Works of Charles Dickens (200+ Works) The Adventures of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, David Copperfield & more (mobi)

by Charles Dickens

  Perhaps it was with the malicious intent of urging him on to his worst that Mr Venus looked as if he doubted that.

  'What? Was it outside the house at present ockypied, to its disgrace, by that minion of fortune and worm of the hour,' said Wegg, falling back upon his strongest terms of reprobation, and slapping the counter, 'that I, Silas Wegg, five hundred times the man he ever was, sat in all weathers, waiting for a errand or a customer? Was it outside that very house as I first set eyes upon him, rolling in the lap of luxury, when I was selling halfpenny ballads there for a living? And am I to grovel in the dust for HIM to walk over? No!'

  There was a grin upon the ghastly countenance of the French gentleman under the influence of the firelight, as if he were computing how many thousand slanderers and traitors array themselves against the fortunate, on premises exactly answering to those of Mr Wegg. One might have fancied that the big-headed babies were toppling over with their hydrocephalic attempts to reckon up the children of men who transform their benefactors into their injurers by the same process. The yard or two of smile on the part of the alligator might have been invested with the meaning, 'All about this was quite familiar knowledge down in the depths of the slime, ages ago.'

  'But,' said Wegg, possibly with some slight perception to the foregoing effect, 'your speaking countenance remarks, Mr Venus, that I'm duller and savager than usual. Perhaps I HAVE allowed myself to brood too much. Begone, dull Care! 'Tis gone, sir. I've looked in upon you, and empire resumes her sway. For, as the song says--subject to your correction, sir--

  "When the heart of a man is depressed with cares, The mist is dispelled if Venus appears. Like the notes of a fiddle, you sweetly, sir, sweetly, Raises our spirits and charms our ears."

  Good-night, sir.'

  'I shall have a word or two to say to you, Mr Wegg, before long,' remarked Venus, 'respecting my share in the project we've been speaking of.'

  'My time, sir,' returned Wegg, 'is yours. In the meanwhile let it be fully understood that I shall not neglect bringing the grindstone to bear, nor yet bringing Dusty Boffin's nose to it. His nose once brought to it, shall be held to it by these hands, Mr Venus, till the sparks flies out in showers.'

  With this agreeable promise Wegg stumped out, and shut the shop-door after him. 'Wait till I light a candle, Mr Boffin,' said Venus, 'and you'll come out more comfortable.' So, he lighting a candle and holding it up at arm's length, Mr Boffin disengaged himself from behind the alligator's smile, with an expression of countenance so very downcast that it not only appeared as if the alligator had the whole of the joke to himself, but further as if it had been conceived and executed at Mr Boffin's expense.

  'That's a treacherous fellow,' said Mr Boffin, dusting his arms and legs as he came forth, the alligator having been but musty company. 'That's a dreadful fellow.'

  'The alligator, sir?' said Venus.

  'No, Venus, no. The Serpent.'

  'You'll have the goodness to notice, Mr Boffin,' remarked Venus, 'that I said nothing to him about my going out of the affair altogether, because I didn't wish to take you anyways by surprise. But I can't be too soon out of it for my satisfaction, Mr Boffin, and I now put it to you when it will suit your views for me to retire?'

  'Thank'ee, Venus, thank'ee, Venus; but I don't know what to say,' returned Mr Boffin, 'I don't know what to do. He'll drop down on me any way. He seems fully determined to drop down; don't he?'

  Mr Venus opined that such was clearly his intention.

  'You might be a sort of protection for me, if you remained in it,' said Mr Boffin; 'you might stand betwixt him and me, and take the edge off him. Don't you feel as if you could make a show of remaining in it, Venus, till I had time to turn myself round?'

  Venus naturally inquired how long Mr Boffin thought it might take him to turn himself round?

  'I am sure I don't know,' was the answer, given quite at a loss. 'Everything is so at sixes and sevens. If I had never come into the property, I shouldn't have minded. But being in it, it would be very trying to be turned out; now, don't you acknowledge that it would, Venus?'

  Mr Venus preferred, he said, to leave Mr Boffin to arrive at his own conclusions on that delicate question.

  'I am sure I don't know what to do,' said Mr Boffin. 'If I ask advice of any one else, it's only letting in another person to be bought out, and then I shall be ruined that way, and might as well have given up the property and gone slap to the workhouse. If I was to take advice of my young man, Rokesmith, I should have to buy HIM out. Sooner or later, of course, he'd drop down upon me, like Wegg. I was brought into the world to be dropped down upon, it appears to me.'

  Mr Venus listened to these lamentations in silence, while Mr Boffin jogged to and fro, holding his pockets as if he had a pain in them.

  'After all, you haven't said what you mean to do yourself, Venus. When you do go out of it, how do you mean to go?'

  Venus replied that as Wegg had found the document and handed it to him, it was his intention to hand it back to Wegg, with the declaration that he himself would have nothing to say to it, or do with it, and that Wegg must act as he chose, and take the consequences.

  'And then he drops down with his whole weight upon ME!' cried Mr Boffin, ruefully. 'I'd sooner be dropped upon by you than by him, or even by you jintly, than by him alone!'

  Mr Venus could only repeat that it was his fixed intention to betake himself to the paths of science, and to walk in the same all the days of his life; not dropping down upon his fellow-creatures until they were deceased, and then only to articulate them to the best of his humble ability.

  'How long could you be persuaded to keep up the appearance of remaining in it?' asked Mr Boffin, retiring on his other idea. 'Could you be got to do so, till the Mounds are gone?'

  No. That would protract the mental uneasiness of Mr Venus too long, he said.

  'Not if I was to show you reason now?' demanded Mr Boffin; 'not if I was to show you good and sufficient reason?'

  If by good and sufficient reason Mr Boffin meant honest and unimpeachable reason, that might weigh with Mr Venus against his personal wishes and convenience. But he must add that he saw no opening to the possibility of such reason being shown him.

  'Come and see me, Venus,' said Mr Boffin, 'at my house.'

  'Is the reason there, sir?' asked Mr Venus, with an incredulous smile and blink.

  'It may be, or may not be,' said Mr Boffin, 'just as you view it. But in the meantime don't go out of the matter. Look here. Do this. Give me your word that you won't take any steps with Wegg, without my knowledge, just as I have given you my word that I won't without yours.'

  'Done, Mr Boffin!' said Venus, after brief consideration.

  'Thank'ee, Venus, thank'ee, Venus! Done!'

  'When shall I come to see you, Mr Boffin.'

  'When you like. The sooner the better. I must be going now. Good-night, Venus.'

  'Good-night, sir.'

  'And good-night to the rest of the present company,' said Mr Boffin, glancing round the shop. 'They make a queer show, Venus, and I should like to be better acquainted with them some day. Good-night, Venus, good-night! Thankee, Venus, thankee, Venus!' With that he jogged out into the street, and jogged upon his homeward way.

  'Now, I wonder,' he meditated as he went along, nursing his stick, 'whether it can be, that Venus is setting himself to get the better of Wegg? Whether it can be, that he means, when I have bought Wegg out, to have me all to himself and to pick me clean to the bones!'

  It was a cunning and suspicious idea, quite in the way of his school of Misers, and he looked very cunning and suspicious as he went jogging through the streets. More than once or twice, more than twice or thrice, say half a dozen times, he took his stick from the arm on which he nursed it, and hit a straight sharp rap at the air with its head. Possibly the wooden countenance of Mr Silas Wegg was incorporeally before him at those moments, for he hit with intense satisfaction.

  He was within a few streets of his own house
, when a little private carriage, coming in the contrary direction, passed him, turned round, and passed him again. It was a little carriage of eccentric movement, for again he heard it stop behind him and turn round, and again he saw it pass him. Then it stopped, and then went on, out of sight. But, not far out of sight, for, when he came to the corner of his own street, there it stood again.

  There was a lady's face at the window as he came up with this carriage, and he was passing it when the lady softly called to him by his name.

  'I beg your pardon, Ma'am?' said Mr Boffin, coming to a stop.

  'It is Mrs Lammle,' said the lady.

  Mr Boffin went up to the window, and hoped Mrs Lammle was well.

  'Not very well, dear Mr Boffin; I have fluttered myself by being--perhaps foolishly--uneasy and anxious. I have been waiting for you some time. Can I speak to you?'

  Mr Boffin proposed that Mrs Lammle should drive on to his house, a few hundred yards further.

  'I would rather not, Mr Boffin, unless you particularly wish it. I feel the difficulty and delicacy of the matter so much that I would rather avoid speaking to you at your own home. You must think this very strange?'

  Mr Boffin said no, but meant yes.

  'It is because I am so grateful for the good opinion of all my friends, and am so touched by it, that I cannot bear to run the risk of forfeiting it in any case, even in the cause of duty. I have asked my husband (my dear Alfred, Mr Boffin) whether it is the cause of duty, and he has most emphatically said Yes. I wish I had asked him sooner. It would have spared me much distress.'

  ('Can this be more dropping down upon me!' thought Mr Boffin, quite bewildered.)

  'It was Alfred who sent me to you, Mr Boffin. Alfred said, "Don't come back, Sophronia, until you have seen Mr Boffin, and told him all. Whatever he may think of it, he ought certainly to know it." Would you mind coming into the carriage?'

  Mr Boffin answered, 'Not at all,' and took his seat at Mrs Lammle's side.

  'Drive slowly anywhere,' Mrs Lammle called to her coachman, 'and don't let the carriage rattle.'

  'It MUST be more dropping down, I think,' said Mr Boffin to himself. 'What next?'

  Chapter 15

  THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST

  The breakfast table at Mr Boffin's was usually a very pleasant one, and was always presided over by Bella. As though he began each new day in his healthy natural character, and some waking hours were necessary to his relapse into the corrupting influences of his wealth, the face and the demeanour of the Golden Dustman were generally unclouded at that meal. It would have been easy to believe then, that there was no change in him. It was as the day went on that the clouds gathered, and the brightness of the morning became obscured. One might have said that the shadows of avarice and distrust lengthened as his own shadow lengthened, and that the night closed around him gradually.

  But, one morning long afterwards to be remembered, it was black midnight with the Golden Dustman when he first appeared. His altered character had never been so grossly marked. His bearing towards his Secretary was so charged with insolent distrust and arrogance, that the latter rose and left the table before breakfast was half done. The look he directed at the Secretary's retiring figure was so cunningly malignant, that Bella would have sat astounded and indignant, even though he had not gone the length of secretly threatening Rokesmith with his clenched fist as he closed the door. This unlucky morning, of all mornings in the year, was the morning next after Mr Boffin's interview with Mrs Lammle in her little carriage.

  Bella looked to Mrs Boffin's face for comment on, or explanation of, this stormy humour in her husband, but none was there. An anxious and a distressed observation of her own face was all she could read in it. When they were left alone together--which was not until noon, for Mr Boffin sat long in his easy-chair, by turns jogging up and down the breakfast-room, clenching his fist and muttering--Bella, in consternation, asked her what had happened, what was wrong? 'I am forbidden to speak to you about it, Bella dear; I mustn't tell you,' was all the answer she could get. And still, whenever, in her wonder and dismay, she raised her eyes to Mrs Boffin's face, she saw in it the same anxious and distressed observation of her own.

  Oppressed by her sense that trouble was impending, and lost in speculations why Mrs Boffin should look at her as if she had any part in it, Bella found the day long and dreary. It was far on in the afternoon when, she being in her own room, a servant brought her a message from Mr Boffin begging her to come to his.

  Mrs Boffin was there, seated on a sofa, and Mr Boffin was jogging up and down. On seeing Bella he stopped, beckoned her to him, and drew her arm through his. 'Don't be alarmed, my dear,' he said, gently; 'I am not angry with you. Why you actually tremble! Don't be alarmed, Bella my dear. I'll see you righted.'

  'See me righted?' thought Bella. And then repeated aloud in a tone of astonishment: 'see me righted, sir?'

  'Ay, ay!' said Mr Boffin. 'See you righted. Send Mr Rokesmith here, you sir.'

  Bella would have been lost in perplexity if there had been pause enough; but the servant found Mr Rokesmith near at hand, and he almost immediately presented himself.

  'Shut the door, sir!' said Mr Boffin. 'I have got something to say to you which I fancy you'll not be pleased to hear.'

  'I am sorry to reply, Mr Boffin,' returned the Secretary, as, having closed the door, he turned and faced him, 'that I think that very likely.'

  'What do you mean?' blustered Mr Boffin.

  'I mean that it has become no novelty to me to hear from your lips what I would rather not hear.'

  'Oh! Perhaps we shall change that,' said Mr Boffin with a threatening roll of his head.

  'I hope so,' returned the Secretary. He was quiet and respectful; but stood, as Bella thought (and was glad to think), on his manhood too.

  'Now, sir,' said Mr Boffin, 'look at this young lady on my arm.

  Bella involuntarily raising her eyes, when this sudden reference was made to herself, met those of Mr Rokesmith. He was pale and seemed agitated. Then her eyes passed on to Mrs Boffin's, and she met the look again. In a flash it enlightened her, and she began to understand what she had done.

  'I say to you, sir,' Mr Boffin repeated, 'look at this young lady on my arm.

  'I do so,' returned the Secretary.

  As his glance rested again on Bella for a moment, she thought there was reproach in it. But it is possible that the reproach was within herself.

  'How dare you, sir,' said Mr Boffin, 'tamper, unknown to me, with this young lady? How dare you come out of your station, and your place in my house, to pester this young lady with your impudent addresses?'

  'I must decline to answer questions,' said the Secretary, 'that are so offensively asked.'

  'You decline to answer?' retorted Mr Boffin. 'You decline to answer, do you? Then I'll tell you what it is, Rokesmith; I'll answer for you. There are two sides to this matter, and I'll take 'em separately. The first side is, sheer Insolence. That's the first side.'

  The Secretary smiled with some bitterness, as though he would have said, 'So I see and hear.'

  'It was sheer Insolence in you, I tell you,' said Mr Boffin, 'even to think of this young lady. This young lady was far above YOU. This young lady was no match for YOU. This young lady was lying in wait (as she was qualified to do) for money, and you had no money.'

  Bella hung her head and seemed to shrink a little from Mr Boffin's protecting arm.

  'What are you, I should like to know,' pursued Mr Boffin, 'that you were to have the audacity to follow up this young lady? This young lady was looking about the market for a good bid; she wasn't in it to be snapped up by fellows that had no money to lay out; nothing to buy with.'

  'Oh, Mr Boffin! Mrs Boffin, pray say something for me!' murmured Bella, disengaging her arm, and covering her face with her hands.

  'Old lady,' said Mr Boffin, anticipating his wife, 'you hold your tongue. Bella, my dear, don't you let yourself be put out. I'll right you.'

&nbs
p; 'But you don't, you don't right me!' exclaimed Bella, with great emphasis. 'You wrong me, wrong me!'

  'Don't you be put out, my dear,' complacently retorted Mr Boffin. 'I'll bring this young man to book. Now, you Rokesmith! You can't decline to hear, you know, as well as to answer. You hear me tell you that the first side of your conduct was Insolence--Insolence and Presumption. Answer me one thing, if you can. Didn't this young lady tell you so herself?'

  'Did I, Mr Rokesmith?' asked Bella with her face still covered. 'O say, Mr Rokesmith! Did I?'

  'Don't be distressed, Miss Wilfer; it matters very little now.'

  'Ah! You can't deny it, though!' said Mr Boffin, with a knowing shake of his head.

  'But I have asked him to forgive me since,' cried Bella; 'and I would ask him to forgive me now again, upon my knees, if it would spare him!'

  Here Mrs Boffin broke out a-crying.

  'Old lady,' said Mr Boffin, 'stop that noise! Tender-hearted in you, Miss Bella; but I mean to have it out right through with this young man, having got him into a corner. Now, you Rokesmith. I tell you that's one side of your conduct--Insolence and Presumption. Now, I'm a-coming to the other, which is much worse. This was a speculation of yours.'

  'I indignantly deny it.'

  'It's of no use your denying it; it doesn't signify a bit whether you deny it or not; I've got a head upon my shoulders, and it ain't a baby's. What!' said Mr Boffin, gathering himself together in his most suspicious attitude, and wrinkling his face into a very map of curves and corners. 'Don't I know what grabs are made at a man with money? If I didn't keep my eyes open, and my pockets buttoned, shouldn't I be brought to the workhouse before I knew where I was? Wasn't the experience of Dancer, and Elwes, and Hopkins, and Blewbury Jones, and ever so many more of 'em, similar to mine? Didn't everybody want to make grabs at what they'd got, and bring 'em to poverty and ruin? Weren't they forced to hide everything belonging to 'em, for fear it should be snatched from 'em? Of course they was. I shall be told next that they didn't know human natur!'