Our Mutual Friend
trouble you by naming—’
‘It is necessary. What object?’ demanded Venus, in a wrathful tone.
‘—Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘The Pump.—When I struck it against the
Pump, and found, not only that the top was loose and opened with a lid,
but that something in it rattled. That something, comrade, I discovered
to be a small flat oblong cash-box. Shall I say it was disappointingly
light?’
‘There were papers in it,’ said Venus.
‘There your expressive countenance speaks indeed!’ cried Wegg. ‘A
paper. The box was locked, tied up, and sealed, and on the outside was
a parchment label, with the writing, “MY WILL, JOHN HARMON, TEMPORARILY
DEPOSITED HERE.”’
‘We must know its contents,’ said Venus.
‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so, and I broke the box open.’
‘Without coming to me!’ exclaimed Venus.
‘Exactly so, sir!’ returned Wegg, blandly and buoyantly. ‘I see I take
you with me! Hear, hear, hear! Resolved, as your discriminating good
sense perceives, that if you was to have a sap—pur—IZE, it should be
a complete one! Well, sir. And so, as you have honoured me by
anticipating, I examined the document. Regularly executed, regularly
witnessed, very short. Inasmuch as he has never made friends, and has
ever had a rebellious family, he, John Harmon, gives to Nicodemus Boffin
the Little Mound, which is quite enough for him, and gives the whole
rest and residue of his property to the Crown.’
‘The date of the will that has been proved, must be looked to,’ remarked
Venus. ‘It may be later than this one.’
‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I said so. I paid a shilling (never mind
your sixpence of it) to look up that will. Brother, that will is dated
months before this will. And now, as a fellow-man, and as a partner in a
friendly move,’ added Wegg, benignantly taking him by both hands again,
and clapping him on both knees again, ‘say have I completed my labour of
love to your perfect satisfaction, and are you sap—pur—IZED?’
Mr Venus contemplated his fellow-man and partner with doubting eyes, and
then rejoined stiffly:
‘This is great news indeed, Mr Wegg. There’s no denying it. But I could
have wished you had told it me before you got your fright to-night, and
I could have wished you had ever asked me as your partner what we were
to do, before you thought you were dividing a responsibility.’
‘—Hear me out!’ cried Wegg. ‘I knew you was a-going to say so. But
alone I bore the anxiety, and alone I’ll bear the blame!’ This with an
air of great magnanimity.
‘No,’ said Venus. ‘Let’s see this will and this box.’
‘Do I understand, brother,’ returned Wegg with considerable reluctance,
‘that it is your wish to see this will and this—?’
Mr Venus smote the table with his hand.
‘—Hear me out!’ said Wegg. ‘Hear me out! I’ll go and fetch ’em.’
After being some time absent, as if in his covetousness he could hardly
make up his mind to produce the treasure to his partner, he returned
with an old leathern hat-box, into which he had put the other box,
for the better preservation of commonplace appearances, and for the
disarming of suspicion. ‘But I don’t half like opening it here,’ said
Silas in a low voice, looking around: ‘he might come back, he may not be
gone; we don’t know what he may be up to, after what we’ve seen.’
‘There’s something in that,’ assented Venus. ‘Come to my place.’
Jealous of the custody of the box, and yet fearful of opening it under
the existing circumstances, Wegg hesitated. ‘Come, I tell you,’ repeated
Venus, chafing, ‘to my place.’ Not very well seeing his way to a
refusal, Mr Wegg then rejoined in a gush, ‘—Hear me out!—Certainly.’
So he locked up the Bower and they set forth: Mr Venus taking his arm,
and keeping it with remarkable tenacity.
They found the usual dim light burning in the window of Mr Venus’s
establishment, imperfectly disclosing to the public the usual pair
of preserved frogs, sword in hand, with their point of honour still
unsettled. Mr Venus had closed his shop door on coming out, and now
opened it with the key and shut it again as soon as they were within;
but not before he had put up and barred the shutters of the shop window.
‘No one can get in without being let in,’ said he then, ‘and we couldn’t
be more snug than here.’ So he raked together the yet warm cinders in
the rusty grate, and made a fire, and trimmed the candle on the little
counter. As the fire cast its flickering gleams here and there upon the
dark greasy walls; the Hindoo baby, the African baby, the articulated
English baby, the assortment of skulls, and the rest of the collection,
came starting to their various stations as if they had all been out,
like their master and were punctual in a general rendezvous to assist
at the secret. The French gentleman had grown considerably since Mr Wegg
last saw him, being now accommodated with a pair of legs and a head,
though his arms were yet in abeyance. To whomsoever the head had
originally belonged, Silas Wegg would have regarded it as a personal
favour if he had not cut quite so many teeth.
Silas took his seat in silence on the wooden box before the fire, and
Venus dropping into his low chair produced from among his skeleton
hands, his tea-tray and tea-cups, and put the kettle on. Silas inwardly
approved of these preparations, trusting they might end in Mr Venus’s
diluting his intellect.
‘Now, sir,’ said Venus, ‘all is safe and quiet. Let us see this
discovery.’
With still reluctant hands, and not without several glances towards the
skeleton hands, as if he mistrusted that a couple of them might spring
forth and clutch the document, Wegg opened the hat-box and revealed the
cash-box, opened the cash-box and revealed the will. He held a corner
of it tight, while Venus, taking hold of another corner, searchingly and
attentively read it.
‘Was I correct in my account of it, partner?’ said Mr Wegg at length.
‘Partner, you were,’ said Mr Venus.
Mr Wegg thereupon made an easy, graceful movement, as though he would
fold it up; but Mr Venus held on by his corner.
‘No, sir,’ said Mr Venus, winking his weak eyes and shaking his head.
‘No, partner. The question is now brought up, who is going to take care
of this. Do you know who is going to take care of this, partner?’
‘I am,’ said Wegg.
‘Oh dear no, partner,’ retorted Venus. ‘That’s a mistake. I am. Now look
here, Mr Wegg. I don’t want to have any words with you, and still less
do I want to have any anatomical pursuits with you.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Wegg, quickly.
‘I mean, partner,’ replied Venus, slowly, ‘that it’s hardly possible
for a man to feel in a more amiable state towards another man than I
do towards you at this present moment. But I am on my own ground, I am
surrounded by the trophies of my art, and my tools is very handy.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Venus?’ asked Wegg again.
‘I am surrounded, as I have observed,’ said Mr Venus, placidly, ‘by
the trophies of my art. They are numerous, my stock of human warious is
large, the shop is pretty well crammed, and I don’t just now want any
more trophies of my art. But I like my art, and I know how to exercise
my art.’
‘No man better,’ assented Mr Wegg, with a somewhat staggered air.
‘There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens,’ said Venus,
‘(though you mightn’t think it) in the box on which you’re sitting.
There’s the Miscellanies of several human specimens, in the lovely
compo-one behind the door’; with a nod towards the French gentleman. ‘It
still wants a pair of arms. I DON’T say that I’m in any hurry for ’em.’
‘You must be wandering in your mind, partner,’ Silas remonstrated.
‘You’ll excuse me if I wander,’ returned Venus; ‘I am sometimes rather
subject to it. I like my art, and I know how to exercise my art, and I
mean to have the keeping of this document.’
‘But what has that got to do with your art, partner?’ asked Wegg, in an
insinuating tone.
Mr Venus winked his chronically-fatigued eyes both at once, and
adjusting the kettle on the fire, remarked to himself, in a hollow
voice, ‘She’ll bile in a couple of minutes.’
Silas Wegg glanced at the kettle, glanced at the shelves, glanced at the
French gentleman behind the door, and shrank a little as he glanced at
Mr Venus winking his red eyes, and feeling in his waistcoat pocket—as
for a lancet, say—with his unoccupied hand. He and Venus were
necessarily seated close together, as each held a corner of the
document, which was but a common sheet of paper.
‘Partner,’ said Wegg, even more insinuatingly than before, ‘I propose
that we cut it in half, and each keep a half.’
Venus shook his shock of hair, as he replied, ‘It wouldn’t do to
mutilate it, partner. It might seem to be cancelled.’
‘Partner,’ said Wegg, after a silence, during which they had
contemplated one another, ‘don’t your speaking countenance say that
you’re a-going to suggest a middle course?’
Venus shook his shock of hair as he replied, ‘Partner, you have kept
this paper from me once. You shall never keep it from me again. I offer
you the box and the label to take care of, but I’ll take care of the
paper.’
Silas hesitated a little longer, and then suddenly releasing his corner,
and resuming his buoyant and benignant tone, exclaimed, ‘What’s life
without trustfulness! What’s a fellow-man without honour! You’re welcome
to it, partner, in a spirit of trust and confidence.’
Continuing to wink his red eyes both together—but in a self-communing
way, and without any show of triumph—Mr Venus folded the paper now left
in his hand, and locked it in a drawer behind him, and pocketed the key.
He then proposed ‘A cup of tea, partner?’ To which Mr Wegg returned,
‘Thank’ee, partner,’ and the tea was made and poured out.
‘Next,’ said Venus, blowing at his tea in his saucer, and looking over
it at his confidential friend, ‘comes the question, What’s the course to
be pursued?’
On this head, Silas Wegg had much to say. Silas had to say That, he
would beg to remind his comrade, brother, and partner, of the impressive
passages they had read that evening; of the evident parallel in Mr
Boffin’s mind between them and the late owner of the Bower, and the
present circumstances of the Bower; of the bottle; and of the box. That,
the fortunes of his brother and comrade, and of himself were evidently
made, inasmuch as they had but to put their price upon this document,
and get that price from the minion of fortune and the worm of the hour:
who now appeared to be less of a minion and more of a worm than had been
previously supposed. That, he considered it plain that such price was
stateable in a single expressive word, and that the word was, ‘Halves!’
That, the question then arose when ‘Halves!’ should be called. That,
here he had a plan of action to recommend, with a conditional clause.
That, the plan of action was that they should lie by with patience;
that, they should allow the Mounds to be gradually levelled and cleared
away, while retaining to themselves their present opportunity of
watching the process—which would be, he conceived, to put the trouble
and cost of daily digging and delving upon somebody else, while they
might nightly turn such complete disturbance of the dust to the account
of their own private investigations—and that, when the Mounds were
gone, and they had worked those chances for their own joint benefit
solely, they should then, and not before, explode on the minion and
worm. But here came the conditional clause, and to this he entreated the
special attention of his comrade, brother, and partner. It was not to
be borne that the minion and worm should carry off any of that property
which was now to be regarded as their own property. When he, Mr Wegg,
had seen the minion surreptitiously making off with that bottle, and its