Our Mutual Friend
automaton ceased, and the sixteen, two and two, took a walk among
the furniture. And herein the unconsciousness of the Ogre Grompus was
pleasantly conspicuous; for, that complacent monster, believing that
he was giving Miss Podsnap a treat, prolonged to the utmost stretch
of possibility a peripatetic account of an archery meeting; while his
victim, heading the procession of sixteen as it slowly circled about,
like a revolving funeral, never raised her eyes except once to steal a
glance at Mrs Lammle, expressive of intense despair.
At length the procession was dissolved by the violent arrival of a
nutmeg, before which the drawing-room door bounced open as if it were a
cannon-ball; and while that fragrant article, dispersed through several
glasses of coloured warm water, was going the round of society, Miss
Podsnap returned to her seat by her new friend.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘THAT’S over! I hope you didn’t
look at me.’
‘My dear, why not?’
‘Oh I know all about myself,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘I’ll tell you something I know about you, my dear,’ returned Mrs Lammle
in her winning way, ‘and that is, you are most unnecessarily shy.’
‘Ma ain’t,’ said Miss Podsnap. ‘—I detest you! Go along!’ This shot
was levelled under her breath at the gallant Grompus for bestowing an
insinuating smile upon her in passing.
‘Pardon me if I scarcely see, my dear Miss Podsnap,’ Mrs Lammle was
beginning when the young lady interposed.
‘If we are going to be real friends (and I suppose we are, for you are
the only person who ever proposed it) don’t let us be awful. It’s awful
enough to BE Miss Podsnap, without being called so. Call me Georgiana.’
‘Dearest Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle began again.
‘Thank you,’ said Miss Podsnap.
‘Dearest Georgiana, pardon me if I scarcely see, my love, why your
mamma’s not being shy, is a reason why you should be.’
‘Don’t you really see that?’ asked Miss Podsnap, plucking at her fingers
in a troubled manner, and furtively casting her eyes now on Mrs Lammle,
now on the ground. ‘Then perhaps it isn’t?’
‘My dearest Georgiana, you defer much too readily to my poor opinion.
Indeed it is not even an opinion, darling, for it is only a confession
of my dullness.’
‘Oh YOU are not dull,’ returned Miss Podsnap. ‘I am dull, but you
couldn’t have made me talk if you were.’
Some little touch of conscience answering this perception of her having
gained a purpose, called bloom enough into Mrs Lammle’s face to make it
look brighter as she sat smiling her best smile on her dear Georgiana,
and shaking her head with an affectionate playfulness. Not that it meant
anything, but that Georgiana seemed to like it.
‘What I mean is,’ pursued Georgiana, ‘that Ma being so endowed with
awfulness, and Pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being
so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I
am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened
at it—I say it very badly—I don’t know whether you can understand what
I mean?’
‘Perfectly, dearest Georgiana!’ Mrs Lammle was proceeding with every
reassuring wile, when the head of that young lady suddenly went back
against the wall again and her eyes closed.
‘Oh there’s Ma being awful with somebody with a glass in his eye! Oh I
know she’s going to bring him here! Oh don’t bring him, don’t bring him!
Oh he’ll be my partner with his glass in his eye! Oh what shall I do!’
This time Georgiana accompanied her ejaculations with taps of her feet
upon the floor, and was altogether in quite a desperate condition. But,
there was no escape from the majestic Mrs Podsnap’s production of an
ambling stranger, with one eye screwed up into extinction and the other
framed and glazed, who, having looked down out of that organ, as if he
descried Miss Podsnap at the bottom of some perpendicular shaft, brought
her to the surface, and ambled off with her. And then the captive at the
piano played another ‘set,’ expressive of his mournful aspirations after
freedom, and other sixteen went through the former melancholy motions,
and the ambler took Miss Podsnap for a furniture walk, as if he had
struck out an entirely original conception.
In the mean time a stray personage of a meek demeanour, who had wandered
to the hearthrug and got among the heads of tribes assembled there in
conference with Mr Podsnap, eliminated Mr Podsnap’s flush and
flourish by a highly unpolite remark; no less than a reference to the
circumstance that some half-dozen people had lately died in the streets,
of starvation. It was clearly ill-timed after dinner. It was not adapted
to the cheek of the young person. It was not in good taste.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Mr Podsnap, putting it behind him.
The meek man was afraid we must take it as proved, because there were
the Inquests and the Registrar’s returns.
‘Then it was their own fault,’ said Mr Podsnap.
Veneering and other elders of tribes commended this way out of it. At
once a short cut and a broad road.
The man of meek demeanour intimated that truly it would seem from
the facts, as if starvation had been forced upon the culprits in
question—as if, in their wretched manner, they had made their weak
protests against it—as if they would have taken the liberty of staving
it off if they could—as if they would rather not have been starved upon
the whole, if perfectly agreeable to all parties.
‘There is not,’ said Mr Podsnap, flushing angrily, ‘there is not a
country in the world, sir, where so noble a provision is made for the
poor as in this country.’
The meek man was quite willing to concede that, but perhaps it
rendered the matter even worse, as showing that there must be something
appallingly wrong somewhere.
‘Where?’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man hinted Wouldn’t it be well to try, very seriously, to find
out where?
‘Ah!’ said Mr Podsnap. ‘Easy to say somewhere; not so easy to say
where! But I see what you are driving at. I knew it from the first.
Centralization. No. Never with my consent. Not English.’
An approving murmur arose from the heads of tribes; as saying, ‘There
you have him! Hold him!’
He was not aware (the meek man submitted of himself) that he was driving
at any ization. He had no favourite ization that he knew of. But he
certainly was more staggered by these terrible occurrences than he was
by names, of howsoever so many syllables. Might he ask, was dying of
destitution and neglect necessarily English?
‘You know what the population of London is, I suppose,’ said Mr Podsnap.
The meek man supposed he did, but supposed that had absolutely nothing
to do with it, if its laws were well administered.
‘And you know; at least I hope you know;’ said Mr Podsnap, with
severity, ‘that Providence has declared that you shall have the poor
always with you?’
The meek man also hoped he knew that.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Mr Podsnap with a portentous air. ‘I am
glad to hear it. It will render you cautious how you fly in the face of
Providence.’
In reference to that absurd and irreverent conventional phrase, the meek
man said, for which Mr Podsnap was not responsible, he the meek man had
no fear of doing anything so impossible; but—
But Mr Podsnap felt that the time had come for flushing and flourishing
this meek man down for good. So he said:
‘I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to
my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings. I have said that I do not
admit these things. I have also said that if they do occur (not that I
admit it), the fault lies with the sufferers themselves. It is not for
ME’—Mr Podsnap pointed ‘me’ forcibly, as adding by implication though
it may be all very well for YOU—‘it is not for me to impugn the
workings of Providence. I know better than that, I trust, and I have
mentioned what the intentions of Providence are. Besides,’ said
Mr Podsnap, flushing high up among his hair-brushes, with a strong
consciousness of personal affront, ‘the subject is a very disagreeable
one. I will go so far as to say it is an odious one. It is not one to be
introduced among our wives and young persons, and I—’ He finished with
that flourish of his arm which added more expressively than any words,
And I remove it from the face of the earth.
Simultaneously with this quenching of the meek man’s ineffectual fire;
Georgiana having left the ambler up a lane of sofa, in a No Thoroughfare
of back drawing-room, to find his own way out, came back to Mrs Lammle.
And who should be with Mrs Lammle, but Mr Lammle. So fond of her!
‘Alfred, my love, here is my friend. Georgiana, dearest girl, you must
like my husband next to me.’
Mr Lammle was proud to be so soon distinguished by this special
commendation to Miss Podsnap’s favour. But if Mr Lammle were prone to be
jealous of his dear Sophronia’s friendships, he would be jealous of her
feeling towards Miss Podsnap.
‘Say Georgiana, darling,’ interposed his wife.
‘Towards—shall I?—Georgiana.’ Mr Lammle uttered the name, with a
delicate curve of his right hand, from his lips outward. ‘For never have
I known Sophronia (who is not apt to take sudden likings) so attracted
and so captivated as she is by—shall I once more?—Georgiana.’
The object of this homage sat uneasily enough in receipt of it, and then
said, turning to Mrs Lammle, much embarrassed:
‘I wonder what you like me for! I am sure I can’t think.’
‘Dearest Georgiana, for yourself. For your difference from all around
you.’
‘Well! That may be. For I think I like you for your difference from all
around me,’ said Georgiana with a smile of relief.
‘We must be going with the rest,’ observed Mrs Lammle, rising with a
show of unwillingness, amidst a general dispersal. ‘We are real friends,
Georgiana dear?’
‘Real.’
‘Good night, dear girl!’
She had established an attraction over the shrinking nature upon which
her smiling eyes were fixed, for Georgiana held her hand while she
answered in a secret and half-frightened tone:
‘Don’t forget me when you are gone away. And come again soon. Good
night!’
Charming to see Mr and Mrs Lammle taking leave so gracefully, and going
down the stairs so lovingly and sweetly. Not quite so charming to see
their smiling faces fall and brood as they dropped moodily into separate
corners of their little carriage. But to be sure that was a sight behind
the scenes, which nobody saw, and which nobody was meant to see.
Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap plate,
took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much; and the
less valuable articles got away after their various manners; and the
Podsnap plate was put to bed. As Mr Podsnap stood with his back to the
drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirtcollar, like a veritable cock
of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions,
nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss
Podsnap, or any other young person properly born and bred, could not be
exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished
like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such
a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for
anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate;
or that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region
bounded on the north, south, east, and west, by the plate; was a
monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into
space. This perhaps in some sort arose from Mr Podsnap’s blushing young
person being, so to speak, all cheek; whereas there is a possibility
that there may be young persons of a rather more complex organization.
If Mr Podsnap, pulling up his shirt-collar, could only have heard