Our Mutual Friend · Book the Second · Chapter 2 5 (2/3)

Little recked Mr. Podsnap of the traps and toils besetting his young person. He regarded her as safe within the Temple of Podsnappery, hiding the fullness of time when she, Georgiana, should take him, Fitz-Podsnap, who with all his worldly goods should her endow. It would call a blush into the cheek of his standard Young Person to have anything to do with such matters save to take as directed, and with worldly goods as per settlement to be endowed. Who giveth this woman to be married to this man? I, Podsnap. Perish the daring thought that any smaller creation should come between!

It was a public holiday, and Fledgeby did not recover his spirits or his usual temperature of nose until the afternoon. Walking into the City in the holiday afternoon, he walked against a living stream setting out of it; and thus, when he turned into the precincts of St. Mary Axe, he found a prevalent repose and quiet there. A yellow overhanging plaster-fronted house at which he stopped was quiet too. The blinds were all drawn down, and the inscription Pubsey and Co. seemed to doze in the countinghouse window on the ground-floor giving on the sleepy street.

Fledgeby knocked and rang, and Fledgeby rang and knocked, but no one came. Fledgeby crossed the narrow street and looked up at the house-windows, but nobody looked down at Fledgeby. He got out of temper, crossed the narrow street again, and pulled the housebell as if it were the house’s nose, and he were taking a hint from his late experience. His ear at the keyhole seemed then, at last, to give him assurance that something stirred within. His eye at the keyhole seemed to confirm his ear, for he angrily pulled the house’s nose again, and pulled and pulled and continued to pull, until a human nose appeared in the dark doorway.

“Now you sir!” cried Fledgeby. “These are nice games!”

He addressed an old Jewish man in an ancient coat, long of skirt, and wide of pocket. A venerable man, bald and shining at the top of his head, and with long grey hair flowing down at its sides and mingling with his beard. A man who with a graceful Eastern action of homage bent his head, and stretched out his hands with the palms downward, as if to deprecate the wrath of a superior.

“What have you been up to?” said Fledgeby, storming at him.

“Generous Christian master,” urged the Jewish man, “it being holiday, I looked for no one.”

“Holiday he blowed!” said Fledgeby, entering. “What have you got to do with holidays? Shut the door.”

With his former action the old man obeyed. In the entry hung his rusty large-brimmed low-crowned hat, as long out of date as his coat; in the corner near it stood his staff⁠—no walking-stick but a veritable staff. Fledgeby turned into the countinghouse, perched himself on a business stool, and cocked his hat. There were light boxes on shelves in the countinghouse, and strings of mock beads hanging up. There were samples of cheap clocks, and samples of cheap vases of flowers. Foreign toys, all.

Perched on the stool with his hat cocked on his head and one of his legs dangling, the youth of Fledgeby hardly contrasted to advantage with the age of the Jewish man as he stood with his bare head bowed, and his eyes (which he only raised in speaking) on the ground. His clothing was worn down to the rusty hue of the hat in the entry, but though he looked shabby he did not look mean. Now, Fledgeby, though not shabby, did look mean.

“You have not told me what you were up to, you sir,” said Fledgeby, scratching his head with the brim of his hat.

“Sir, I was breathing the air.”

“In the cellar, that you didn’t hear?”

“On the housetop.”

“Upon my soul! That’s a way of doing business.”

“Sir,” the old man represented with a grave and patient air, “there must be two parties to the transaction of business, and the holiday has left me alone.”

“Ah! Can’t be buyer and seller too. That’s what the Jews say; ain’t it?”

“At least we say truly, if we say so,” answered the old man with a smile.

“Your people need speak the truth sometimes, for they lie enough,” remarked Fascination Fledgeby.

“Sir, there is,” returned the old man with quiet emphasis, “too much untruth among all denominations of men.”

Rather dashed, Fascination Fledgeby took another scratch at his intellectual head with his hat, to gain time for rallying.

“For instance,” he resumed, as though it were he who had spoken last, “who but you and I ever heard of a poor Jew?”

“The Jews,” said the old man, raising his eyes from the ground with his former smile. “They hear of poor Jews often, and are very good to them.”

“Bother that!” returned Fledgeby. “You know what I mean. You’d persuade me if you could, that you are a poor Jew. I wish you’d confess how much you really did make out of my late governor. I should have a better opinion of you.”

The old man only bent his head, and stretched out his hands as before.

“Don’t go on posturing like a Deaf and Dumb School,” said the ingenious Fledgeby, “but express yourself like a Christian⁠—or as nearly as you can.”

“I had had sickness and misfortunes, and was so poor,” said the old man, “as hopelessly to owe the father, principal and interest. The son inheriting, was so merciful as to forgive me both, and place me here.”

He made a little gesture as though he kissed the hem of an imaginary garment worn by the noble youth before him. It was humbly done, but picturesquely, and was not abasing to the doer.

“You won’t say more, I see,” said Fledgeby, looking at him as if he would like to try the effect of extracting a double-tooth or two, “and so it’s of no use my putting it to you. But confess this, Riah; who believes you to be poor now?”

“No one,” said the old man.

“There you’re right,” assented Fledgeby.

“No one,” repeated the old man with a grave slow wave of his head. “All scout it as a fable. Were I to say ‘This little fancy business is not mine’ ”; with a lithe sweep of his easily-turning hand around him, to comprehend the various objects on the shelves; “ ‘it is the little business of a Christian young gentleman who places me, his servant, in trust and charge here, and to whom I am accountable for every single bead,’ they would laugh. When, in the larger money-business, I tell the borrowers⁠—”

“I say, old chap!” interposed Fledgeby, “I hope you mind what you do tell ’em?”

“Sir, I tell them no more than I am about to repeat. When I tell them, ‘I cannot promise this, I cannot answer for the other, I must see my principal, I have not the money, I am a poor man and it does not rest with me,’ they are so unbelieving and so impatient, that they sometimes curse me in Jehovah’s name.”

“That’s deuced good, that is!” said Fascination Fledgeby.

“And at other times they say, ‘Can it never be done without these tricks, Mr. Riah? Come, come, Mr. Riah, we know the arts of your people’⁠—my people!⁠—‘If the money is to be lent, fetch it, fetch it; if it is not to be lent, keep it and say so.’ They never believe me.”

“That’s all right,” said Fascination Fledgeby.

“They say, ‘We know, Mr. Riah, we know. We have but to look at you, and we know.’ ”

“Oh, a good ’un are you for the post,” thought Fledgeby, “and a good ’un was I to mark you out for it! I may be slow, but I am precious sure.”

Not a syllable of this reflection shaped itself in any scrap of Mr. Fledgeby’s breath, lest it should tend to put his servant’s price up. But looking at the old man as he stood quiet with his head bowed and his eyes cast down, he felt that to relinquish an inch of his baldness, an inch of his grey hair, an inch of his coat-skirt, an inch of his hat-brim, an inch of his walking-staff, would be to relinquish hundreds of pounds.

“Look here, Riah,” said Fledgeby, mollified by these self-approving considerations. “I want to go a little more into buying-up queer bills. Look out in that direction.”

“Sir, it shall be done.”

“Casting my eye over the accounts, I find that branch of business pays pretty fairly, and I am game for extending it. I like to know people’s affairs likewise. So look out.”

“Sir, I will, promptly.”

“Put it about in the right quarters, that you’ll buy queer bills by the lump⁠—by the pound weight if that’s all⁠—supposing you see your way to a fair chance on looking over the parcel. And there’s one thing more. Come to me with the books for periodical inspection as usual, at eight on Monday morning.”

Riah drew some folding tablets from his breast and noted it down.

“That’s all I wanted to say at the present time,” continued Fledgeby in a grudging vein, as he got off the stool, “except that I wish you’d take the air where you can hear the bell, or the knocker, either one of the two or both. By the by how do you take the air at the top of the house? Do you stick your head out of a chimney-pot?”

“Sir, there are leads there, and I have made a little garden there.”

“To bury your money in, you old dodger?”

“A thumbnail’s space of garden would hold the treasure I bury, master,” said Riah. “Twelve shillings a week, even when they are an old man’s wages, bury themselves.”

“I should like to know what you really are worth,” returned Fledgeby, with whom his growing rich on that stipend and gratitude was a very convenient fiction. “But come! Let’s have a look at your garden on the tiles, before I go!”

The old man took a step back, and hesitated.

“Truly, sir, I have company there.”

“Have you, by George!” said Fledgeby; “I suppose you happen to know whose premises these are?”

“Sir, they are yours, and I am your servant in them.”

“Oh! I thought you might have overlooked that,” retorted Fledgeby, with his eyes on Riah’s beard as he felt for his own; “having company on my premises, you know!”

“Come up and see the guests, sir. I hope for your admission that they can do no harm.”

Passing him with a courteous reverence, specially unlike any action that Mr. Fledgeby could for his life have imparted to his own head and hands, the old man began to ascend the stairs. As he toiled on before, with his palm upon the stair-rail, and his long black skirt, a very gaberdine, overhanging each successive step, he might have been the leader in some pilgrimage of devotional ascent to a prophet’s tomb. Not troubled by any such weak imagining, Fascination Fledgeby merely speculated on the time of life at which his beard had begun, and thought once more what a good ’un he was for the part.

Some final wooden steps conducted them, stooping under a low penthouse roof, to the housetop. Riah stood still, and, turning to his master, pointed out his guests.

Lizzie Hexam and Jenny Wren. For whom, perhaps with some old instinct of his race, the gentle Jew had spread a carpet. Seated on it, against no more romantic object than a blackened chimney-stack over which some bumble creeper had been trained, they both pored over one book; both with attentive faces; Jenny with the sharper; Lizzie with the more perplexed. Another little book or two were lying near, and a common basket of common fruit, and another basket full of strings of beads and tinsel scraps. A few boxes of humble flowers and evergreens completed the garden; and the encompassing wilderness of dowager old chimneys twirled their cowls and fluttered their smoke, rather as if they were bridling, and fanning themselves, and looking on in a state of airy surprise.

Taking her eyes off the book, to test her memory of something in it, Lizzie was the first to see herself observed. As she rose, Miss Wren likewise became conscious, and said, irreverently addressing the great chief of the premises: “Whoever you are, I can’t get up, because my back’s bad and my legs are queer.”

“This is my master,” said Riah, stepping forward.

(“Don’t look like anybody’s master,” observed Miss Wren to herself, with a hitch of her chin and eyes.)

“This, sir,” pursued the old man, “is a little dressmaker for little people. Explain to the master, Jenny.”

“Dolls; that’s all,” said Jenny, shortly. “Very difficult to fit too, because their figures are so uncertain. You never know where to expect their waists.”

“Her friend,” resumed the old man, motioning towards Lizzie; “and as industrious as virtuous. But that they both are. They are busy early and late, sir, early and late; and in bye-times, as on this holiday, they go to book-learning.”

“Not much good to be got out of that,” remarked Fledgeby.

“Depends upon the person!” quoth Miss Wren, snapping him up.

“I made acquaintance with my guests, sir,” pursued the Jew, with an evident purpose of drawing out the dressmaker, “through their coming here to buy of our damage and waste for Miss Jenny’s millinery. Our waste goes into the best of company, sir, on her rosy-cheeked little customers. They wear it in their hair, and on their ball-dresses, and even (so she tells me) are presented at Court with it.”

“Ah!” said Fledgeby, on whose intelligence this doll-fancy made rather strong demands; “she’s been buying that basketful today, I suppose?”

“I suppose she has,” Miss Jenny interposed; “and paying for it too, most likely!”

“Let’s have a look at it,” said the suspicious chief. Riah handed it to him. “How much for this now?”

“Two precious silver shillings,” said Miss Wren.

Riah confirmed her with two nods, as Fledgeby looked to him. A nod for each shilling.

“Well,” said Fledgeby, poking into the contents of the basket with his forefinger, “the price is not so bad. You have got good measure, Miss What-is-it.”

“Try Jenny,” suggested that young lady with great calmness.

“You have got good measure, Miss Jenny; but the price is not so bad.⁠—And you,” said Fledgeby, turning to the other visitor, “do you buy anything here, miss?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor sell anything neither, miss?”

“No, sir.”

Looking askew at the questioner, Jenny stole her hand up to her friend’s, and drew her friend down, so that she bent beside her on her knee.

“We are thankful to come here for rest, sir,” said Jenny. “You see, you don’t know what the rest of this place is to us; does he, Lizzie? It’s the quiet, and the air.”

“The quiet!” repeated Fledgeby, with a contemptuous turn of his head towards the City’s roar. “And the air!” with a “Poof!” at the smoke.

“Ah!” said Jenny. “But it’s so high. And you see the clouds rushing on above the narrow streets, not minding them, and you see the golden arrows pointing at the mountains in the sky from which the wind comes, and you feel as if you were dead.”

The little creature looked above her, holding up her slight transparent hand.

“How do you feel when you are dead?” asked Fledgeby, much perplexed.

“Oh, so tranquil!” cried the little creature, smiling. “Oh, so peaceful and so thankful! And you hear the people who are alive, crying, and working, and calling to one another down in the close dark streets, and you seem to pity them so! And such a chain has fallen from you, and such a strange good sorrowful happiness comes upon you!”

Her eyes fell on the old man, who, with his hands folded, quietly looked on.

“Why it was only just now,” said the little creature, pointing at him, “that I fancied I saw him come out of his grave! He toiled out at that low door so bent and worn, and then he took his breath and stood upright, and looked all round him at the sky, and the wind blew upon him, and his life down in the dark was over!⁠—Till he was called back to life,” she added, looking round at Fledgeby with that lower look of sharpness. “Why did you call him back?”

“He was long enough coming, anyhow,” grumbled Fledgeby.

“But you are not dead, you know,” said Jenny Wren. “Get down to life!”

Mr. Fledgeby seemed to think it rather a good suggestion, and with a nod turned round. As Riah followed to attend him down the stairs, the little creature called out to the Jew in a silvery tone, “Don’t be long gone. Come back, and be dead!” And still as they went down they heard the little sweet voice, more and more faintly, half calling and half singing, “Come back and be dead, Come back and be dead!”