Our Mutual Friend
discretion of the Lammles than he had heretofore held, as showing that
they appreciated the value of the connexion. So, Georgiana repairing
to her friend, Mr Podsnap went out to dinner, and to dinner, and yet to
dinner, arm in arm with Mrs Podsnap: settling his obstinate head in his
cravat and shirt-collar, much as if he were performing on the Pandean
pipes, in his own honour, the triumphal march, See the conquering
Podsnap comes, Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
It was a trait in Mr Podsnap’s character (and in one form or other
it will be generally seen to pervade the depths and shallows of
Podsnappery), that he could not endure a hint of disparagement of any
friend or acquaintance of his. ‘How dare you?’ he would seem to say, in
such a case. ‘What do you mean? I have licensed this person. This person
has taken out MY certificate. Through this person you strike at me,
Podsnap the Great. And it is not that I particularly care for the
person’s dignity, but that I do most particularly care for Podsnap’s.’
Hence, if any one in his presence had presumed to doubt the
responsibility of the Lammles, he would have been mightily huffed. Not
that any one did, for Veneering, M.P., was always the authority for
their being very rich, and perhaps believed it. As indeed he might, if
he chose, for anything he knew of the matter.
Mr and Mrs Lammle’s house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, was but
a temporary residence. It has done well enough, they informed their
friends, for Mr Lammle when a bachelor, but it would not do now. So,
they were always looking at palatial residences in the best situations,
and always very nearly taking or buying one, but never quite concluding
the bargain. Hereby they made for themselves a shining little reputation
apart. People said, on seeing a vacant palatial residence, ‘The very
thing for the Lammles!’ and wrote to the Lammles about it, and the
Lammles always went to look at it, but unfortunately it never exactly
answered. In short, they suffered so many disappointments, that they
began to think it would be necessary to build a palatial residence.
And hereby they made another shining reputation; many persons of their
acquaintance becoming by anticipation dissatisfied with their own
houses, and envious of the non-existent Lammle structure.
The handsome fittings and furnishings of the house in Sackville Street
were piled thick and high over the skeleton up-stairs, and if it ever
whispered from under its load of upholstery, ‘Here I am in the closet!’
it was to very few ears, and certainly never to Miss Podsnap’s. What
Miss Podsnap was particularly charmed with, next to the graces of
her friend, was the happiness of her friend’s married life. This was
frequently their theme of conversation.
‘I am sure,’ said Miss Podsnap, ‘Mr Lammle is like a lover. At least
I—I should think he was.’
‘Georgiana, darling!’ said Mrs Lammle, holding up a forefinger, ‘Take
care!’
‘Oh my goodness me!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap, reddening. ‘What have I
said now?’
‘Alfred, you know,’ hinted Mrs Lammle, playfully shaking her head. ‘You
were never to say Mr Lammle any more, Georgiana.’
‘Oh! Alfred, then. I am glad it’s no worse. I was afraid I had said
something shocking. I am always saying something wrong to ma.’
‘To me, Georgiana dearest?’
‘No, not to you; you are not ma. I wish you were.’
Mrs Lammle bestowed a sweet and loving smile upon her friend, which Miss
Podsnap returned as she best could. They sat at lunch in Mrs Lammle’s
own boudoir.
‘And so, dearest Georgiana, Alfred is like your notion of a lover?’
‘I don’t say that, Sophronia,’ Georgiana replied, beginning to conceal
her elbows. ‘I haven’t any notion of a lover. The dreadful wretches that
ma brings up at places to torment me, are not lovers. I only mean that
Mr—’
‘Again, dearest Georgiana?’
‘That Alfred—’
‘Sounds much better, darling.’
‘—Loves you so. He always treats you with such delicate gallantry and
attention. Now, don’t he?’
‘Truly, my dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, with a rather singular expression
crossing her face. ‘I believe that he loves me, fully as much as I love
him.’
‘Oh, what happiness!’ exclaimed Miss Podsnap.
‘But do you know, my Georgiana,’ Mrs Lammle resumed presently, ‘that
there is something suspicious in your enthusiastic sympathy with
Alfred’s tenderness?’
‘Good gracious no, I hope not!’
‘Doesn’t it rather suggest,’ said Mrs Lammle archly, ‘that my
Georgiana’s little heart is—’
‘Oh don’t!’ Miss Podsnap blushingly besought her. ‘Please don’t! I
assure you, Sophronia, that I only praise Alfred, because he is your
husband and so fond of you.’
Sophronia’s glance was as if a rather new light broke in upon her. It
shaded off into a cool smile, as she said, with her eyes upon her lunch,
and her eyebrows raised:
‘You are quite wrong, my love, in your guess at my meaning. What I
insinuated was, that my Georgiana’s little heart was growing conscious
of a vacancy.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Georgiana. ‘I wouldn’t have anybody say anything to
me in that way for I don’t know how many thousand pounds.’
‘In what way, my Georgiana?’ inquired Mrs Lammle, still smiling coolly
with her eyes upon her lunch, and her eyebrows raised.
‘YOU know,’ returned poor little Miss Podsnap. ‘I think I should go out
of my mind, Sophronia, with vexation and shyness and detestation, if
anybody did. It’s enough for me to see how loving you and your husband
are. That’s a different thing. I couldn’t bear to have anything of that
sort going on with myself. I should beg and pray to—to have the person
taken away and trampled upon.’
Ah! here was Alfred. Having stolen in unobserved, he playfully leaned on
the back of Sophronia’s chair, and, as Miss Podsnap saw him, put one
of Sophronia’s wandering locks to his lips, and waved a kiss from it
towards Miss Podsnap.
‘What is this about husbands and detestations?’ inquired the captivating
Alfred.
‘Why, they say,’ returned his wife, ‘that listeners never hear any good
of themselves; though you—but pray how long have you been here, sir?’
‘This instant arrived, my own.’
‘Then I may go on—though if you had been here but a moment or two
sooner, you would have heard your praises sounded by Georgiana.’
‘Only, if they were to be called praises at all which I really don’t
think they were,’ explained Miss Podsnap in a flutter, ‘for being so
devoted to Sophronia.’
‘Sophronia!’ murmured Alfred. ‘My life!’ and kissed her hand. In return
for which she kissed his watch-chain.
‘But it was not I who was to be taken away and trampled upon, I hope?’
said Alfred, drawing a seat between them.
‘Ask Georgiana, my soul,’ replied his wife.
Alfred touchingly appealed to Georgiana.
‘Oh, it was nobody,’ replied Miss Podsnap. ‘It was nonsense.’
‘But if you are determined to know, Mr Inquisitive Pet, as I suppose you
are,’ said the happy and fond Sophronia, smiling, ‘it was any one who
should venture to aspire to Georgiana.’
‘Sophronia, my love,’ remonstrated Mr Lammle, becoming graver, ‘you are
not serious?’
‘Alfred, my love,’ returned his wife, ‘I dare say Georgiana was not, but
I am.’
‘Now this,’ said Mr Lammle, ‘shows the accidental combinations that
there are in things! Could you believe, my Ownest, that I came in here
with the name of an aspirant to our Georgiana on my lips?’
‘Of course I could believe, Alfred,’ said Mrs Lammle, ‘anything that YOU
told me.’
‘You dear one! And I anything that YOU told me.’
How delightful those interchanges, and the looks accompanying them! Now,
if the skeleton up-stairs had taken that opportunity, for instance, of
calling out ‘Here I am, suffocating in the closet!’
‘I give you my honour, my dear Sophronia—’
‘And I know what that is, love,’ said she.
‘You do, my darling—that I came into the room all but uttering young
Fledgeby’s name. Tell Georgiana, dearest, about young Fledgeby.’
‘Oh no, don’t! Please don’t!’ cried Miss Podsnap, putting her fingers in
her ears. ‘I’d rather not.’
Mrs Lammle laughed in her gayest manner, and, removing her Georgiana’s
unresisting hands, and playfully holding them in her own at arms’
length, sometimes near together and sometimes wide apart, went on:
‘You must know, you dearly beloved little goose, that once upon a
time there was a certain person called young Fledgeby. And this young
Fledgeby, who was of an excellent family and rich, was known to two
other certain persons, dearly attached to one another and called Mr and
Mrs Alfred Lammle. So this young Fledgeby, being one night at the play,
there sees with Mr and Mrs Alfred Lammle, a certain heroine called—’
‘No, don’t say Georgiana Podsnap!’ pleaded that young lady almost in
tears. ‘Please don’t. Oh do do do say somebody else! Not Georgiana
Podsnap. Oh don’t, don’t, don’t!’
‘No other,’ said Mrs Lammle, laughing airily, and, full of affectionate
blandishments, opening and closing Georgiana’s arms like a pair of
compasses, ‘than my little Georgiana Podsnap. So this young Fledgeby goes
to that Alfred Lammle and says—’
‘Oh ple-e-e-ease don’t!’ Georgiana, as if the supplication were being
squeezed out of her by powerful compression. ‘I so hate him for saying
it!’
‘For saying what, my dear?’ laughed Mrs Lammle.
‘Oh, I don’t know what he said,’ cried Georgiana wildly, ‘but I hate him
all the same for saying it.’
‘My dear,’ said Mrs Lammle, always laughing in her most captivating way,
‘the poor young fellow only says that he is stricken all of a heap.’
‘Oh, what shall I ever do!’ interposed Georgiana. ‘Oh my goodness what a
Fool he must be!’
‘—And implores to be asked to dinner, and to make a fourth at the play
another time. And so he dines to-morrow and goes to the Opera with
us. That’s all. Except, my dear Georgiana—and what will you think of
this!—that he is infinitely shyer than you, and far more afraid of you
than you ever were of any one in all your days!’
In perturbation of mind Miss Podsnap still fumed and plucked at her
hands a little, but could not help laughing at the notion of anybody’s
being afraid of her. With that advantage, Sophronia flattered her and
rallied her more successfully, and then the insinuating Alfred flattered
her and rallied her, and promised that at any moment when she might
require that service at his hands, he would take young Fledgeby out and
trample on him. Thus it remained amicably understood that young Fledgeby
was to come to admire, and that Georgiana was to come to be admired; and
Georgiana with the entirely new sensation in her breast of having that
prospect before her, and with many kisses from her dear Sophronia in
present possession, preceded six feet one of discontented footman (an
amount of the article that always came for her when she walked home) to
her father’s dwelling.
The happy pair being left together, Mrs Lammle said to her husband:
‘If I understand this girl, sir, your dangerous fascinations have
produced some effect upon her. I mention the conquest in good time
because I apprehend your scheme to be more important to you than your
vanity.’
There was a mirror on the wall before them, and her eyes just caught
him smirking in it. She gave the reflected image a look of the deepest
disdain, and the image received it in the glass. Next moment they
quietly eyed each other, as if they, the principals, had had no part in
that expressive transaction.
It may have been that Mrs Lammle tried in some manner to excuse her
conduct to herself by depreciating the poor little victim of whom she
spoke with acrimonious contempt. It may have been too that in this she
did not quite succeed, for it is very difficult to resist confidence,
and she knew she had Georgiana’s.
Nothing more was said between the happy pair. Perhaps conspirators