Where is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares.
Has he any principles? Shares. What squeezes him into Parliament?
Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never
originated anything, never produced anything? Sufficient answer to all;
Shares. O mighty Shares! To set those blaring images so high, and to
cause us smaller vermin, as under the influence of henbane or opium, to
cry out, night and day, ‘Relieve us of our money, scatter it for us, buy
us and sell us, ruin us, only we beseech ye take rank among the powers
of the earth, and fatten on us’!
While the Loves and Graces have been preparing this torch for Hymen,
which is to be kindled to-morrow, Mr Twemlow has suffered much in his
mind. It would seem that both the mature young lady and the mature young
gentleman must indubitably be Veneering’s oldest friends. Wards of his,
perhaps? Yet that can scarcely be, for they are older than himself.
Veneering has been in their confidence throughout, and has done much to
lure them to the altar. He has mentioned to Twemlow how he said to
Mrs Veneering, ‘Anastatia, this must be a match.’ He has mentioned to
Twemlow how he regards Sophronia Akershem (the mature young lady) in the
light of a sister, and Alfred Lammle (the mature young gentleman) in the
light of a brother. Twemlow has asked him whether he went to school as
a junior with Alfred? He has answered, ‘Not exactly.’ Whether Sophronia
was adopted by his mother? He has answered, ‘Not precisely so.’
Twemlow’s hand has gone to his forehead with a lost air.
But, two or three weeks ago, Twemlow, sitting over his newspaper,
and over his dry-toast and weak tea, and over the stable-yard in Duke
Street, St James’s, received a highly-perfumed cocked-hat and monogram
from Mrs Veneering, entreating her dearest Mr T., if not particularly
engaged that day, to come like a charming soul and make a fourth at
dinner with dear Mr Podsnap, for the discussion of an interesting family
topic; the last three words doubly underlined and pointed with a note
of admiration. And Twemlow replying, ‘Not engaged, and more than
delighted,’ goes, and this takes place:
‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, ‘your ready response to Anastatia’s
unceremonious invitation is truly kind, and like an old, old friend. You
know our dear friend Podsnap?’
Twemlow ought to know the dear friend Podsnap who covered him with so
much confusion, and he says he does know him, and Podsnap reciprocates.
Apparently, Podsnap has been so wrought upon in a short time, as to
believe that he has been intimate in the house many, many, many years.
In the friendliest manner he is making himself quite at home with his
back to the fire, executing a statuette of the Colossus at Rhodes.
Twemlow has before noticed in his feeble way how soon the Veneering
guests become infected with the Veneering fiction. Not, however, that he
has the least notion of its being his own case.
‘Our friends, Alfred and Sophronia,’ pursues Veneering the veiled
prophet: ‘our friends Alfred and Sophronia, you will be glad to hear, my
dear fellows, are going to be married. As my wife and I make it a family
affair the entire direction of which we take upon ourselves, of course
our first step is to communicate the fact to our family friends.’
(‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes on Podsnap, ‘then there are only
two of us, and he’s the other.’)
‘I did hope,’ Veneering goes on, ‘to have had Lady Tippins to meet you;
but she is always in request, and is unfortunately engaged.’
(‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes wandering, ‘then there are three of
us, and SHE’S the other.’)
‘Mortimer Lightwood,’ resumes Veneering, ‘whom you both know, is out of
town; but he writes, in his whimsical manner, that as we ask him to be
bridegroom’s best man when the ceremony takes place, he will not refuse,
though he doesn’t see what he has to do with it.’
(‘Oh!’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes rolling, ‘then there are four of
us, and HE’S the other.’)
‘Boots and Brewer,’ observes Veneering, ‘whom you also know, I have not
asked to-day; but I reserve them for the occasion.’
(‘Then,’ thinks Twemlow, with his eyes shut, ‘there are si—’ But here
collapses and does not completely recover until dinner is over and the
Analytical has been requested to withdraw.)
‘We now come,’ says Veneering, ‘to the point, the real point, of our
little family consultation. Sophronia, having lost both father and
mother, has no one to give her away.’
‘Give her away yourself,’ says Podsnap.
‘My dear Podsnap, no. For three reasons. Firstly, because I couldn’t
take so much upon myself when I have respected family friends to
remember. Secondly, because I am not so vain as to think that I look
the part. Thirdly, because Anastatia is a little superstitious on the
subject and feels averse to my giving away anybody until baby is old
enough to be married.’
‘What would happen if he did?’ Podsnap inquires of Mrs Veneering.
‘My dear Mr Podsnap, it’s very foolish I know, but I have an instinctive
presentiment that if Hamilton gave away anybody else first, he would
never give away baby.’ Thus Mrs Veneering; with her open hands pressed
together, and each of her eight aquiline fingers looking so very like
her one aquiline nose that the bran-new jewels on them seem necessary
for distinction’s sake.
‘But, my dear Podsnap,’ quoth Veneering, ‘there IS a tried friend of
our family who, I think and hope you will agree with me, Podsnap, is
the friend on whom this agreeable duty almost naturally devolves. That
friend,’ saying the words as if the company were about a hundred and
fifty in number, ‘is now among us. That friend is Twemlow.’
‘Certainly!’ from Podsnap.
‘That friend,’ Veneering repeats with greater firmness, ‘is our dear
good Twemlow. And I cannot sufficiently express to you, my dear Podsnap,
the pleasure I feel in having this opinion of mine and Anastatia’s so
readily confirmed by you, that other equally familiar and tried friend
who stands in the proud position—I mean who proudly stands in the
position—or I ought rather to say, who places Anastatia and myself in
the proud position of himself standing in the simple position—of baby’s