Our Mutual Friend
To which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one
another, and addressing the tablecloth, ‘Thank you, but I generally go
with no one but you, Sophronia, and I like that very much.’
Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr Lammle let Miss
Podsnap out of the room, as if he were opening her cage door, and Mrs
Lammle followed. Coffee being presently served up stairs, he kept a
watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap’s cup was empty, and then directed
him with his finger (as if that young gentleman were a slow Retriever)
to go and fetch it. This feat he performed, not only without failure,
but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Podsnap that
green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Podsnap
unintentionally threw him out by faltering, ‘Oh, is it indeed? How does
it act?’ Which he was not prepared to elucidate.
The carriage announced, Mrs Lammle said; ‘Don’t mind me, Mr Fledgeby, my
skirts and cloak occupy both my hands, take Miss Podsnap.’ And he
took her, and Mrs Lammle went next, and Mr Lammle went last, savagely
following his little flock, like a drover.
But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box at the Opera, and there he
and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and Georgiana in
the following ingenious and skilful manner. They sat in this order:
Mrs Lammle, Fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana, Mr Lammle. Mrs Lammle made
leading remarks to Fledgeby, only requiring monosyllabic replies. Mr
Lammle did the like with Georgiana. At times Mrs Lammle would lean
forward to address Mr Lammle to this purpose.
‘Alfred, my dear, Mr Fledgeby very justly says, apropos of the last
scene, that true constancy would not require any such stimulant as the
stage deems necessary.’ To which Mr Lammle would reply, ‘Ay, Sophronia,
my love, but as Georgiana has observed to me, the lady had no sufficient
reason to know the state of the gentleman’s affections.’ To which Mrs
Lammle would rejoin, ‘Very true, Alfred; but Mr Fledgeby points
out,’ this. To which Alfred would demur: ‘Undoubtedly, Sophronia, but
Georgiana acutely remarks,’ that. Through this device the two young
people conversed at great length and committed themselves to a variety
of delicate sentiments, without having once opened their lips, save to
say yes or no, and even that not to one another.
Fledgeby took his leave of Miss Podsnap at the carriage door, and the
Lammles dropped her at her own home, and on the way Mrs Lammle archly
rallied her, in her fond and protecting manner, by saying at intervals,
‘Oh little Georgiana, little Georgiana!’ Which was not much; but the
tone added, ‘You have enslaved your Fledgeby.’
And thus the Lammles got home at last, and the lady sat down moody and
weary, looking at her dark lord engaged in a deed of violence with a
bottle of soda-water as though he were wringing the neck of some unlucky
creature and pouring its blood down his throat. As he wiped his dripping
whiskers in an ogreish way, he met her eyes, and pausing, said, with no
very gentle voice:
‘Well?’
‘Was such an absolute Booby necessary to the purpose?’
‘I know what I am doing. He is no such dolt as you suppose.’
‘A genius, perhaps?’
‘You sneer, perhaps; and you take a lofty air upon yourself perhaps!
But I tell you this:—when that young fellow’s interest is concerned,
he holds as tight as a horse-leech. When money is in question with that
young fellow, he is a match for the Devil.’
‘Is he a match for you?’
‘He is. Almost as good a one as you thought me for you. He has no
quality of youth in him, but such as you have seen to-day. Touch him
upon money, and you touch no booby then. He really is a dolt, I suppose,
in other things; but it answers his one purpose very well.’
‘Has she money in her own right in any case?’
‘Ay! she has money in her own right in any case. You have done so well
to-day, Sophronia, that I answer the question, though you know I object
to any such questions. You have done so well to-day, Sophronia, that you
must be tired. Get to bed.’
Chapter 5
MERCURY PROMPTING
Fledgeby deserved Mr Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was the meanest
cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all
clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on
two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on
two.
The father of this young gentleman had been a money-lender, who
had transacted professional business with the mother of this
young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast dark
ante-chambers of the present world to be born. The lady, a widow, being
unable to pay the money-lender, married him; and in due course, Fledgeby
was summoned out of the vast dark ante-chambers to come and be presented
to the Registrar-General. Rather a curious speculation how Fledgeby
would otherwise have disposed of his leisure until Doomsday.
Fledgeby’s mother offended her family by marrying Fledgeby’s father. It
is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when
your family want to get rid of you. Fledgeby’s mother’s family had
been very much offended with her for being poor, and broke with her
for becoming comparatively rich. Fledgeby’s mother’s family was the
Snigsworth family. She had even the high honour to be cousin to Lord
Snigsworth—so many times removed that the noble Earl would have had no
compunction in removing her one time more and dropping her clean outside
the cousinly pale; but cousin for all that.
Among her pre-matrimonial transactions with Fledgeby’s father,
Fledgeby’s mother had raised money of him at a great disadvantage on a
certain reversionary interest. The reversion falling in soon after they
were married, Fledgeby’s father laid hold of the cash for his separate
use and benefit. This led to subjective differences of opinion, not to
say objective interchanges of boot-jacks, backgammon boards, and other
such domestic missiles, between Fledgeby’s father and Fledgeby’s mother,
and those led to Fledgeby’s mother spending as much money as she
could, and to Fledgeby’s father doing all he couldn’t to restrain her.
Fledgeby’s childhood had been, in consequence, a stormy one; but the
winds and the waves had gone down in the grave, and Fledgeby flourished
alone.
He lived in chambers in the Albany, did Fledgeby, and maintained a
spruce appearance. But his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from
the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed
anything, be sure that Fledgeby had his tools at the grindstone, and
turned it with a wary eye.
Mr Alfred Lammle came round to the Albany to breakfast with Fledgeby.
Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty
pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an
abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.
‘What did you think of Georgiana?’ asked Mr Lammle.
‘Why, I’ll tell you,’ said Fledgeby, very deliberately.
‘Do, my boy.’
‘You misunderstand me,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I don’t mean I’ll tell you that.
I mean I’ll tell you something else.’
‘Tell me anything, old fellow!’
‘Ah, but there you misunderstand me again,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I mean I’ll
tell you nothing.’
Mr Lammle sparkled at him, but frowned at him too.
‘Look here,’ said Fledgeby. ‘You’re deep and you’re ready. Whether I am
deep or not, never mind. I am not ready. But I can do one thing, Lammle,
I can hold my tongue. And I intend always doing it.’
‘You are a long-headed fellow, Fledgeby.’
‘May be, or may not be. If I am a short-tongued fellow, it may amount to
the same thing. Now, Lammle, I am never going to answer questions.’
‘My dear fellow, it was the simplest question in the world.’
‘Never mind. It seemed so, but things are not always what they seem. I
saw a man examined as a witness in Westminster Hall. Questions put to
him seemed the simplest in the world, but turned out to be anything
rather than that, after he had answered ’em. Very well. Then he should
have held his tongue. If he had held his tongue he would have kept out
of scrapes that he got into.’
‘If I had held my tongue, you would never have seen the subject of my
question,’ remarked Lammle, darkening.
‘Now, Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby, calmly feeling for his
whisker, ‘it won’t do. I won’t be led on into a discussion. I can’t
manage a discussion. But I can manage to hold my tongue.’
‘Can?’ Mr Lammle fell back upon propitiation. ‘I should think you could!
Why, when these fellows of our acquaintance drink and you drink with
them, the more talkative they get, the more silent you get. The more
they let out, the more you keep in.’
‘I don’t object, Lammle,’ returned Fledgeby, with an internal chuckle,
‘to being understood, though I object to being questioned. That
certainly IS the way I do it.’
‘And when all the rest of us are discussing our ventures, none of us
ever know what a single venture of yours is!’
‘And none of you ever will from me, Lammle,’ replied Fledgeby, with
another internal chuckle; ‘that certainly IS the way I do it.’
‘Why of course it is, I know!’ rejoined Lammle, with a flourish of
frankness, and a laugh, and stretching out his hands as if to show
the universe a remarkable man in Fledgeby. ‘If I hadn’t known it of my
Fledgeby, should I have proposed our little compact of advantage, to my
Fledgeby?’
‘Ah!’ remarked Fascination, shaking his head slyly. ‘But I am not to
be got at in that way. I am not vain. That sort of vanity don’t pay,
Lammle. No, no, no. Compliments only make me hold my tongue the more.’
Alfred Lammle pushed his plate away (no great sacrifice under the
circumstances of there being so little in it), thrust his hands in his
pockets, leaned back in his chair, and contemplated Fledgeby in silence.
Then he slowly released his left hand from its pocket, and made that
bush of his whiskers, still contemplating him in silence. Then he slowly
broke silence, and slowly said: ‘What—the—Dev-il is this fellow about
this morning?’
‘Now, look here, Lammle,’ said Fascination Fledgeby, with the meanest
of twinkles in his meanest of eyes: which were too near together, by
the way: ‘look here, Lammle; I am very well aware that I didn’t show to
advantage last night, and that you and your wife—who, I consider, is
a very clever woman and an agreeable woman—did. I am not calculated to
show to advantage under that sort of circumstances. I know very well you
two did show to advantage, and managed capitally. But don’t you on that
account come talking to me as if I was your doll and puppet, because I
am not.
‘And all this,’ cried Alfred, after studying with a look the meanness
that was fain to have the meanest help, and yet was so mean as to turn
upon it: ‘all this because of one simple natural question!’
‘You should have waited till I thought proper to say something about it
of myself. I don’t like your coming over me with your Georgianas, as if
you was her proprietor and mine too.’
‘Well, when you are in the gracious mind to say anything about it of
yourself,’ retorted Lammle, ‘pray do.’
‘I have done it. I have said you managed capitally. You and your wife
both. If you’ll go on managing capitally, I’ll go on doing my part. Only
don’t crow.’
‘I crow!’ exclaimed Lammle, shrugging his shoulders.
‘Or,’ pursued the other—‘or take it in your head that people are your
puppets because they don’t come out to advantage at the particular
moments when you do, with the assistance of a very clever and agreeable
wife. All the rest keep on doing, and let Mrs Lammle keep on doing. Now,
I have held my tongue when I thought proper, and I have spoken when I
thought proper, and there’s an end of that. And now the question is,’