Our Mutual Friend
proceeded Fledgeby, with the greatest reluctance, ‘will you have another
egg?’
‘No, I won’t,’ said Lammle, shortly.
‘Perhaps you’re right and will find yourself better without it,’ replied
Fascination, in greatly improved spirits. ‘To ask you if you’ll have
another rasher would be unmeaning flattery, for it would make you
thirsty all day. Will you have some more bread and butter?’
‘No, I won’t,’ repeated Lammle.
‘Then I will,’ said Fascination. And it was not a mere retort for the
sound’s sake, but was a cheerful cogent consequence of the refusal; for
if Lammle had applied himself again to the loaf, it would have been so
heavily visited, in Fledgeby’s opinion, as to demand abstinence from
bread, on his part, for the remainder of that meal at least, if not for
the whole of the next.
Whether this young gentleman (for he was but three-and-twenty) combined
with the miserly vice of an old man, any of the open-handed vices of
a young one, was a moot point; so very honourably did he keep his own
counsel. He was sensible of the value of appearances as an investment,
and liked to dress well; but he drove a bargain for every moveable about
him, from the coat on his back to the china on his breakfast-table;
and every bargain by representing somebody’s ruin or somebody’s loss,
acquired a peculiar charm for him. It was a part of his avarice to take,
within narrow bounds, long odds at races; if he won, he drove harder
bargains; if he lost, he half starved himself until next time. Why money
should be so precious to an Ass too dull and mean to exchange it for any
other satisfaction, is strange; but there is no animal so sure to get
laden with it, as the Ass who sees nothing written on the face of the
earth and sky but the three letters L. S. D.—not Luxury, Sensuality,
Dissoluteness, which they often stand for, but the three dry letters.
Your concentrated Fox is seldom comparable to your concentrated Ass in
money-breeding.
Fascination Fledgeby feigned to be a young gentleman living on his
means, but was known secretly to be a kind of outlaw in the bill-broking
line, and to put money out at high interest in various ways. His circle
of familiar acquaintance, from Mr Lammle round, all had a touch of the
outlaw, as to their rovings in the merry greenwood of Jobbery Forest,
lying on the outskirts of the Share-Market and the Stock Exchange.
‘I suppose you, Lammle,’ said Fledgeby, eating his bread and butter,
‘always did go in for female society?’
‘Always,’ replied Lammle, glooming considerably under his late
treatment.
‘Came natural to you, eh?’ said Fledgeby.
‘The sex were pleased to like me, sir,’ said Lammle sulkily, but with
the air of a man who had not been able to help himself.
‘Made a pretty good thing of marrying, didn’t you?’ asked Fledgeby.
The other smiled (an ugly smile), and tapped one tap upon his nose.
‘My late governor made a mess of it,’ said Fledgeby. ‘But Geor—is the
right name Georgina or Georgiana?’
‘Georgiana.’
‘I was thinking yesterday, I didn’t know there was such a name. I
thought it must end in ina.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, you play—if you can—the Concertina, you know,’ replied
Fledgeby, meditating very slowly. ‘And you have—when you catch it—the
Scarlatina. And you can come down from a balloon in a parach—no you
can’t though. Well, say Georgeute—I mean Georgiana.’
‘You were going to remark of Georgiana—?’ Lammle moodily hinted, after
waiting in vain.
‘I was going to remark of Georgiana, sir,’ said Fledgeby, not at all
pleased to be reminded of his having forgotten it, ‘that she don’t seem
to be violent. Don’t seem to be of the pitching-in order.’
‘She has the gentleness of the dove, Mr Fledgeby.’
‘Of course you’ll say so,’ replied Fledgeby, sharpening, the moment his
interest was touched by another. ‘But you know, the real look-out is
this:—what I say, not what you say. I say having my late governor
and my late mother in my eye—that Georgiana don’t seem to be of the
pitching-in order.’
The respected Mr Lammle was a bully, by nature and by usual practice.
Perceiving, as Fledgeby’s affronts cumulated, that conciliation by no
means answered the purpose here, he now directed a scowling look
into Fledgeby’s small eyes for the effect of the opposite treatment.
Satisfied by what he saw there, he burst into a violent passion and
struck his hand upon the table, making the china ring and dance.
‘You are a very offensive fellow, sir,’ cried Mr Lammle, rising. ‘You
are a highly offensive scoundrel. What do you mean by this behaviour?’
‘I say!’ remonstrated Fledgeby. ‘Don’t break out.’
‘You are a very offensive fellow sir,’ repeated Mr Lammle. ‘You are a
highly offensive scoundrel!’
‘I SAY, you know!’ urged Fledgeby, quailing.
‘Why, you coarse and vulgar vagabond!’ said Mr Lammle, looking fiercely
about him, ‘if your servant was here to give me sixpence of your
money to get my boots cleaned afterwards—for you are not worth the
expenditure—I’d kick you.’
‘No you wouldn’t,’ pleaded Fledgeby. ‘I am sure you’d think better of
it.’
‘I tell you what, Mr Fledgeby,’ said Lammle advancing on him. ‘Since
you presume to contradict me, I’ll assert myself a little. Give me your
nose!’
Fledgeby covered it with his hand instead, and said, retreating, ‘I beg
you won’t!’
‘Give me your nose, sir,’ repeated Lammle.
Still covering that feature and backing, Mr Fledgeby reiterated
(apparently with a severe cold in his head), ‘I beg, I beg, you won’t.’
‘And this fellow,’ exclaimed Lammle, stopping and making the most of his
chest—‘This fellow presumes on my having selected him out of all the
young fellows I know, for an advantageous opportunity! This fellow
presumes on my having in my desk round the corner, his dirty note of
hand for a wretched sum payable on the occurrence of a certain event,
which event can only be of my and my wife’s bringing about! This fellow,
Fledgeby, presumes to be impertinent to me, Lammle. Give me your nose
sir!’
‘No! Stop! I beg your pardon,’ said Fledgeby, with humility.
‘What do you say, sir?’ demanded Mr Lammle, seeming too furious to
understand.
‘I beg your pardon,’ repeated Fledgeby.
‘Repeat your words louder, sir. The just indignation of a gentleman has
sent the blood boiling to my head. I don’t hear you.’
‘I say,’ repeated Fledgeby, with laborious explanatory politeness, ‘I
beg your pardon.’
Mr Lammle paused. ‘As a man of honour,’ said he, throwing himself into a
chair, ‘I am disarmed.’
Mr Fledgeby also took a chair, though less demonstratively, and by
slow approaches removed his hand from his nose. Some natural diffidence
assailed him as to blowing it, so shortly after its having assumed a
personal and delicate, not to say public, character; but he overcame
his scruples by degrees, and modestly took that liberty under an implied
protest.
‘Lammle,’ he said sneakingly, when that was done, ‘I hope we are friends
again?’
‘Mr Fledgeby,’ returned Lammle, ‘say no more.’
‘I must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable,’ said Fledgeby,
‘but I never intended it.’
‘Say no more, say no more!’ Mr Lammle repeated in a magnificent tone.
‘Give me your’—Fledgeby started—‘hand.’
They shook hands, and on Mr Lammle’s part, in particular, there ensued
great geniality. For, he was quite as much of a dastard as the other,
and had been in equal danger of falling into the second place for good,
when he took heart just in time, to act upon the information conveyed to
him by Fledgeby’s eye.
The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant machinations
were to be kept at work by Mr and Mrs Lammle; love was to be made for
Fledgeby, and conquest was to be insured to him; he on his part
very humbly admitting his defects as to the softer social arts, and
entreating to be backed to the utmost by his two able coadjutors.
Little recked Mr Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his Young
Person. He regarded her as safe within the Temple of Podsnappery, hiding
the fulness of time when she, Georgiana, should take him, Fitz-Podsnap,
who with all his worldly goods should her endow. It would call a blush
into the cheek of his standard Young Person to have anything to do with
such matters save to take as directed, and with worldly goods as per
settlement to be endowed. Who giveth this woman to be married to this
man? I, Podsnap. Perish the daring thought that any smaller creation
should come between!
It was a public holiday, and Fledgeby did not recover his spirits or his
usual temperature of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the City in
the holiday afternoon, he walked against a living stream setting out of
it; and thus, when he turned into the precincts of St Mary Axe, he found
a prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow overhanging plaster-fronted
house at which he stopped was quiet too. The blinds were all drawn down,
and the inscription Pubsey and Co. seemed to doze in the counting-house
window on the ground-floor giving on the sleepy street.
Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but no
one came. Fledgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at the
house-windows, but nobody looked down at Fledgeby. He got out of temper,
crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the housebell as if it were
the house’s nose, and he were taking a hint from his late experience.
His ear at the keyhole seemed then, at last, to give him assurance that
something stirred within. His eye at the keyhole seemed to confirm his
ear, for he angrily pulled the house’s nose again, and pulled and pulled
and continued to pull, until a human nose appeared in the dark doorway.
‘Now you sir!’ cried Fledgeby. ‘These are nice games!’
He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt, and
wide of pocket. A venerable man, bald and shining at the top of his
head, and with long grey hair flowing down at its sides and mingling
with his beard. A man who with a graceful Eastern action of homage bent
his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms downward, as if to
deprecate the wrath of a superior.
‘What have you been up to?’ said Fledgeby, storming at him.
‘Generous Christian master,’ urged the Jewish man, ‘it being holiday, I
looked for no one.’
‘Holiday he blowed!’ said Fledgeby, entering. ‘What have YOU got to do
with holidays? Shut the door.’
With his former action the old man obeyed. In the entry hung his rusty
large-brimmed low-crowned hat, as long out of date as his coat; in the
corner near it stood his staff—no walking-stick but a veritable staff.
Fledgeby turned into the counting-house, perched himself on a business
stool, and cocked his hat. There were light boxes on shelves in the
counting-house, and strings of mock beads hanging up. There were samples
of cheap clocks, and samples of cheap vases of flowers. Foreign toys,
all.
Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head and one of his legs
dangling, the youth of Fledgeby hardly contrasted to advantage with the
age of the Jewish man as he stood with his bare head bowed, and his eyes
(which he only raised in speaking) on the ground. His clothing was worn
down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry, but though he looked
shabby he did not look mean. Now, Fledgeby, though not shabby, did look
mean.
‘You have not told me what you were up to, you sir,’ said Fledgeby,
scratching his head with the brim of his hat.
‘Sir, I was breathing the air.’
‘In the cellar, that you didn’t hear?’
‘On the house-top.’
‘Upon my soul! That’s a way of doing business.’
‘Sir,’ the old man represented with a grave and patient air, ‘there must
be two parties to the transaction of business, and the holiday has left
me alone.’
‘Ah! Can’t be buyer and seller too. That’s what the Jews say; ain’t it?’