Our Mutual Friend
the long bright rows, by hearing them ask, all together a long way off,
“Who is this in pain! Who is this in pain!” And I used to cry out, “O my
blessed children, it’s poor me. Have pity on me. Take me up and make me
light!”’
By degrees, as she progressed in this remembrance, the hand was raised,
the late ecstatic look returned, and she became quite beautiful. Having
so paused for a moment, silent, with a listening smile upon her face,
she looked round and recalled herself.
‘What poor fun you think me; don’t you, Mr Wrayburn? You may well look
tired of me. But it’s Saturday night, and I won’t detain you.’
‘That is to say, Miss Wren,’ observed Eugene, quite ready to profit by
the hint, ‘you wish me to go?’
‘Well, it’s Saturday night,’ she returned, ‘and my child’s coming
home. And my child is a troublesome bad child, and costs me a world of
scolding. I would rather you didn’t see my child.’
‘A doll?’ said Eugene, not understanding, and looking for an
explanation.
But Lizzie, with her lips only, shaping the two words, ‘Her father,’ he
delayed no longer. He took his leave immediately. At the corner of the
street he stopped to light another cigar, and possibly to ask himself
what he was doing otherwise. If so, the answer was indefinite and vague.
Who knows what he is doing, who is careless what he does!
A man stumbled against him as he turned away, who mumbled some maudlin
apology. Looking after this man, Eugene saw him go in at the door by
which he himself had just come out.
On the man’s stumbling into the room, Lizzie rose to leave it.
‘Don’t go away, Miss Hexam,’ he said in a submissive manner, speaking
thickly and with difficulty. ‘Don’t fly from unfortunate man in
shattered state of health. Give poor invalid honour of your company. It
ain’t—ain’t catching.’
Lizzie murmured that she had something to do in her own room, and went
away upstairs.
‘How’s my Jenny?’ said the man, timidly. ‘How’s my Jenny Wren, best of
children, object dearest affections broken-hearted invalid?’
To which the person of the house, stretching out her arm in an attitude
of command, replied with irresponsive asperity: ‘Go along with you! Go
along into your corner! Get into your corner directly!’
The wretched spectacle made as if he would have offered some
remonstrance; but not venturing to resist the person of the house,
thought better of it, and went and sat down on a particular chair of
disgrace.
‘Oh-h-h!’ cried the person of the house, pointing her little finger,
‘You bad old boy! Oh-h-h you naughty, wicked creature! WHAT do you mean
by it?’
The shaking figure, unnerved and disjointed from head to foot, put
out its two hands a little way, as making overtures of peace and
reconciliation. Abject tears stood in its eyes, and stained the blotched
red of its cheeks. The swollen lead-coloured under lip trembled with a
shameful whine. The whole indecorous threadbare ruin, from the broken
shoes to the prematurely-grey scanty hair, grovelled. Not with any sense
worthy to be called a sense, of this dire reversal of the places of
parent and child, but in a pitiful expostulation to be let off from a
scolding.
‘I know your tricks and your manners,’ cried Miss Wren. ‘I know where
you’ve been to!’ (which indeed it did not require discernment to
discover). ‘Oh, you disgraceful old chap!’
The very breathing of the figure was contemptible, as it laboured and
rattled in that operation, like a blundering clock.
‘Slave, slave, slave, from morning to night,’ pursued the person of the
house, ‘and all for this! WHAT do you mean by it?’
There was something in that emphasized ‘What,’ which absurdly frightened
the figure. As often as the person of the house worked her way round to
it—even as soon as he saw that it was coming—he collapsed in an extra
degree.
‘I wish you had been taken up, and locked up,’ said the person of the
house. ‘I wish you had been poked into cells and black holes, and run
over by rats and spiders and beetles. I know their tricks and their
manners, and they’d have tickled you nicely. Ain’t you ashamed of
yourself?’
‘Yes, my dear,’ stammered the father.
‘Then,’ said the person of the house, terrifying him by a grand muster
of her spirits and forces before recurring to the emphatic word, ‘WHAT
do you mean by it?’
‘Circumstances over which had no control,’ was the miserable creature’s
plea in extenuation.
‘I’LL circumstance you and control you too,’ retorted the person of the
house, speaking with vehement sharpness, ‘if you talk in that way. I’ll
give you in charge to the police, and have you fined five shillings when
you can’t pay, and then I won’t pay the money for you, and you’ll be
transported for life. How should you like to be transported for life?’
‘Shouldn’t like it. Poor shattered invalid. Trouble nobody long,’ cried
the wretched figure.
‘Come, come!’ said the person of the house, tapping the table near her
in a business-like manner, and shaking her head and her chin; ‘you know
what you’ve got to do. Put down your money this instant.’
The obedient figure began to rummage in its pockets.
‘Spent a fortune out of your wages, I’ll be bound!’ said the person of
the house. ‘Put it here! All you’ve got left! Every farthing!’
Such a business as he made of collecting it from his dogs’-eared
pockets; of expecting it in this pocket, and not finding it; of not
expecting it in that pocket, and passing it over; of finding no pocket
where that other pocket ought to be!
‘Is this all?’ demanded the person of the house, when a confused heap of
pence and shillings lay on the table.
‘Got no more,’ was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of the
head.
‘Let me make sure. You know what you’ve got to do. Turn all your pockets
inside out, and leave ’em so!’ cried the person of the house.
He obeyed. And if anything could have made him look more abject or more
dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been his so displaying
himself.
‘Here’s but seven and eightpence halfpenny!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, after
reducing the heap to order. ‘Oh, you prodigal old son! Now you shall be
starved.’
‘No, don’t starve me,’ he urged, whimpering.
‘If you were treated as you ought to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘you’d be fed
upon the skewers of cats’ meat;—only the skewers, after the cats had
had the meat. As it is, go to bed.’
When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put out both his
hands, and pleaded: ‘Circumstances over which no control—’
‘Get along with you to bed!’ cried Miss Wren, snapping him up. ‘Don’t
speak to me. I’m not going to forgive you. Go to bed this moment!’
Seeing another emphatic ‘What’ upon its way, he evaded it by complying
and was heard to shuffle heavily up stairs, and shut his door, and throw
himself on his bed. Within a little while afterwards, Lizzie came down.
‘Shall we have our supper, Jenny dear?’
‘Ah! bless us and save us, we need have something to keep us going,’
returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders.
Lizzie laid a cloth upon the little bench (more handy for the person of
the house than an ordinary table), and put upon it such plain fare as
they were accustomed to have, and drew up a stool for herself.
‘Now for supper! What are you thinking of, Jenny darling?’
‘I was thinking,’ she returned, coming out of a deep study, ‘what I
would do to Him, if he should turn out a drunkard.’
‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll take care of that, beforehand.’
‘I shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive me.
Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do
deceive!’ With the little fist in full action. ‘And if so, I tell you
what I think I’d do. When he was asleep, I’d make a spoon red hot, and
I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan, and I’d take it
out hissing, and I’d open his mouth with the other hand—or perhaps he’d
sleep with his mouth ready open—and I’d pour it down his throat, and
blister it and choke him.’
‘I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,’ said Lizzie.
‘Shouldn’t I? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t. But I should like to!’
‘I am equally sure you would not.’
‘Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you haven’t
always lived among it as I have lived—and your back isn’t bad and your
legs are not queer.’
As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her round to
that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken. The person
of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares,
with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even
innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll’s
dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of
the earth, earthy.
Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should
have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the
eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll’s dressmaker!
Chapter 3
A PIECE OF WORK
Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude in
which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden
that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering
is ‘a representative man’—which cannot in these times be doubted—and
that Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So,
Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if
Veneering will ‘put down’ five thousand pounds, he may write a couple
of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two
thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between
Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five
thousand pounds, but that being put down they will disappear by magical
conjuration and enchantment.
The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence going straight from that
lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering declares himself highly
flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain ‘whether his friends
will rally round him.’ Above all things, he says, it behoves him to be
clear, at a crisis of this importance, ‘whether his friends will rally
round him.’ The legal gentleman, in the interests of his client cannot
allow much time for this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows
somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds; but he says he will
give Veneering four hours.
Veneering then says to Mrs Veneering, ‘We must work,’ and throws himself
into a Hansom cab. Mrs Veneering in the same moment relinquishes baby
to Nurse; presses her aquiline hands upon her brow, to arrange the
throbbing intellect within; orders out the carriage; and repeats in
a distracted and devoted manner, compounded of Ophelia and any
self-immolating female of antiquity you may prefer, ‘We must work.’
Veneering having instructed his driver to charge at the Public in the
streets, like the Life-Guards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to Duke
Street, Saint James’s. There, he finds Twemlow in his lodgings, fresh
from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something to his
hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that Twemlow shall, for
two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright and dry
gradually, he is in an appropriate state for the receipt of startling
intelligence; looking equally like the Monument on Fish Street Hill, and
King Priam on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly unknown as a neat
point from the classics.
‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, grasping both his hands, ‘as the
dearest and oldest of my friends—’
(‘Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,’ thinks Twemlow,
‘and I AM!’)
‘—Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would give his