Our Mutual Friend
In which state of affairs, the usual ceremonies rather droop and flag,
and the splendid cake when cut by the fair hand of the bride has but
an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indispensable to
be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be done are
done (including Lady Tippins’s yawning, falling asleep, and waking
insensible), and there is hurried preparation for the nuptial journey
to the Isle of Wight, and the outer air teems with brass bands and
spectators. In full sight of whom, the malignant star of the Analytical
has pre-ordained that pain and ridicule shall befall him. For he,
standing on the doorsteps to grace the departure, is suddenly caught a
most prodigious thump on the side of his head with a heavy shoe, which
a Buffer in the hall, champagne-flushed and wild of aim, has borrowed on
the spur of the moment from the pastrycook’s porter, to cast after the
departing pair as an auspicious omen.
So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms—all of them
flushed with breakfast, as having taken scarlatina sociably—and there
the combined unknowns do malignant things with their legs to ottomans,
and take as much as possible out of the splendid furniture. And so, Lady
Tippins, quite undetermined whether today is the day before yesterday,
or the day after to-morrow, or the week after next, fades away; and
Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene fade away, and Twemlow fades away, and
the stoney aunt goes away—she declines to fade, proving rock to the
last—and even the unknowns are slowly strained off, and it is all over.
All over, that is to say, for the time being. But, there is another time
to come, and it comes in about a fortnight, and it comes to Mr and Mrs
Lammle on the sands at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight.
Mr and Mrs Lammle have walked for some time on the Shanklin sands, and
one may see by their footprints that they have not walked arm in arm,
and that they have not walked in a straight track, and that they have
walked in a moody humour; for, the lady has prodded little spirting
holes in the damp sand before her with her parasol, and the gentleman
has trailed his stick after him. As if he were of the Mephistopheles
family indeed, and had walked with a drooping tail.
‘Do you mean to tell me, then, Sophronia—’
Thus he begins after a long silence, when Sophronia flashes fiercely,
and turns upon him.
‘Don’t put it upon ME, sir. I ask you, do YOU mean to tell me?’
Mr Lammle falls silent again, and they walk as before. Mrs Lammle opens
her nostrils and bites her under-lip; Mr Lammle takes his gingerous
whiskers in his left hand, and, bringing them together, frowns furtively
at his beloved, out of a thick gingerous bush.
‘Do I mean to say!’ Mrs Lammle after a time repeats, with indignation.
‘Putting it on me! The unmanly disingenuousness!’
Mr Lammle stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. ‘The what?’
Mrs Lammle haughtily replies, without stopping, and without looking
back. ‘The meanness.’
He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts, ‘That is not
what you said. You said disingenuousness.’
‘What if I did?’
‘There is no “if” in the case. You did.’
‘I did, then. And what of it?’
‘What of it?’ says Mr Lammle. ‘Have you the face to utter the word to
me?’
‘The face, too!’ replied Mrs Lammle, staring at him with cold scorn.
‘Pray, how dare you, sir, utter the word to me?’
‘I never did.’
As this happens to be true, Mrs Lammle is thrown on the feminine
resource of saying, ‘I don’t care what you uttered or did not utter.’
After a little more walking and a little more silence, Mr Lammle breaks
the latter.
‘You shall proceed in your own way. You claim a right to ask me do I
mean to tell you. Do I mean to tell you what?’
‘That you are a man of property?’
‘No.’
‘Then you married me on false pretences?’
‘So be it. Next comes what you mean to say. Do you mean to say you are a
woman of property?’
‘No.’
‘Then you married me on false pretences.’
‘If you were so dull a fortune-hunter that you deceived yourself, or
if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over-willing to be
deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?’ the lady
demands, with great asperity.
‘I asked Veneering, and he told me you were rich.’
‘Veneering!’ with great contempt. ‘And what does Veneering know about
me!’
‘Was he not your trustee?’
‘No. I have no trustee, but the one you saw on the day when you
fraudulently married me. And his trust is not a very difficult one, for
it is only an annuity of a hundred and fifteen pounds. I think there are
some odd shillings or pence, if you are very particular.’
Mr Lammle bestows a by no means loving look upon the partner of his joys
and sorrows, and he mutters something; but checks himself.
‘Question for question. It is my turn again, Mrs Lammle. What made you
suppose me a man of property?’
‘You made me suppose you so. Perhaps you will deny that you always
presented yourself to me in that character?’
‘But you asked somebody, too. Come, Mrs Lammle, admission for admission.
You asked somebody?’
‘I asked Veneering.’
‘And Veneering knew as much of me as he knew of you, or as anybody knows
of him.’
After more silent walking, the bride stops short, to say in a passionate
manner:
‘I never will forgive the Veneerings for this!’
‘Neither will I,’ returns the bridegroom.
With that, they walk again; she, making those angry spirts in the sand;
he, dragging that dejected tail. The tide is low, and seems to have
thrown them together high on the bare shore. A gull comes sweeping by
their heads and flouts them. There was a golden surface on the brown
cliffs but now, and behold they are only damp earth. A taunting roar
comes from the sea, and the far-out rollers mount upon one another,
to look at the entrapped impostors, and to join in impish and exultant
gambols.
‘Do you pretend to believe,’ Mrs Lammle resumes, sternly, ‘when you talk
of my marrying you for worldly advantages, that it was within the bounds
of reasonable probability that I would have married you for yourself?’
‘Again there are two sides to the question, Mrs Lammle. What do you
pretend to believe?’
‘So you first deceive me and then insult me!’ cries the lady, with a
heaving bosom.
‘Not at all. I have originated nothing. The double-edged question was
yours.’
‘Was mine!’ the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her angry hand.
His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have come to
light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself had,
within the last few moments, touched it here and there. But he has
repressive power, and she has none.
‘Throw it away,’ he coolly recommends as to the parasol; ‘you have made
it useless; you look ridiculous with it.’
Whereupon she calls him in her rage, ‘A deliberate villain,’ and so
casts the broken thing from her as that it strikes him in falling. The
finger-marks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks on at
her side.
She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most
deceived, the worst-used, of women. Then she says that if she had
the courage to kill herself, she would do it. Then she calls him vile
impostor. Then she asks him, why, in the disappointment of his base
speculation, he does not take her life with his own hand, under the
present favourable circumstances. Then she cries again. Then she is
enraged again, and makes some mention of swindlers. Finally, she sits
down crying on a block of stone, and is in all the known and unknown
humours of her sex at once. Pending her changes, those aforesaid marks
in his face have come and gone, now here now there, like white steps
of a pipe on which the diabolical performer has played a tune. Also his
livid lips are parted at last, as if he were breathless with running.
Yet he is not.
‘Now, get up, Mrs Lammle, and let us speak reasonably.’
She sits upon her stone, and takes no heed of him.
‘Get up, I tell you.’
Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and repeats,
‘You tell me! Tell me, forsooth!’
She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her as she droops
her head again; but her whole figure reveals that she knows it uneasily.
‘Enough of this. Come! Do you hear? Get up.’
Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again; but this time with
their faces turned towards their place of residence.
‘Mrs Lammle, we have both been deceiving, and we have both been
deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten. In a
nut-shell, there’s the state of the case.’
‘You sought me out—’
‘Tut! Let us have done with that. WE know very well how it was. Why
should you and I talk about it, when you and I can’t disguise it? To
proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.’
‘Am I no one?’
‘Some one—and I was coming to you, if you had waited a moment. You,
too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.’
‘An injured figure!’
‘You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can’t be injured
without my being equally injured; and that therefore the mere word is
not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such
a fool as to take you to so great an extent upon trust.’
‘And when I look back—’ the bride cries, interrupting.
‘And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been—you’ll excuse
the word?’
‘Most certainly, with so much reason.’
‘—Such a fool as to take ME to so great an extent upon trust. But the
folly is committed on both sides. I cannot get rid of you; you cannot
get rid of me. What follows?’
‘Shame and misery,’ the bride bitterly replies.
‘I don’t know. A mutual understanding follows, and I think it may carry
us through. Here I split my discourse (give me your arm, Sophronia),
into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer. Firstly, it’s enough
to have been done, without the mortification of being known to have been
done. So we agree to keep the fact to ourselves. You agree?’
‘If it is possible, I do.’
‘Possible! We have pretended well enough to one another. Can’t we,
united, pretend to the world? Agreed. Secondly, we owe the Veneerings
a grudge, and we owe all other people the grudge of wishing them to be
taken in, as we ourselves have been taken in. Agreed?’
‘Yes. Agreed.’
‘We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adventurer,
Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so I am. So are
you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to keep our own secret, and
to work together in furtherance of our own schemes.’
‘What schemes?’
‘Any scheme that will bring us money. By our own schemes, I mean our
joint interest. Agreed?’
She answers, after a little hesitation, ‘I suppose so. Agreed.’
‘Carried at once, you see! Now, Sophronia, only half a dozen words more.
We know one another perfectly. Don’t be tempted into twitting me with
the past knowledge that you have of me, because it is identical with
the past knowledge that I have of you, and in twitting me, you
twit yourself, and I don’t want to hear you do it. With this good
understanding established between us, it is better never done. To wind
up all:—You have shown temper today, Sophronia. Don’t be betrayed into
doing so again, because I have a Devil of a temper myself.’
So, the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract thus signed,
sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If, when those infernal
finger-marks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred
Lammle, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of subduing
his dear wife Mrs Alfred Lammle, by at once divesting her of any
lingering reality or pretence of self-respect, the purpose would seem
to have been presently executed. The mature young lady has mighty little