Чарльз Диккенс
Our Mutual Friend
The chaining of the door behind her, as she went forth, disenchanted Lizzie Hexam of that first relief she had felt. The night was black and shrill, the river-side wilderness was melancholy, and there was a sound of casting-out, in the rattling of the iron-links, and the grating of the bolts and staples under Miss Abbey’s hand. As she came beneath the lowering sky, a sense of being involved in a murky shade of Murder dropped upon her; and, as the tidal swell of the river broke at her feet without her seeing how it gathered, so, her thoughts startled her by rushing out of an unseen void and striking at her heart.
Of her father’s being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. And yet, repeat the word inwardly as often as she would, the attempt to reason out and prove that she was sure, always came after it and failed. Riderhood had done the deed, and entrapped her father. Riderhood had not done the deed, but had resolved in his malice to turn against her father, the appearances that were ready to his hand to distort. Equally and swiftly upon either putting of the case, followed the frightful possibility that her father, being innocent, yet might come to be believed guilty. She had heard of people suffering Death for bloodshed of which they were afterwards proved pure, and those ill-fated persons were not, first, in that dangerous wrong in which her father stood. Then at the best, the beginning of his being set apart, whispered against, and avoided, was a certain fact. It dated from that very night. And as the great black river with its dreary shores was soon lost to her view in the gloom, so, she stood on the river’s brink unable to see into the vast blank misery of a life suspected, and fallen away from by good and bad, but knowing that it lay there dim before her, stretching away to the great ocean, Death.
One thing only, was clear to the girl’s mind. Accustomed from her very babyhood promptly to do the thing that could be done – whether to keep out weather, to ward off cold, to postpone hunger, or what not – she started out of her meditation, and ran home.
The room was quiet, and the lamp burnt on the table. In the bunk in the corner, her brother lay asleep. She bent over him softly, kissed him, and came to the table.
‘By the time of Miss Abbey’s closing, and by the run of the tide, it must be one. Tide’s running up. Father at Chiswick, wouldn’t think of coming down, till after the turn, and that’s at half after four. I’ll call Charley at six. I shall hear the church-clocks strike, as I sit here.’
Very quietly, she placed a chair before the scanty fire, and sat down in it, drawing her shawl about her.
‘Charley’s hollow down by the flare is not there now. Poor Charley!’
The clock struck two, and the clock struck three, and the clock struck four, and she remained there, with a woman’s patience and her own purpose. When the morning was well on between four and five, she slipped off her shoes (that her going about might not wake Charley), trimmed the fire sparingly, put water on to boil, and set the table for breakfast. Then she went up the ladder, lamp in hand, and came down again, and glided about and about, making a little bundle. Lastly, from her pocket, and from the chimney-piece, and from an inverted basin on the highest shelf she brought halfpence, a few sixpences, fewer shillings, and fell to laboriously and noiselessly counting them, and setting aside one little heap. She was still so engaged, when she was startled by:
‘Hal-loa!’ From her brother, sitting up in bed.
‘You made me jump, Charley.’
‘Jump! Didn’t you make me jump, when I opened my eyes a moment ago, and saw you sitting there, like the ghost of a girl miser, in the dead of the night.’
‘It’s not the dead of the night, Charley. It’s nigh six in the morning.’
‘Is it though? But what are you up to, Liz?’
‘Still telling your fortune, Charley.’
‘It seems to be a precious small one, if that’s it,’ said the boy. ‘What are you putting that little pile of money by itself for?’
‘For you, Charley.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Get out of bed, Charley, and get washed and dressed, and then I’ll tell you.’
Her composed manner, and her low distinct voice, always had an influence over him. His head was soon in a basin of water, and out of it again, and staring at her through a storm of towelling.
‘I never,’ towelling at himself as if he were his bitterest enemy, ‘saw such a girl as you are. What is the move, Liz?’
‘Are you almost ready for breakfast, Charley?’
‘You can pour it out. Hal-loa! I say? And a bundle?’
‘And a bundle, Charley.’
‘You don’t mean it’s for me, too?’
‘Yes, Charley; I do; indeed.’
More serious of face, and more slow of action, than he had been, the boy completed his dressing, and came and sat down at the little breakfast-table, with his eyes amazedly directed to her face.
‘You see, Charley dear, I have made up my mind that this is the right time for your going away from us. Over and above all the blessed change of by-and-bye, you’ll be much happier, and do much better, even so soon as next month. Even so soon as next week.’
‘How do you know I shall?’
‘I don’t quite know how, Charley, but I do.’ In spite of her unchanged manner of speaking, and her unchanged appearance of composure, she scarcely trusted herself to look at him, but kept her eyes employed on the cutting and buttering of his bread, and on the mixing of his tea, and other such little preparations. ‘You must leave father to me, Charley – I will do what I can with him – but you must go.’
‘You don’t stand upon ceremony, I think,’ grumbled the boy, throwing his bread and butter about, in an ill-humour.
She made him no answer.
‘I tell you what,’ said the boy, then, bursting out into an angry whimpering, ‘you’re a selfish jade, and you think there’s not enough for three of us, and you want to get rid of me.’
‘If you believe so, Charley, – yes, then I believe too, that I am a selfish jade, and that I think there’s not enough for three of us, and that I want to get rid of you.’
It was only when the boy rushed at her, and threw his arms round her neck, that she lost her self-restraint. But she lost it then, and wept over him.
‘Don’t cry, don’t cry! I am satisfied to go, Liz; I am satisfied to go. I know you send me away for my good.’
‘O, Charley, Charley, Heaven above us knows I do!’
‘Yes yes. Don’t mind what I said. Don’t remember it. Kiss me.’
After a silence, she loosed him, to dry her eyes and regain her strong quiet influence.
‘Now listen, Charley dear. We both know it must be done, and I alone know there is good reason for its being done at once. Go straight to the school, and say that you and I agreed upon it – that we can’t overcome father’s opposition – that father will never trouble them, but will never take you back. You are a credit to the school, and you will be a greater credit to it yet, and they will help you to get a living. Show what clothes you have brought, and what money, and say that I will send some more money. If I can get some in no other way, I will ask a little help of those two gentlemen who came here that night.’
‘I say!’ cried her brother, quickly. ‘Don’t you have it of that chap that took hold of me by the chin! Don’t you have it of that Wrayburn one!’
Perhaps a slight additional tinge of red flushed up into her face and brow, as with a nod she laid a hand upon his lips to keep him silently attentive.
‘And above all things mind this, Charley! Be sure you always speak well of father. Be sure you always give father his full due. You can’t deny that because father has no learning himself he is set against it in you; but favour nothing else against him, and be sure you say – as you know – that your sister is devoted to him. And if you should ever happen to hear anything said against father that is new to you, it will not be true. Remember, Charley! It will not be true.’
The boy looked at her with some doubt and surprise, but she went on again without heeding it.
‘Above all things remember! It will not be true. I have nothing more to say, Charley dear, except, be good, and get learning, and only think of some things in the old life here, as if you had dreamed them in a dream last night. Good-bye, my Darling!’
Though so young, she infused in these parting words a love that was far more like a mother’s than a sister’s, and before which the boy was quite bowed down. After holding her to his breast with a passionate cry, he took up his bundle and darted out at the door, with an arm across his eyes.
The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire. Lizzie, looking for her father, saw him coming, and stood upon the causeway that he might see her.
He had nothing with him but his boat, and came on apace. A knot of those amphibious human-creatures who appear to have some mysterious power of extracting a subsistence out of tidal water by looking at it, were gathered together about the causeway. As her father’s boat grounded, they became contemplative of the mud, and dispersed themselves. She saw that the mute avoidance had begun.
Gaffer saw it, too, in so far as that he was moved when he set foot on shore, to stare around him. But, he promptly set to work to haul up his boat, and make her fast, and take the sculls and rudder and rope out of her. Carrying these with Lizzie’s aid, he passed up to his dwelling.
‘Sit close to the fire, father, dear, while I cook your breakfast. It’s all ready for cooking, and only been waiting for you. You must be frozen.’
‘Well, Lizzie, I ain’t of a glow; that’s certain. And my hands seem nailed through to the sculls. See how dead they are!’ Something suggestive in their colour, and perhaps in her face, struck him as he held them up; he turned his shoulder and held them down to the fire.
‘You were not out in the perishing night, I hope, father?’
‘No, my dear. Lay aboard a barge, by a blazing coal-fire. – Where’s that boy?’
‘There’s a drop of brandy for your tea, father, if you’ll put it in while I turn this bit of meat. If the river was to get frozen, there would be a deal of distress; wouldn’t there, father?’
‘Ah! there’s always enough of that,’ said Gaffer, dropping the liquor into his cup from a squat black bottle, and dropping it slowly that it might seem more; ‘distress is for ever a going about, like sut in the air – Ain’t that boy up yet?’
‘The meat’s ready now, father. Eat it while it’s hot and comfortable. After you have finished, we’ll turn round to the fire and talk.’
But, he perceived that he was evaded, and, having thrown a hasty angry glance towards the bunk, plucked at a corner of her apron and asked:
‘What’s gone with that boy?’
‘Father, if you’ll begin your breakfast, I’ll sit by and tell you.’ He looked at her, stirred his tea and took two or three gulps, then cut at his piece of hot steak with his case-knife, and said, eating:
‘Now then. What’s gone with that boy?’
‘Don’t be angry, dear. It seems, father, that he has quite a gift of learning.’
‘Unnat’ral young beggar!’ said the parent, shaking his knife in the air.
‘And that having this gift, and not being equally good at other things, he has made shift to get some schooling.’
‘Unnat’ral young beggar!’ said the parent again, with his former action.
‘ – And that knowing you have nothing to spare, father, and not wishing to be a burden on you, he gradually made up his mind to go seek his fortune out of learning. He went away this morning, father, and he cried very much at going, and he hoped you would forgive him.’
‘Let him never come a nigh me to ask me my forgiveness,’ said the father, again emphasizing his words with the knife. ‘Let him never come within sight of my eyes, nor yet within reach of my arm. His own father ain’t good enough for him. He’s disowned his own father. His own father therefore, disowns him for ever and ever, as a unnat’ral young beggar.’
He had pushed away his plate. With the natural need of a strong rough man in anger, to do something forcible, he now clutched his knife overhand, and struck downward with it at the end of every succeeding sentence. As he would have struck with his own clenched fist if there had chanced to be nothing in it.
‘He’s welcome to go. He’s more welcome to go than to stay. But let him never come back. Let him never put his head inside that door. And let you never speak a word more in his favour, or you’ll disown your own father, likewise, and what your father says of him he’ll have to come to say of you. Now I see why them men yonder held aloof from me. They says to one another, “Here comes the man as ain’t good enough for his own son!” Lizzie – !’
But, she stopped him with a cry. Looking at her he saw her, with a face quite strange to him, shrinking back against the wall, with her hands before her eyes.
‘Father, don’t! I can’t bear to see you striking with it. Put it down!’
He looked at the knife; but in his astonishment still held it.
‘Father, it’s too horrible. O put it down, put it down!’
Confounded by her appearance and exclamation, he tossed it away, and stood up with his open hands held out before him.
‘What’s come to you, Liz? Can you think I would strike at you with a knife?’
‘No, father, no; you would never hurt me.’
‘What should I hurt?’
‘Nothing, dear father. On my knees, I am certain, in my heart and soul I am certain, nothing! But it was too dreadful to bear; for it looked – ’ her hands covering her face again, ‘O it looked – ’
‘What did it look like?’
The recollection of his murderous figure, combining with her trial of last night, and her trial of the morning, caused her to drop at his feet, without having answered.
He had never seen her so before. He raised her with the utmost tenderness, calling her the best of daughters, and ‘my poor pretty creetur’, and laid her head upon his knee, and tried to restore her. But failing, he laid her head gently down again, got a pillow and placed it under her dark hair, and sought on the table for a spoonful of brandy. There being none left, he hurriedly caught up the empty bottle, and ran out at the door.
He returned as hurriedly as he had gone, with the bottle still empty. He kneeled down by her, took her head on his arm, and moistened her lips with a little water into which he dipped his fingers: saying, fiercely, as he looked around, now over this shoulder, now over that:
‘Have we got a pest in the house? Is there summ’at deadly sticking to my clothes? What’s let loose upon us? Who loosed it?’
Chapter 7
MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
Silas Wegg, being on his road to the Roman Empire, approaches it by way of Clerkenwell. The time is early in the evening; the weather moist and raw. Mr Wegg finds leisure to make a little circuit, by reason that he folds his screen early, now that he combines another source of income with it, and also that he feels it due to himself to be anxiously expected at the Bower. ‘Boffin will get all the eagerer for waiting a bit,’ says Silas, screwing up, as he stumps along, first his right eye, and then his left. Which is something superfluous in him, for Nature has already screwed both pretty tight.
‘If I get on with him as I expect to get on,’ Silas pursues, stumping and meditating, ‘it wouldn’t become me to leave it here. It wouldn’t be respectable.’ Animated by this reflection, he stumps faster, and looks a long way before him, as a man with an ambitious project in abeyance often will do.
Aware of a working-jeweller population taking sanctuary about the church in Clerkenwell, Mr Wegg is conscious of an interest in, and a respect for, the neighbourhood. But, his sensations in this regard halt as to their strict morality, as he halts in his gait; for, they suggest the delights of a coat of invisibility in which to walk off safely with the precious stones and watch-cases, but stop short of any compunction for the people who would lose the same.
Not, however, towards the ‘shops’ where cunning artificers work in pearls and diamonds and gold and silver, making their hands so rich, that the enriched water in which they wash them is bought for the refiners; – not towards these does Mr Wegg stump, but towards the poorer shops of small retail traders in commodities to eat and drink and keep folks warm, and of Italian frame-makers, and of barbers, and of brokers, and of dealers in dogs and singing-birds. From these, in a narrow and a dirty street devoted to such callings, Mr Wegg selects one dark shop-window with a tallow candle dimly burning in it, surrounded by a muddle of objects vaguely resembling pieces of leather and dry stick, but among which nothing is resolvable into anything distinct, save the candle itself in its old tin candlestick, and two preserved frogs fighting a small-sword duel. Stumping with fresh vigour, he goes in at the dark greasy entry, pushes a little greasy dark reluctant side-door, and follows the door into the little dark greasy shop. It is so dark that nothing can be made out in it, over a little counter, but another tallow candle in another old tin candlestick, close to the face of a man stooping low in a chair.
Mr Wegg nods to the face, ‘Good evening.’
The face looking up is a sallow face with weak eyes, surmounted by a tangle of reddish-dusty hair. The owner of the face has no cravat on, and has opened his tumbled shirt-collar to work with the more ease. For the same reason he has no coat on: only a loose waistcoat over his yellow linen. His eyes are like the over-tried eyes of an engraver, but he is not that; his expression and stoop are like those of a shoemaker, but he is not that.
‘Good evening, Mr Venus. Don’t you remember?’
With slowly dawning remembrance, Mr Venus rises, and holds his candle over the little counter, and holds it down towards the legs, natural and artificial, of Mr Wegg.
‘To be sure!’ he says, then. ‘How do you do?’
‘Wegg, you know,’ that gentleman explains.
‘Yes, yes,’ says the other. ‘Hospital amputation?’
‘Just so,’ says Mr Wegg.
‘Yes, yes,’ quoth Venus. ‘How do you do? Sit down by the fire, and warm your – your other one.’
The little counter being so short a counter that it leaves the fireplace, which would have been behind it if it had been longer, accessible, Mr Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. ‘For that,’ Mr Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, ‘is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,’ with another sniff, ‘as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows.’
‘My tea is drawing, and my muffin is on the hob, Mr Wegg; will you partake?’
It being one of Mr Wegg’s guiding rules in life always to partake, he says he will. But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees Mr Venus’s cup and saucer only because it is close under the candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess Mr Venus produces another for himself until it is under his nose. Concurrently, Wegg perceives a pretty little dead bird lying on the counter, with its head drooping on one side against the rim of Mr Venus’s saucer, and a long stiff wire piercing its breast. As if it were Cock Robin, the hero of the ballad, and Mr Venus were the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and Mr Wegg were the fly with his little eye.
Mr Venus dives, and produces another muffin, yet untoasted; taking the arrow out of the breast of Cock Robin, he proceeds to toast it on the end of that cruel instrument. When it is brown, he dives again and produces butter, with which he completes his work.
Mr Wegg, as an artful man who is sure of his supper by-and-bye, presses muffin on his host to soothe him into a compliant state of mind, or, as one might say, to grease his works. As the muffins disappear, little by little, the black shelves and nooks and corners begin to appear, and Mr Wegg gradually acquires an imperfect notion that over against him on the chimney-piece is a Hindoo baby in a bottle, curved up with his big head tucked under him, as he would instantly throw a summersault if the bottle were large enough.
When he deems Mr Venus’s wheels sufficiently lubricated, Mr Wegg approaches his object by asking, as he lightly taps his hands together, to express an undesigning frame of mind:
‘And how have I been going on, this long time, Mr Venus?’
‘Very bad,’ says Mr Venus, uncompromisingly.
‘What? Am I still at home?’ asks Wegg, with an air of surprise.
‘Always at home.’
This would seem to be secretly agreeable to Wegg, but he veils his feelings, and observes, ‘Strange. To what do you attribute it?’
‘I don’t know,’ replies Venus, who is a haggard melancholy man, speaking in a weak voice of querulous complaint, ‘to what to attribute it, Mr Wegg. I can’t work you into a miscellaneous one, no how. Do what I will, you can’t be got to fit. Anybody with a passable knowledge would pick you out at a look, and say, – “No go! Don’t match!”’
‘Well, but hang it, Mr Venus,’ Wegg expostulates with some little irritation, ‘that can’t be personal and peculiar in me. It must often happen with miscellaneous ones.’
‘With ribs (I grant you) always. But not else. When I prepare a miscellaneous one, I know beforehand that I can’t keep to nature, and be miscellaneous with ribs, because every man has his own ribs, and no other man’s will go with them; but elseways I can be miscellaneous. I have just sent home a Beauty – a perfect Beauty – to a school of art. One leg Belgian, one leg English, and the pickings of eight other people in it. Talk of not being qualified to be miscellaneous! By rights you ought to be, Mr Wegg.’
Silas looks as hard at his one leg as he can in the dim light, and after a pause sulkily opines ‘that it must be the fault of the other people. Or how do you mean to say it comes about?’ he demands impatiently.
‘I don’t know how it comes about. Stand up a minute. Hold the light.’ Mr Venus takes from a corner by his chair, the bones of a leg and foot, beautifully pure, and put together with exquisite neatness. These he compares with Mr Wegg’s leg; that gentleman looking on, as if he were being measured for a riding-boot. ‘No, I don’t know how it is, but so it is. You have got a twist in that bone, to the best of my belief. I never saw the likes of you.’
Mr Wegg having looked distrustfully at his own limb, and suspiciously at the pattern with which it has been compared, makes the point:
‘I’ll bet a pound that ain’t an English one!’
‘An easy wager, when we run so much into foreign! No, it belongs to that French gentleman.’
As he nods towards a point of darkness behind Mr Wegg, the latter, with a slight start, looks round for ‘that French gentleman,’ whom he at length descries to be represented (in a very workmanlike manner) by his ribs only, standing on a shelf in another corner, like a piece of armour or a pair of stays.
‘Oh!’ says Mr Wegg, with a sort of sense of being introduced; ‘I dare say you were all right enough in your own country, but I hope no objections will be taken to my saying that the Frenchman was never yet born as I should wish to match.’
At this moment the greasy door is violently pushed inward, and a boy follows it, who says, after having let it slam:
‘Come for the stuffed canary.’
‘It’s three and ninepence,’ returns Venus; ‘have you got the money?’
The boy produces four shillings. Mr Venus, always in exceedingly low spirits and making whimpering sounds, peers about for the stuffed canary. On his taking the candle to assist his search, Mr Wegg observes that he has a convenient little shelf near his knees, exclusively appropriated to skeleton hands, which have very much the appearance of wanting to lay hold of him. From these Mr Venus rescues the canary in a glass case, and shows it to the boy.
‘There!’ he whimpers. ‘There’s animation! On a twig, making up his mind to hop! Take care of him; he’s a lovely specimen. – And three is four.’
The boy gathers up his change and has pulled the door open by a leather strap nailed to it for the purpose, when Venus cries out:
‘Stop him! Come back, you young villain! You’ve got a tooth among them halfpence.’
‘How was I to know I’d got it? You giv it me. I don’t want none of your teeth; I’ve got enough of my own.’ So the boy pipes, as he selects it from his change, and throws it on the counter.
‘Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth,’ Mr Venus retorts pathetically. ‘Don’t hit me because you see I’m down. I’m low enough without that. It dropped into the till, I suppose. They drop into everything. There was two in the coffee-pot at breakfast time. Molars.’
‘Very well, then,’ argues the boy, ‘what do you call names for?’
To which Mr Venus only replies, shaking his shock of dusty hair, and winking his weak eyes, ‘Don’t sauce me, in the wicious pride of your youth; don’t hit me, because you see I’m down. You’ve no idea how small you’d come out, if I had the articulating of you.’
This consideration seems to have its effect on the boy, for he goes out grumbling.
‘Oh dear me, dear me!’ sighs Mr Venus, heavily, snuffing the candle, ‘the world that appeared so flowery has ceased to blow! You’re casting your eye round the shop, Mr Wegg. Let me show you a light. My working bench. My young man’s bench. A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls, warious. Preserved Indian baby. African ditto. Bottled preparations, warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation. The mouldy ones a-top. What’s in those hampers over them again, I don’t quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby. Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious. Oh, dear me! That’s the general panoramic view.’
Having so held and waved the candle as that all these heterogeneous objects seemed to come forward obediently when they were named, and then retire again, Mr Venus despondently repeats, ‘Oh dear me, dear me!’ resumes his seat, and with drooping despondency upon him, falls to pouring himself out more tea.
‘Where am I?’ asks Mr Wegg.
‘You’re somewhere in the back shop across the yard, sir; and speaking quite candidly, I wish I’d never bought you of the Hospital Porter.’
‘Now, look here, what did you give for me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, blowing his tea: his head and face peering out of the darkness, over the smoke of it, as if he were modernizing the old original rise in his family: ‘you were one of a warious lot, and I don’t know.’
Silas puts his point in the improved form of ‘What will you take for me?’
‘Well,’ replies Venus, still blowing his tea, ‘I’m not prepared, at a moment’s notice, to tell you, Mr Wegg.’
‘Come! According to your own account I’m not worth much,’ Wegg reasons persuasively.
‘Not for miscellaneous working in, I grant you, Mr Wegg; but you might turn out valuable yet, as a – ’ here Mr Venus takes a gulp of tea, so hot that it makes him choke, and sets his weak eyes watering; ‘as a Monstrosity, if you’ll excuse me.’
Repressing an indignant look, indicative of anything but a disposition to excuse him, Silas pursues his point.
‘I think you know me, Mr Venus, and I think you know I never bargain.’
Mr Venus takes gulps of hot tea, shutting his eyes at every gulp, and opening them again in a spasmodic manner; but does not commit himself to assent.
‘I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own independent exertions,’ says Wegg, feelingly, ‘and I shouldn’t like – I tell you openly I should not like – under such circumstances, to be what I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.’
‘It’s a prospect at present, is it, Mr Wegg? Then you haven’t got the money for a deal about you? Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you; I’ll hold you over. I am a man of my word, and you needn’t be afraid of my disposing of you. I’ll hold you over. That’s a promise. Oh dear me, dear me!’
Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr Wegg looks on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to get a sympathetic tone into his voice:
‘You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?’
‘Never was so good.’
‘Is your hand out at all?’
‘Never was so well in. Mr Wegg, I’m not only first in the trade, but I’m the trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like, and pay the West End price, but it’ll be my putting together. I’ve as much to do as I can possibly do, with the assistance of my young man, and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.’
Mr Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his smoking saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst into a flood of tears.
‘That ain’t a state of things to make you low, Mr Venus.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. Mr Wegg, not to name myself as a workman without an equal, I’ve gone on improving myself in my knowledge of Anatomy, till both by sight and by name I’m perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I’d name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as I could pick ‘em out, and I’d sort ‘em all, and sort your wertebrae, in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.’
‘Well,’ remarks Silas (though not quite so readily as last time), ‘that ain’t a state of things to be low about. – Not for you to be low about, leastways.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t; Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. But it’s the heart that lowers me, it is the heart! Be so good as take and read that card out loud.’
Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:
‘“Mr Venus,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Preserver of Animals and Birds,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Articulator of human bones.”’
‘That’s it,’ with a groan. ‘That’s it! Mr Wegg, I’m thirty-two, and a bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by a Potentate!’ Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus’s springing to his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying, with the calmness of despair, ‘She objects to the business.’
