Our Mutual Friend · Book the First · Chapter 1 10 (2/2)

The Analytical, in course of time achieving what he feels to be due to himself in bringing to a dignified conclusion several quarrels he has on hand with the pastrycook’s men, announces breakfast. Dining-room no less magnificent than drawing-room; tables superb; all the camels out, and all laden. Splendid cake, covered with Cupids, silver, and true-lovers’ knots. Splendid bracelet, produced by Veneering before going down, and clasped upon the arm of bride. Yet nobody seems to think much more of the Veneerings than if they were a tolerable landlord and landlady doing the thing in the way of business at so much a head. The bride and bridegroom talk and laugh apart, as has always been their manner; and the Buffers work their way through the dishes with systematic perseverance, as has always been their manner; and the pokey unknowns are exceedingly benevolent to one another in invitations to take glasses of champagne; but Mrs. Podsnap, arching her mane and rocking her grandest, has a far more deferential audience than Mrs. Veneering; and Podsnap all but does the honours.

Another dismal circumstance is, that Veneering, having the captivating Tippins on one side of him and the bride’s aunt on the other, finds it immensely difficult to keep the peace. For, Medusa, besides unmistakingly glaring petrifaction at the fascinating Tippins, follows every lively remark made by that dear creature, with an audible snort: which may be referable to a chronic cold in the head, but may also be referable to indignation and contempt. And this snort being regular in its reproduction, at length comes to be expected by the company, who make embarrassing pauses when it is falling due, and by waiting for it, render it more emphatic when it comes. The stoney aunt has likewise an injurious way of rejecting all dishes whereof Lady Tippins partakes: saying aloud when they are proffered to her, “No, no, no, not for me. Take it away!” As with a set purpose of implying a misgiving that if nourished upon similar meats, she might come to be like that charmer, which would be a fatal consummation. Aware of her enemy, Lady Tippins tries a youthful sally or two, and tries the eyeglass; but, from the impenetrable cap and snorting armour of the stoney aunt all weapons rebound powerless.

Another objectionable circumstance is, that the pokey unknowns support each other in being unimpressible. They persist in not being frightened by the gold and silver camels, and they are banded together to defy the elaborately chased ice-pails. They even seem to unite in some vague utterance of the sentiment that the landlord and landlady will make a pretty good profit out of this, and they almost carry themselves like customers. Nor is there compensating influence in the adorable bridesmaids; for, having very little interest in the bride, and none at all in one another, those lovely beings become, each one of her own account, depreciatingly contemplative of the millinery present; while the bridegroom’s man, exhausted, in the back of his chair, appears to be improving the occasion by penitentially contemplating all the wrong he has ever done; the difference between him and his friend Eugene, being, that the latter, in the back of his chair, appears to be contemplating all the wrong he would like to do⁠—particularly to the present company.

In which state of affairs, the usual ceremonies rather droop and flag, and the splendid cake when cut by the fair hand of the bride has but an indigestible appearance. However, all the things indispensable to be said are said, and all the things indispensable to be done are done (including Lady Tippins’s yawning, falling asleep, and waking insensible), and there is hurried preparation for the nuptial journey to the Isle of Wight, and the outer air teems with brass bands and spectators. In full sight of whom, the malignant star of the Analytical has preordained that pain and ridicule shall befall him. For he, standing on the doorsteps to grace the departure, is suddenly caught a most prodigious thump on the side of his head with a heavy shoe, which a Buffer in the hall, champagne-flushed and wild of aim, has borrowed on the spur of the moment from the pastrycook’s porter, to cast after the departing pair as an auspicious omen.

So they all go up again into the gorgeous drawing-rooms⁠—all of them flushed with breakfast, as having taken scarlatina sociably⁠—and there the combined unknowns do malignant things with their legs to ottomans, and take as much as possible out of the splendid furniture. And so, Lady Tippins, quite undetermined whether today is the day before yesterday, or the day after tomorrow, or the week after next, fades away; and Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene fade away, and Twemlow fades away, and the stoney aunt goes away⁠—she declines to fade, proving rock to the last⁠—and even the unknowns are slowly strained off, and it is all over.

All over, that is to say, for the time being. But, there is another time to come, and it comes in about a fortnight, and it comes to Mr. and Mrs. Lammle on the sands at Shanklin, in the Isle of Wight.

Mr. and Mrs. Lammle have walked for some time on the Shanklin sands, and one may see by their footprints that they have not walked arm in arm, and that they have not walked in a straight track, and that they have walked in a moody humour; for, the lady has prodded little spirting holes in the damp sand before her with her parasol, and the gentleman has trailed his stick after him. As if he were of the Mephistopheles family indeed, and had walked with a drooping tail.

“Do you mean to tell me, then, Sophronia⁠—”

Thus he begins after a long silence, when Sophronia flashes fiercely, and turns upon him.

“Don’t put it upon me, sir. I ask you, do you mean to tell me?”

Mr. Lammle falls silent again, and they walk as before. Mrs. Lammle opens her nostrils and bites her underlip; Mr. Lammle takes his gingerous whiskers in his left hand, and, bringing them together, frowns furtively at his beloved, out of a thick gingerous bush.

“Do I mean to say!” Mrs. Lammle after a time repeats, with indignation. “Putting it on me! The unmanly disingenuousness!”

Mr. Lammle stops, releases his whiskers, and looks at her. “The what?”

Mrs. Lammle haughtily replies, without stopping, and without looking back. “The meanness.”

He is at her side again in a pace or two, and he retorts, “That is not what you said. You said disingenuousness.”

“What if I did?”

“There is no ‘if’ in the case. You did.”

“I did, then. And what of it?”

“What of it?” says Mr. Lammle. “Have you the face to utter the word to me?”

“The face, too!” replied Mrs. Lammle, staring at him with cold scorn. “Pray, how dare you, sir, utter the word to me?”

“I never did.”

As this happens to be true, Mrs. Lammle is thrown on the feminine resource of saying, “I don’t care what you uttered or did not utter.”

After a little more walking and a little more silence, Mr. Lammle breaks the latter.

“You shall proceed in your own way. You claim a right to ask me do I mean to tell you. Do I mean to tell you what?”

“That you are a man of property?”

“No.”

“Then you married me on false pretences?”

“So be it. Next comes what you mean to say. Do you mean to say you are a woman of property?”

“No.”

“Then you married me on false pretences.”

“If you were so dull a fortune-hunter that you deceived yourself, or if you were so greedy and grasping that you were over-willing to be deceived by appearances, is it my fault, you adventurer?” the lady demands, with great asperity.

“I asked Veneering, and he told me you were rich.”

“Veneering!” with great contempt. “And what does Veneering know about me!”

“Was he not your trustee?”

“No. I have no trustee, but the one you saw on the day when you fraudulently married me. And his trust is not a very difficult one, for it is only an annuity of a hundred and fifteen pounds. I think there are some odd shillings or pence, if you are very particular.”

Mr. Lammle bestows a by no means loving look upon the partner of his joys and sorrows, and he mutters something; but checks himself.

“Question for question. It is my turn again, Mrs. Lammle. What made you suppose me a man of property?”

“You made me suppose you so. Perhaps you will deny that you always presented yourself to me in that character?”

“But you asked somebody, too. Come, Mrs. Lammle, admission for admission. You asked somebody?”

“I asked Veneering.”

“And Veneering knew as much of me as he knew of you, or as anybody knows of him.”

After more silent walking, the bride stops short, to say in a passionate manner:

“I never will forgive the Veneerings for this!”

“Neither will I,” returns the bridegroom.

With that, they walk again; she, making those angry spirts in the sand; he, dragging that dejected tail. The tide is low, and seems to have thrown them together high on the bare shore. A gull comes sweeping by their heads and flouts them. There was a golden surface on the brown cliffs but now, and behold they are only damp earth. A taunting roar comes from the sea, and the far-out rollers mount upon one another, to look at the entrapped impostors, and to join in impish and exultant gambols.

“Do you pretend to believe,” Mrs. Lammle resumes, sternly, “when you talk of my marrying you for worldly advantages, that it was within the bounds of reasonable probability that I would have married you for yourself?”

“Again there are two sides to the question, Mrs. Lammle. What do you pretend to believe?”

“So you first deceive me and then insult me!” cries the lady, with a heaving bosom.

“Not at all. I have originated nothing. The double-edged question was yours.”

“Was mine!” the bride repeats, and her parasol breaks in her angry hand.

His colour has turned to a livid white, and ominous marks have come to light about his nose, as if the finger of the very devil himself had, within the last few moments, touched it here and there. But he has repressive power, and she has none.

“Throw it away,” he coolly recommends as to the parasol; “you have made it useless; you look ridiculous with it.”

Whereupon she calls him in her rage, “A deliberate villain,” and so casts the broken thing from her as that it strikes him in falling. The fingermarks are something whiter for the instant, but he walks on at her side.

She bursts into tears, declaring herself the wretchedest, the most deceived, the worst-used, of women. Then she says that if she had the courage to kill herself, she would do it. Then she calls him vile impostor. Then she asks him, why, in the disappointment of his base speculation, he does not take her life with his own hand, under the present favourable circumstances. Then she cries again. Then she is enraged again, and makes some mention of swindlers. Finally, she sits down crying on a block of stone, and is in all the known and unknown humours of her sex at once. Pending her changes, those aforesaid marks in his face have come and gone, now here now there, like white steps of a pipe on which the diabolical performer has played a tune. Also his livid lips are parted at last, as if he were breathless with running. Yet he is not.

“Now, get up, Mrs. Lammle, and let us speak reasonably.”

She sits upon her stone, and takes no heed of him.

“Get up, I tell you.”

Raising her head, she looks contemptuously in his face, and repeats, “You tell me! Tell me, forsooth!”

She affects not to know that his eyes are fastened on her as she droops her head again; but her whole figure reveals that she knows it uneasily.

“Enough of this. Come! Do you hear? Get up.”

Yielding to his hand, she rises, and they walk again; but this time with their faces turned towards their place of residence.

“Mrs. Lammle, we have both been deceiving, and we have both been deceived. We have both been biting, and we have both been bitten. In a nutshell, there’s the state of the case.”

“You sought me out⁠—”

“Tut! Let us have done with that. We know very well how it was. Why should you and I talk about it, when you and I can’t disguise it? To proceed. I am disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

“Am I no one?”

“Someone⁠—and I was coming to you, if you had waited a moment. You, too, are disappointed and cut a poor figure.”

“An injured figure!”

“You are now cool enough, Sophronia, to see that you can’t be injured without my being equally injured; and that therefore the mere word is not to the purpose. When I look back, I wonder how I can have been such a fool as to take you to so great an extent upon trust.”

“And when I look back⁠—” the bride cries, interrupting.

“And when you look back, you wonder how you can have been⁠—you’ll excuse the word?”

“Most certainly, with so much reason.”

“⁠—Such a fool as to take me to so great an extent upon trust. But the folly is committed on both sides. I cannot get rid of you; you cannot get rid of me. What follows?”

“Shame and misery,” the bride bitterly replies.

“I don’t know. A mutual understanding follows, and I think it may carry us through. Here I split my discourse (give me your arm, Sophronia), into three heads, to make it shorter and plainer. Firstly, it’s enough to have been done, without the mortification of being known to have been done. So we agree to keep the fact to ourselves. You agree?”

“If it is possible, I do.”

“Possible! We have pretended well enough to one another. Can’t we, united, pretend to the world? Agreed. Secondly, we owe the Veneerings a grudge, and we owe all other people the grudge of wishing them to be taken in, as we ourselves have been taken in. Agreed?”

“Yes. Agreed.”

“We come smoothly to thirdly. You have called me an adventurer, Sophronia. So I am. In plain uncomplimentary English, so I am. So are you, my dear. So are many people. We agree to keep our own secret, and to work together in furtherance of our own schemes.”

“What schemes?”

“Any scheme that will bring us money. By our own schemes, I mean our joint interest. Agreed?”

She answers, after a little hesitation, “I suppose so. Agreed.”

“Carried at once, you see! Now, Sophronia, only half a dozen words more. We know one another perfectly. Don’t be tempted into twitting me with the past knowledge that you have of me, because it is identical with the past knowledge that I have of you, and in twitting me, you twit yourself, and I don’t want to hear you do it. With this good understanding established between us, it is better never done. To wind up all:⁠—You have shown temper today, Sophronia. Don’t be betrayed into doing so again, because I have a Devil of a temper myself.”

So, the happy pair, with this hopeful marriage contract thus signed, sealed, and delivered, repair homeward. If, when those infernal fingermarks were on the white and breathless countenance of Alfred Lammle, Esquire, they denoted that he conceived the purpose of subduing his dear wife Mrs. Alfred Lammle, by at once divesting her of any lingering reality or pretence of self-respect, the purpose would seem to have been presently executed. The mature young lady has mighty little need of powder, now, for her downcast face, as he escorts her in the light of the setting sun to their abode of bliss.