Our Mutual Friend
precious contents unknown, he had looked upon him in the light of a mere
robber, and, as such, would have despoiled him of his ill-gotten gain,
but for the judicious interference of his comrade, brother, and partner.
Therefore, the conditional clause he proposed was, that, if the minion
should return in his late sneaking manner, and if, being closely
watched, he should be found to possess himself of anything, no matter
what, the sharp sword impending over his head should be instantly shown
him, he should be strictly examined as to what he knew or suspected,
should be severely handled by them his masters, and should be kept in
a state of abject moral bondage and slavery until the time when they
should see fit to permit him to purchase his freedom at the price of
half his possessions. If, said Mr Wegg by way of peroration, he had
erred in saying only ‘Halves!’ he trusted to his comrade, brother, and
partner not to hesitate to set him right, and to reprove his weakness.
It might be more according to the rights of things, to say
Two-thirds; it might be more according to the rights of things, to say
Three-fourths. On those points he was ever open to correction.
Mr Venus, having wafted his attention to this discourse over three
successive saucers of tea, signified his concurrence in the views
advanced. Inspirited hereby, Mr Wegg extended his right hand, and
declared it to be a hand which never yet. Without entering into more
minute particulars. Mr Venus, sticking to his tea, briefly professed his
belief as polite forms required of him, that it WAS a hand which never
yet. But contented himself with looking at it, and did not take it to
his bosom.
‘Brother,’ said Wegg, when this happy understanding was established, ‘I
should like to ask you something. You remember the night when I first
looked in here, and found you floating your powerful mind in tea?’
Still swilling tea, Mr Venus nodded assent.
‘And there you sit, sir,’ pursued Wegg with an air of thoughtful
admiration, ‘as if you had never left off! There you sit, sir, as if you
had an unlimited capacity of assimilating the flagrant article! There
you sit, sir, in the midst of your works, looking as if you’d been
called upon for Home, Sweet Home, and was obleeging the company!
“A exile from home splendour dazzles in vain,
O give you your lowly Preparations again,
The birds stuffed so sweetly that can’t be expected to come at
your call,
Give you these with the peace of mind dearer than all.
Home, Home, Home, sweet Home!”
—Be it ever,’ added Mr Wegg in prose as he glanced about the shop,
‘ever so ghastly, all things considered there’s no place like it.’
‘You said you’d like to ask something; but you haven’t asked it,’
remarked Venus, very unsympathetic in manner.
‘Your peace of mind,’ said Wegg, offering condolence, ‘your peace of
mind was in a poor way that night. HOW’S it going on? IS it looking up
at all?’
‘She does not wish,’ replied Mr Venus with a comical mixture of
indignant obstinacy and tender melancholy, ‘to regard herself, nor yet
to be regarded, in that particular light. There’s no more to be said.’
‘Ah, dear me, dear me!’ exclaimed Wegg with a sigh, but eyeing him while
pretending to keep him company in eyeing the fire, ‘such is Woman! And
I remember you said that night, sitting there as I sat here—said that
night when your peace of mind was first laid low, that you had taken an
interest in these very affairs. Such is coincidence!’
‘Her father,’ rejoined Venus, and then stopped to swallow more tea, ‘her
father was mixed up in them.’
‘You didn’t mention her name, sir, I think?’ observed Wegg, pensively.
‘No, you didn’t mention her name that night.’
‘Pleasant Riderhood.’
‘In—deed!’ cried Wegg. ‘Pleasant Riderhood. There’s something moving in
the name. Pleasant. Dear me! Seems to express what she might have
been, if she hadn’t made that unpleasant remark—and what she ain’t,
in consequence of having made it. Would it at all pour balm into your
wounds, Mr Venus, to inquire how you came acquainted with her?’
‘I was down at the water-side,’ said Venus, taking another gulp of
tea and mournfully winking at the fire—‘looking for parrots’—taking
another gulp and stopping.
Mr Wegg hinted, to jog his attention: ‘You could hardly have been out
parrot-shooting, in the British climate, sir?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Venus fretfully. ‘I was down at the water-side,
looking for parrots brought home by sailors, to buy for stuffing.’
‘Ay, ay, ay, sir!’
‘—And looking for a nice pair of rattlesnakes, to articulate for a
Museum—when I was doomed to fall in with her and deal with her. It was
just at the time of that discovery in the river. Her father had seen the
discovery being towed in the river. I made the popularity of the subject
a reason for going back to improve the acquaintance, and I have never
since been the man I was. My very bones is rendered flabby by brooding
over it. If they could be brought to me loose, to sort, I should hardly
have the face to claim ’em as mine. To such an extent have I fallen off
under it.’
Mr Wegg, less interested than he had been, glanced at one particular
shelf in the dark.
‘Why I remember, Mr Venus,’ he said in a tone of friendly commiseration
‘(for I remember every word that falls from you, sir), I remember that
you said that night, you had got up there—and then your words was,
“Never mind.”’
‘—The parrot that I bought of her,’ said Venus, with a despondent rise
and fall of his eyes. ‘Yes; there it lies on its side, dried up; except
for its plumage, very like myself. I’ve never had the heart to prepare
it, and I never shall have now.’
With a disappointed face, Silas mentally consigned this parrot to
regions more than tropical, and, seeming for the time to have lost
his power of assuming an interest in the woes of Mr Venus, fell to
tightening his wooden leg as a preparation for departure: its gymnastic
performances of that evening having severely tried its constitution.
After Silas had left the shop, hat-box in hand, and had left Mr Venus
to lower himself to oblivion-point with the requisite weight of tea, it
greatly preyed on his ingenuous mind that he had taken this artist into
partnership at all. He bitterly felt that he had overreached himself in
the beginning, by grasping at Mr Venus’s mere straws of hints, now shown
to be worthless for his purpose. Casting about for ways and means of
dissolving the connexion without loss of money, reproaching himself for
having been betrayed into an avowal of his secret, and complimenting
himself beyond measure on his purely accidental good luck, he beguiled
the distance between Clerkenwell and the mansion of the Golden Dustman.
For, Silas Wegg felt it to be quite out of the question that he could
lay his head upon his pillow in peace, without first hovering over
Mr Boffin’s house in the superior character of its Evil Genius. Power
(unless it be the power of intellect or virtue) has ever the greatest
attraction for the lowest natures; and the mere defiance of the
unconscious house-front, with his power to strip the roof off the
inhabiting family like the roof of a house of cards, was a treat which
had a charm for Silas Wegg.
As he hovered on the opposite side of the street, exulting, the carriage
drove up.
‘There’ll shortly be an end of YOU,’ said Wegg, threatening it with the
hat-box. ‘YOUR varnish is fading.’
Mrs Boffin descended and went in.
‘Look out for a fall, my Lady Dustwoman,’ said Wegg.
Bella lightly descended, and ran in after her.
‘How brisk we are!’ said Wegg. ‘You won’t run so gaily to your old
shabby home, my girl. You’ll have to go there, though.’
A little while, and the Secretary came out.
‘I was passed over for you,’ said Wegg. ‘But you had better provide
yourself with another situation, young man.’
Mr Boffin’s shadow passed upon the blinds of three large windows as he
trotted down the room, and passed again as he went back.
‘Yoop!’ cried Wegg. ‘You’re there, are you? Where’s the bottle? You
would give your bottle for my box, Dustman!’
Having now composed his mind for slumber, he turned homeward. Such
was the greed of the fellow, that his mind had shot beyond halves,
two-thirds, three-fourths, and gone straight to spoliation of the whole.
‘Though that wouldn’t quite do,’ he considered, growing cooler as he got
away. ‘That’s what would happen to him if he didn’t buy us up. We should
get nothing by that.’
We so judge others by ourselves, that it had never come into his head
before, that he might not buy us up, and might prove honest, and prefer
to be poor. It caused him a slight tremor as it passed; but a very
slight one, for the idle thought was gone directly.
‘He’s grown too fond of money for that,’ said Wegg; ‘he’s grown too fond
of money.’ The burden fell into a strain or tune as he stumped along the
pavements. All the way home he stumped it out of the rattling streets,
PIANO with his own foot, and FORTE with his wooden leg, ‘He’s GROWN too
FOND of MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’
Even next day Silas soothed himself with this melodious strain, when he
was called out of bed at daybreak, to set open the yard-gate and admit
the train of carts and horses that came to carry off the little Mound.
And all day long, as he kept unwinking watch on the slow process which
promised to protract itself through many days and weeks, whenever
(to save himself from being choked with dust) he patrolled a little
cinderous beat he established for the purpose, without taking his eyes
from the diggers, he still stumped to the tune: He’s GROWN too FOND of
MONEY for THAT, he’s GROWN too FOND of MONEY.’
Chapter 8
THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
The train of carts and horses came and went all day from dawn to
nightfall, making little or no daily impression on the heap of ashes,
though, as the days passed on, the heap was seen to be slowly melting.
My lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, when you in the course
of your dust-shovelling and cinder-raking have piled up a mountain of
pretentious failure, you must off with your honourable coats for the
removal of it, and fall to the work with the power of all the queen’s
horses and all the queen’s men, or it will come rushing down and bury us
alive.
Yes, verily, my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, adapting your
Catechism to the occasion, and by God’s help so you must. For when we
have got things to the pass that with an enormous treasure at disposal
to relieve the poor, the best of the poor detest our mercies, hide their
heads from us, and shame us by starving to death in the midst of us, it
is a pass impossible of prosperity, impossible of continuance. It may
not be so written in the Gospel according to Podsnappery; you may not
‘find these words’ for the text of a sermon, in the Returns of the Board
of Trade; but they have been the truth since the foundations of the
universe were laid, and they will be the truth until the foundations of
the universe are shaken by the Builder. This boastful handiwork of
ours, which fails in its terrors for the professional pauper, the sturdy
breaker of windows and the rampant tearer of clothes, strikes with a
cruel and a wicked stab at the stricken sufferer, and is a horror to
the deserving and unfortunate. We must mend it, lords and gentlemen and
honourable boards, or in its own evil hour it will mar every one of us.
Old Betty Higden fared upon her pilgrimage as many ruggedly honest
creatures, women and men, fare on their toiling way along the roads
of life. Patiently to earn a spare bare living, and quietly to die,
untouched by workhouse hands—this was her highest sublunary hope.
Nothing had been heard of her at Mr Boffin’s house since she trudged