Our Mutual Friend

‘As you handsomely say again, partner! No, it was not my fault. I’d have had that bottle out of him. Was it to be borne that he should come, like a thief in the dark, digging among stuff that was far more ours than his (seeing that we could deprive him of every grain of it, if he didn’t buy us at our own figure), and carrying off treasure from its bowels? No, it was not to be borne. And for that, too, his nose shall be put to the grindstone.’

‘How do you propose to do it, Mr Wegg?’

‘To put his nose to the grindstone? I propose,’ returned that estimable man, ‘to insult him openly. And, if looking into this eye of mine, he dares to offer a word in answer, to retort upon him before he can take his breath, “Add another word to that, you dusty old dog, and you’re a beggar.”’

‘Suppose he says nothing, Mr Wegg?’

‘Then,’ replied Wegg, ‘we shall have come to an understanding with very little trouble, and I’ll break him and drive him, Mr Venus. I’ll put him in harness, and I’ll bear him up tight, and I’ll break him and drive him. The harder the old Dust is driven, sir, the higher he’ll pay. And I mean to be paid high, Mr Venus, I promise you.’

‘You speak quite revengefully, Mr Wegg.’

‘Revengefully, sir? Is it for him that I have declined and falled, night after night? Is it for his pleasure that I’ve waited at home of an evening, like a set of skittles, to be set up and knocked over, set up and knocked over, by whatever balls – or books – he chose to bring against me? Why, I’m a hundred times the man he is, sir; five hundred times!’

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.