Our Mutual Friend
hand with the original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean
corner.
‘Very well indeed!’ are at length the words which Twemlow with great
difficulty extracts from himself.
‘I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the best.
The others are so dark. Now here, for instance, is another of Mr
Lammle—’
‘But I don’t understand; I don’t see my way,’ Twemlow stammers, as he
falters over the book with his glass at his eye. ‘How warn her father,
and not tell him? Tell him how much? Tell him how little? I—I—am
getting lost.’
‘Tell him I am a match-maker; tell him I am an artful and designing
woman; tell him you are sure his daughter is best out of my house and my
company. Tell him any such things of me; they will all be true. You know
what a puffed-up man he is, and how easily you can cause his vanity to
take the alarm. Tell him as much as will give him the alarm and make
him careful of her, and spare me the rest. Mr Twemlow, I feel my sudden
degradation in your eyes; familiar as I am with my degradation in my own
eyes, I keenly feel the change that must have come upon me in yours,
in these last few moments. But I trust to your good faith with me as
implicitly as when I began. If you knew how often I have tried to speak
to you to-day, you would almost pity me. I want no new promise from you
on my own account, for I am satisfied, and I always shall be satisfied,
with the promise you have given me. I can venture to say no more, for
I see that I am watched. If you would set my mind at rest with the
assurance that you will interpose with the father and save this harmless
girl, close that book before you return it to me, and I shall know what
you mean, and deeply thank you in my heart.—Alfred, Mr Twemlow thinks
the last one the best, and quite agrees with you and me.’
Alfred advances. The groups break up. Lady Tippins rises to go, and Mrs
Veneering follows her leader. For the moment, Mrs Lammle does not turn
to them, but remains looking at Twemlow looking at Alfred’s portrait
through his eyeglass. The moment past, Twemlow drops his eyeglass at its
ribbon’s length, rises, and closes the book with an emphasis which makes
that fragile nursling of the fairies, Tippins, start.
Then good-bye and good-bye, and charming occasion worthy of the Golden
Age, and more about the flitch of bacon, and the like of that; and
Twemlow goes staggering across Piccadilly with his hand to his forehead,
and is nearly run down by a flushed lettercart, and at last drops
safe in his easy-chair, innocent good gentleman, with his hand to his
forehead still, and his head in a whirl.
BOOK THE THIRD — A LONG LANE
Chapter 1
LODGERS IN QUEER STREET
It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate
London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing,
and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose
between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.
Gaslights flared in the shops with a haggard and unblest air, as knowing
themselves to be night-creatures that had no business abroad under the
sun; while the sun itself when it was for a few moments dimly indicated
through circling eddies of fog, showed as if it had gone out and were
collapsing flat and cold. Even in the surrounding country it was a foggy
day, but there the fog was grey, whereas in London it was, at about
the boundary line, dark yellow, and a little within it brown, and then
browner, and then browner, until at the heart of the City—which call
Saint Mary Axe—it was rusty-black. From any point of the high ridge of
land northward, it might have been discerned that the loftiest buildings
made an occasional struggle to get their heads above the foggy sea, and
especially that the great dome of Saint Paul’s seemed to die hard; but
this was not perceivable in the streets at their feet, where the whole
metropolis was a heap of vapour charged with muffled sound of wheels,
and enfolding a gigantic catarrh.
At nine o’clock on such a morning, the place of business of Pubsey and
Co. was not the liveliest object even in Saint Mary Axe—which is not a
very lively spot—with a sobbing gaslight in the counting-house window,
and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in to strangle it through the
keyhole of the main door. But the light went out, and the main door
opened, and Riah came forth with a bag under his arm.
Almost in the act of coming out at the door, Riah went into the fog, and
was lost to the eyes of Saint Mary Axe. But the eyes of this history
can follow him westward, by Cornhill, Cheapside, Fleet Street, and the
Strand, to Piccadilly and the Albany. Thither he went at his grave and
measured pace, staff in hand, skirt at heel; and more than one head,
turning to look back at his venerable figure already lost in the mist,
supposed it to be some ordinary figure indistinctly seen, which fancy
and the fog had worked into that passing likeness.
Arrived at the house in which his master’s chambers were on the
second floor, Riah proceeded up the stairs, and paused at Fascination
Fledgeby’s door. Making free with neither bell nor knocker, he struck
upon the door with the top of his staff, and, having listened, sat down
on the threshold. It was characteristic of his habitual submission,
that he sat down on the raw dark staircase, as many of his ancestors
had probably sat down in dungeons, taking what befell him as it might
befall.
After a time, when he had grown so cold as to be fain to blow upon his
fingers, he arose and knocked with his staff again, and listened again,
and again sat down to wait. Thrice he repeated these actions before his
listening ears were greeted by the voice of Fledgeby, calling from his
bed, ‘Hold your row!—I’ll come and open the door directly!’ But, in
lieu of coming directly, he fell into a sweet sleep for some quarter of
an hour more, during which added interval Riah sat upon the stairs and
waited with perfect patience.
At length the door stood open, and Mr Fledgeby’s retreating drapery
plunged into bed again. Following it at a respectful distance, Riah
passed into the bed-chamber, where a fire had been sometime lighted, and
was burning briskly.
‘Why, what time of night do you mean to call it?’ inquired Fledgeby,
turning away beneath the clothes, and presenting a comfortable rampart
of shoulder to the chilled figure of the old man.
‘Sir, it is full half-past ten in the morning.’
‘The deuce it is! Then it must be precious foggy?’
‘Very foggy, sir.’
‘And raw, then?’
‘Chill and bitter,’ said Riah, drawing out a handkerchief, and wiping
the moisture from his beard and long grey hair as he stood on the verge
of the rug, with his eyes on the acceptable fire.
With a plunge of enjoyment, Fledgeby settled himself afresh.
‘Any snow, or sleet, or slush, or anything of that sort?’ he asked.
‘No, sir, no. Not quite so bad as that. The streets are pretty clean.’
‘You needn’t brag about it,’ returned Fledgeby, disappointed in his
desire to heighten the contrast between his bed and the streets. ‘But
you’re always bragging about something. Got the books there?’
‘They are here, sir.’
‘All right. I’ll turn the general subject over in my mind for a minute
or two, and while I’m about it you can empty your bag and get ready for
me.’
With another comfortable plunge, Mr Fledgeby fell asleep again. The old
man, having obeyed his directions, sat down on the edge of a chair, and,
folding his hands before him, gradually yielded to the influence of the
warmth, and dozed. He was roused by Mr Fledgeby’s appearing erect at
the foot of the bed, in Turkish slippers, rose-coloured Turkish trousers
(got cheap from somebody who had cheated some other somebody out of
them), and a gown and cap to correspond. In that costume he would have
left nothing to be desired, if he had been further fitted out with a
bottomless chair, a lantern, and a bunch of matches.
‘Now, old ’un!’ cried Fascination, in his light raillery, ‘what dodgery
are you up to next, sitting there with your eyes shut? You ain’t asleep.
Catch a weasel at it, and catch a Jew!’
‘Truly, sir, I fear I nodded,’ said the old man.
‘Not you!’ returned Fledgeby, with a cunning look. ‘A telling move with
a good many, I dare say, but it won’t put ME off my guard. Not a bad
notion though, if you want to look indifferent in driving a bargain. Oh,
you are a dodger!’
The old man shook his head, gently repudiating the imputation, and
suppressed a sigh, and moved to the table at which Mr Fledgeby was now
pouring out for himself a cup of steaming and fragrant coffee from a pot
that had stood ready on the hob. It was an edifying spectacle, the young
man in his easy chair taking his coffee, and the old man with his grey
head bent, standing awaiting his pleasure.
‘Now!’ said Fledgeby. ‘Fork out your balance in hand, and prove by
figures how you make it out that it ain’t more. First of all, light that
candle.’
Riah obeyed, and then taking a bag from his breast, and referring to
the sum in the accounts for which they made him responsible, told it out
upon the table. Fledgeby told it again with great care, and rang every
sovereign.
‘I suppose,’ he said, taking one up to eye it closely, ‘you haven’t been
lightening any of these; but it’s a trade of your people’s, you know.
YOU understand what sweating a pound means, don’t you?’
‘Much as you do, sir,’ returned the old man, with his hands under
opposite cuffs of his loose sleeves, as he stood at the table,
deferentially observant of the master’s face. ‘May I take the liberty to
say something?’
‘You may,’ Fledgeby graciously conceded.
‘Do you not, sir—without intending it—of a surety without intending
it—sometimes mingle the character I fairly earn in your employment,
with the character which it is your policy that I should bear?’
‘I don’t find it worth my while to cut things so fine as to go into the
inquiry,’ Fascination coolly answered.
‘Not in justice?’
‘Bother justice!’ said Fledgeby.
‘Not in generosity?’
‘Jews and generosity!’ said Fledgeby. ‘That’s a good connexion! Bring
out your vouchers, and don’t talk Jerusalem palaver.’
The vouchers were produced, and for the next half-hour Mr Fledgeby
concentrated his sublime attention on them. They and the accounts were
all found correct, and the books and the papers resumed their places in
the bag.
‘Next,’ said Fledgeby, ‘concerning that bill-broking branch of the
business; the branch I like best. What queer bills are to be bought, and
at what prices? You have got your list of what’s in the market?’
‘Sir, a long list,’ replied Riah, taking out a pocket-book, and
selecting from its contents a folded paper, which, being unfolded,
became a sheet of foolscap covered with close writing.
‘Whew!’ whistled Fledgeby, as he took it in his hand. ‘Queer Street is
full of lodgers just at present! These are to be disposed of in parcels;
are they?’
‘In parcels as set forth,’ returned the old man, looking over his
master’s shoulder; ‘or the lump.’
‘Half the lump will be waste-paper, one knows beforehand,’ said
Fledgeby. ‘Can you get it at waste-paper price? That’s the question.’
Riah shook his head, and Fledgeby cast his small eyes down the list.
They presently began to twinkle, and he no sooner became conscious of
their twinkling, than he looked up over his shoulder at the grave face
above him, and moved to the chimney-piece. Making a desk of it, he stood
there with his back to the old man, warming his knees, perusing the list
at his leisure, and often returning to some lines of it, as though
they were particularly interesting. At those times he glanced in the
chimney-glass to see what note the old man took of him. He took none