Our Mutual Friend

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OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

Charles Dickens



CONTENTS


Book the First

THE CUP AND THE LIP


1. ON THE LOOK OUT
2. THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE
3. ANOTHER MAN
4. THE R. WILFER FAMILY
5. BOFFIN'S BOWER
6. CUT ADRIFT
7. MR WEGG LOOKS AFTER HIMSELF
8. MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
9. MR AND MRS BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
10. A MARRIAGE CONTRACT
11. PODSNAPPERY
12. THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN'S BROW
13. TRACKING THE BIRD OF PREY
14. THE BIRD OF PREY BROUGHT DOWN
15. TWO NEW SERVANTS
16. MINDERS AND RE-MINDERS
17. A DISMAL SWAMP



Book the Second

BIRDS OF A FEATHER


1. OF AN EDUCATIONAL CHARACTER
2. STILL EDUCATIONAL
3. A PIECE OF WORK
4. CUPID PROMPTED
5. MERCURY PROMPTING
6. A RIDDLE WITHOUT AN ANSWER
7. IN WHICH A FRIENDLY MOVE IS ORIGINATED
8. IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS
9. IN WHICH THE ORPHAN MAKES HIS WILL
10. A SUCCESSOR
11. SOME AFFAIRS OF THE HEART
12. MORE BIRDS OF PREY
13. A SOLO AND A DUETT
14. STRONG OF PURPOSE
15. THE WHOLE CASE SO FAR
16. AN ANNIVERSARY OCCASION



Book the Third

A LONG LANE


1. LODGERS IN QUEER STREET
2. A RESPECTED FRIEND IN A NEW ASPECT
3. THE SAME RESPECTED FRIEND IN MORE ASPECTS THAN ONE
4. A HAPPY RETURN OF THE DAY
5. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO BAD COMPANY
6. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN FALLS INTO WORSE COMPANY
7. THE FRIENDLY MOVE TAKES UP A STRONG POSITION
8. THE END OF A LONG JOURNEY
9. SOMEBODY BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF A PREDICTION
10. SCOUTS OUT
11. IN THE DARK
12. MEANING MISCHIEF
13. GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME, AND HANG HIM
14. MR WEGG PREPARES A GRINDSTONE FOR MR BOFFIN'S NOSE
15. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN AT HIS WORST
16. THE FEAST OF THE THREE HOBGOBLINS
17. A SOCIAL CHORUS



Book the Fourth

A TURNING


1. SETTING TRAPS
2. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN RISES A LITTLE
3. THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN SINKS AGAIN
4. A RUNAWAY MATCH
5. CONCERNING THE MENDICANT'S BRIDE
6. A CRY FOR HELP
7. BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN
8. A FEW GRAINS OF PEPPER
9. TWO PLACES VACATED
10. THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER DISCOVERS A WORD
11. EFFECT IS GIVEN TO THE DOLLS' DRESSMAKER'S DISCOVERY
12. THE PASSING SHADOW
13. SHOWING HOW THE GOLDEN DUSTMAN HELPED TO SCATTER DUST
14. CHECKMATE TO THE FRIENDLY MOVE
15. WHAT WAS CAUGHT IN THE TRAPS THAT WERE SET
16. PERSONS AND THINGS IN GENERAL
17. THE VOICE OF SOCIETY


POSTSCRIPT, IN LIEU OF PREFACE




BOOK THE FIRST -- THE CUP AND THE LIP



Chapter 1

ON THE LOOK OUT


In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no
need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with
two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which
is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening
was closing in.

The figures in this boat were those of a strong man with ragged grizzled
hair and a sun-browned face, and a dark girl of nineteen or twenty,
sufficiently like him to be recognizable as his daughter. The girl
rowed, pulling a pair of sculls very easily; the man, with the
rudder-lines slack in his hands, and his hands loose in his waistband,
kept an eager look out. He had no net, hook, or line, and he could
not be a fisherman; his boat had no cushion for a sitter, no paint, no
inscription, no appliance beyond a rusty boathook and a coil of rope,
and he could not be a waterman; his boat was too crazy and too small
to take in cargo for delivery, and he could not be a lighterman or
river-carrier; there was no clue to what he looked for, but he looked
for something, with a most intent and searching gaze. The tide, which
had turned an hour before, was running down, and his eyes watched
every little race and eddy in its broad sweep, as the boat made slight
head-way against it, or drove stern foremost before it, according as he
directed his daughter by a movement of his head. She watched his face
as earnestly as he watched the river. But, in the intensity of her look
there was a touch of dread or horror.

Allied to the bottom of the river rather than the surface, by reason of
the slime and ooze with which it was covered, and its sodden state, this
boat and the two figures in it obviously were doing something that they
often did, and were seeking what they often sought. Half savage as the
man showed, with no covering on his matted head, with his brown arms
bare to between the elbow and the shoulder, with the loose knot of a
looser kerchief lying low on his bare breast in a wilderness of beard
and whisker, with such dress as he wore seeming to be made out of the
mud that begrimed his boat, still there was a business-like usage in his
steady gaze. So with every lithe action of the girl, with every turn of
her wrist, perhaps most of all with her look of dread or horror; they
were things of usage.

'Keep her out, Lizzie. Tide runs strong here. Keep her well afore the
sweep of it.'

Trusting to the girl's skill and making no use of the rudder, he eyed
the coming tide with an absorbed attention. So the girl eyed him. But,
it happened now, that a slant of light from the setting sun glanced into
the bottom of the boat, and, touching a rotten stain there which bore
some resemblance to the outline of a muffled human form, coloured it as
though with diluted blood. This caught the girl's eye, and she shivered.

'What ails you?' said the man, immediately aware of it, though so intent
on the advancing waters; 'I see nothing afloat.'

The red light was gone, the shudder was gone, and his gaze, which had
come back to the boat for a moment, travelled away again. Wheresoever
the strong tide met with an impediment, his gaze paused for an instant.
At every mooring-chain and rope, at every stationery boat or barge that
split the current into a broad-arrowhead, at the offsets from the piers
of Southwark Bridge, at the paddles of the river steamboats as they beat
the filthy water, at the floating logs of timber lashed together lying
off certain wharves, his shining eyes darted a hungry look. After a
darkening hour or so, suddenly the rudder-lines tightened in his hold,
and he steered hard towards the Surrey shore.

Always watching his face, the girl instantly answered to the action in
her sculling; presently the boat swung round, quivered as from a sudden
jerk, and the upper half of the man was stretched out over the stern.

The girl pulled the hood of a cloak she wore, over her head and over her
face, and, looking backward so that the front folds of this hood were
turned down the river, kept the boat in that direction going before the
tide. Until now, the boat had barely held her own, and had hovered about
one spot; but now, the banks changed swiftly, and the deepening shadows
and the kindling lights of London Bridge were passed, and the tiers of
shipping lay on either hand.

It was not until now that the upper half of the man came back into the
boat. His arms were wet and dirty, and he washed them over the side. In
his right hand he held something, and he washed that in the river too.
It was money. He chinked it once, and he blew upon it once, and he spat
upon it once,--'for luck,' he hoarsely said--before he put it in his
pocket.

'Lizzie!'

The girl turned her face towards him with a start, and rowed in silence.
Her face was very pale. He was a hook-nosed man, and with that and his
bright eyes and his ruffled head, bore a certain likeness to a roused
bird of prey.

'Take that thing off your face.'

She put it back.

'Here! and give me hold of the sculls. I'll take the rest of the spell.'

'No, no, father! No! I can't indeed. Father!--I cannot sit so near it!'

He was moving towards her to change places, but her terrified
expostulation stopped him and he resumed his seat.

'What hurt can it do you?'

'None, none. But I cannot bear it.'

'It's my belief you hate the sight of the very river.'

'I--I do not like it, father.'

'As if it wasn't your living! As if it wasn't meat and drink to you!'

At these latter words the girl shivered again, and for a moment paused
in her rowing, seeming to turn deadly faint. It escaped his attention,
for he was glancing over the stern at something the boat had in tow.

'How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very
fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river
alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide
washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle
of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or
another.'

Lizzie took her right hand from the scull it held, and touched her
lips with it, and for a moment held it out lovingly towards him: then,
without speaking, she resumed her rowing, as another boat of similar
appearance, though in rather better trim, came out from a dark place and
dropped softly alongside.

'In luck again, Gaffer?' said a man with a squinting leer, who sculled
her and who was alone, 'I know'd you was in luck again, by your wake as
you come down.'

'Ah!' replied the other, drily. 'So you're out, are you?'

'Yes, pardner.'

There was now a tender yellow moonlight on the river, and the new comer,
keeping half his boat's length astern of the other boat looked hard at
its track.

'I says to myself,' he went on, 'directly you hove in view, yonder's
Gaffer, and in luck again, by George if he ain't! Scull it is,
pardner--don't fret yourself--I didn't touch him.' This was in answer
to a quick impatient movement on the part of Gaffer: the speaker at the
same time unshipping his scull on that side, and laying his hand on the
gunwale of Gaffer's boat and holding to it.

'He's had touches enough not to want no more, as well as I make him
out, Gaffer! Been a knocking about with a pretty many tides, ain't he
pardner? Such is my out-of-luck ways, you see! He must have passed me
when he went up last time, for I was on the lookout below bridge here. I
a'most think you're like the wulturs, pardner, and scent 'em out.'

He spoke in a dropped voice, and with more than one glance at Lizzie who
had pulled on her hood again. Both men then looked with a weird unholy
interest in the wake of Gaffer's boat.

'Easy does it, betwixt us. Shall I take him aboard, pardner?'

'No,' said the other. In so surly a tone that the man, after a blank
stare, acknowledged it with the retort:

'--Arn't been eating nothing as has disagreed with you, have you,
pardner?'

'Why, yes, I have,' said Gaffer. 'I have been swallowing too much of
that word, Pardner. I am no pardner of yours.'

'Since when was you no pardner of mine, Gaffer Hexam Esquire?'

'Since you was accused of robbing a man. Accused of robbing a live man!'
said Gaffer, with great indignation.

'And what if I had been accused of robbing a dead man, Gaffer?'

'You COULDN'T do it.'

'Couldn't you, Gaffer?'

'No. Has a dead man any use for money? Is it possible for a dead man to
have money? What world does a dead man belong to? 'Tother world. What
world does money belong to? This world. How can money be a corpse's? Can
a corpse own it, want it, spend it, claim it, miss it? Don't try to go
confounding the rights and wrongs of things in that way. But it's worthy
of the sneaking spirit that robs a live man.'

'I'll tell you what it is--.'

'No you won't. I'll tell you what it is. You got off with a short time
of it for putting you're hand in the pocket of a sailor, a live sailor.
Make the most of it and think yourself lucky, but don't think after
that to come over ME with your pardners. We have worked together in time
past, but we work together no more in time present nor yet future. Let
go. Cast off!'

'Gaffer! If you think to get rid of me this way--.'

'If I don't get rid of you this way, I'll try another, and chop you over
the fingers with the stretcher, or take a pick at your head with the
boat-hook. Cast off! Pull you, Lizzie. Pull home, since you won't let
your father pull.'

Lizzie shot ahead, and the other boat fell astern. Lizzie's father,
composing himself into the easy attitude of one who had asserted the
high moralities and taken an unassailable position, slowly lighted a
pipe, and smoked, and took a survey of what he had in tow. What he had
in tow, lunged itself at him sometimes in an awful manner when the boat
was checked, and sometimes seemed to try to wrench itself away, though
for the most part it followed submissively. A neophyte might have
fancied that the ripples passing over it were dreadfully like faint
changes of expression on a sightless face; but Gaffer was no neophyte
and had no fancies.



Chapter 2

THE MAN FROM SOMEWHERE


Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a
bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick
and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new,
all their servants were new, their plate was new, their carriage was
new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures
were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was
lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby, and if they had
set up a great-grandfather, he would have come home in matting from the
Pantechnicon, without a scratch upon him, French polished to the crown
of his head.

For, in the Veneering establishment, from the hall-chairs with the new
coat of arms, to the grand pianoforte with the new action, and upstairs
again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish
and polish. And what was observable in the furniture, was observable in
the Veneerings--the surface smelt a little too much of the workshop and
was a trifle sticky.

There was an innocent piece of dinner-furniture that went upon easy
castors and was kept over a livery stable-yard in Duke Street, Saint
James's, when not in use, to whom the Veneerings were a source of blind
confusion. The name of this article was Twemlow. Being first cousin
to Lord Snigsworth, he was in frequent requisition, and at many houses
might be said to represent the dining-table in its normal state. Mr and
Mrs Veneering, for example, arranging a dinner, habitually started with
Twemlow, and then put leaves in him, or added guests to him. Sometimes,
the table consisted of Twemlow and half a dozen leaves; sometimes, of
Twemlow and a dozen leaves; sometimes, Twemlow was pulled out to his
utmost extent of twenty leaves. Mr and Mrs Veneering on occasions of
ceremony faced each other in the centre of the board, and thus the
parallel still held; for, it always happened that the more Twemlow was
pulled out, the further he found himself from the center, and nearer
to the sideboard at one end of the room, or the window-curtains at the
other.

But, it was not this which steeped the feeble soul of Twemlow in
confusion. This he was used to, and could take soundings of. The abyss
to which he could find no bottom, and from which started forth the
engrossing and ever-swelling difficulty of his life, was the insoluble
question whether he was Veneering's oldest friend, or newest friend.
To the excogitation of this problem, the harmless gentleman had devoted
many anxious hours, both in his lodgings over the livery stable-yard,
and in the cold gloom, favourable to meditation, of Saint James's
Square. Thus. Twemlow had first known Veneering at his club, where
Veneering then knew nobody but the man who made them known to one
another, who seemed to be the most intimate friend he had in the world,
and whom he had known two days--the bond of union between their souls,
the nefarious conduct of the committee respecting the cookery of
a fillet of veal, having been accidentally cemented at that date.
Immediately upon this, Twemlow received an invitation to dine with
Veneering, and dined: the man being of the party. Immediately upon
that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine with the man, and dined:
Veneering being of the party. At the man's were a Member, an Engineer, a
Payer-off of the National Debt, a Poem on Shakespeare, a Grievance, and
a Public Office, who all seem to be utter strangers to Veneering. And
yet immediately after that, Twemlow received an invitation to dine at
Veneerings, expressly to meet the Member, the Engineer, the Payer-off
of the National Debt, the Poem on Shakespeare, the Grievance, and the
Public Office, and, dining, discovered that all of them were the most
intimate friends Veneering had in the world, and that the wives of all
of them (who were all there) were the objects of Mrs Veneering's most
devoted affection and tender confidence.

Thus it had come about, that Mr Twemlow had said to himself in his
lodgings, with his hand to his forehead: 'I must not think of this. This
is enough to soften any man's brain,'--and yet was always thinking of
it, and could never form a conclusion.

This evening the Veneerings give a banquet. Eleven leaves in the
Twemlow; fourteen in company all told. Four pigeon-breasted retainers in
plain clothes stand in line in the hall. A fifth retainer, proceeding up
the staircase with a mournful air--as who should say, 'Here is another
wretched creature come to dinner; such is life!'--announces, 'Mis-ter
Twemlow!'

Mrs Veneering welcomes her sweet Mr Twemlow. Mr Veneering welcomes
his dear Twemlow. Mrs Veneering does not expect that Mr Twemlow can in
nature care much for such insipid things as babies, but so old a friend
must please to look at baby. 'Ah! You will know the friend of your
family better, Tootleums,' says Mr Veneering, nodding emotionally at
that new article, 'when you begin to take notice.' He then begs to make
his dear Twemlow known to his two friends, Mr Boots and Mr Brewer--and
clearly has no distinct idea which is which.

But now a fearful circumstance occurs.

'Mis-ter and Mis-sus Podsnap!'

'My dear,' says Mr Veneering to Mrs Veneering, with an air of much
friendly interest, while the door stands open, 'the Podsnaps.'

A too, too smiling large man, with a fatal freshness on him, appearing
with his wife, instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow with:

'How do you do? So glad to know you. Charming house you have here. I
hope we are not late. So glad of the opportunity, I am sure!'

When the first shock fell upon him, Twemlow twice skipped back in
his neat little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone
fashion, as if impelled to leap over a sofa behind him; but the large
man closed with him and proved too strong.

'Let me,' says the large man, trying to attract the attention of his
wife in the distance, 'have the pleasure of presenting Mrs Podsnap
to her host. She will be,' in his fatal freshness he seems to find
perpetual verdure and eternal youth in the phrase, 'she will be so glad
of the opportunity, I am sure!'

In the meantime, Mrs Podsnap, unable to originate a mistake on her own
account, because Mrs Veneering is the only other lady there, does her
best in the way of handsomely supporting her husband's, by looking
towards Mr Twemlow with a plaintive countenance and remarking to Mrs
Veneering in a feeling manner, firstly, that she fears he has been
rather bilious of late, and, secondly, that the baby is already very
like him.

It is questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for
any other man; but, Mr Veneering having this very evening set up the
shirt-front of the young Antinous in new worked cambric just come home,
is not at all complimented by being supposed to be Twemlow, who is dry
and weazen and some thirty years older. Mrs Veneering equally resents
the imputation of being the wife of Twemlow. As to Twemlow, he is
so sensible of being a much better bred man than Veneering, that he
considers the large man an offensive ass.

In this complicated dilemma, Mr Veneering approaches the large man with
extended hand and, smilingly assures that incorrigible personage that he
is delighted to see him: who in his fatal freshness instantly replies:

'Thank you. I am ashamed to say that I cannot at this moment recall
where we met, but I am so glad of this opportunity, I am sure!'

Then pouncing upon Twemlow, who holds back with all his feeble might, he
is haling him off to present him, as Veneering, to Mrs Podsnap, when the
arrival of more guests unravels the mistake. Whereupon, having re-shaken
hands with Veneering as Veneering, he re-shakes hands with Twemlow as
Twemlow, and winds it all up to his own perfect satisfaction by saying
to the last-named, 'Ridiculous opportunity--but so glad of it, I am
sure!'

Now, Twemlow having undergone this terrific experience, having likewise
noted the fusion of Boots in Brewer and Brewer in Boots, and having
further observed that of the remaining seven guests four discrete
characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly declined to commit
themselves as to which is Veneering, until Veneering has them in his
grasp;--Twemlow having profited by these studies, finds his brain
wholesomely hardening as he approaches the conclusion that he really is
Veneering's oldest friend, when his brain softens again and all is
lost, through his eyes encountering Veneering and the large man linked
together as twin brothers in the back drawing-room near the conservatory
door, and through his ears informing him in the tones of Mrs Veneering
that the same large man is to be baby's godfather.

'Dinner is on the table!'

Thus the melancholy retainer, as who should say, 'Come down and be
poisoned, ye unhappy children of men!'

Twemlow, having no lady assigned him, goes down in the rear, with
his hand to his forehead. Boots and Brewer, thinking him indisposed,
whisper, 'Man faint. Had no lunch.' But he is only stunned by the
unvanquishable difficulty of his existence.

Revived by soup, Twemlow discourses mildly of the Court Circular with
Boots and Brewer. Is appealed to, at the fish stage of the banquet, by
Veneering, on the disputed question whether his cousin Lord Snigsworth
is in or out of town? Gives it that his cousin is out of town. 'At
Snigsworthy Park?' Veneering inquires. 'At Snigsworthy,' Twemlow
rejoins. Boots and Brewer regard this as a man to be cultivated; and
Veneering is clear that he is a remunerative article. Meantime the
retainer goes round, like a gloomy Analytical Chemist: always seeming
to say, after 'Chablis, sir?'--'You wouldn't if you knew what it's made
of.'

The great looking-glass above the sideboard, reflects the table and the
company. Reflects the new Veneering crest, in gold and eke in silver,
frosted and also thawed, a camel of all work. The Heralds' College found
out a Crusading ancestor for Veneering who bore a camel on his shield
(or might have done it if he had thought of it), and a caravan of camels
take charge of the fruits and flowers and candles, and kneel down be
loaded with the salt. Reflects Veneering; forty, wavy-haired, dark,
tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy--a kind of sufficiently
well-looking veiled-prophet, not prophesying. Reflects Mrs Veneering;
fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might
have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory,
conscious that a corner of her husband's veil is over herself. Reflects
Podsnap; prosperously feeding, two little light-coloured wiry wings, one
on either side of his else bald head, looking as like his hairbrushes as
his hair, dissolving view of red beads on his forehead, large allowance
of crumpled shirt-collar up behind. Reflects Mrs Podsnap; fine woman
for Professor Owen, quantity of bone, neck and nostrils like a
rocking-horse, hard features, majestic head-dress in which Podsnap has
hung golden offerings. Reflects Twemlow; grey, dry, polite, susceptible
to east wind, First-Gentleman-in-Europe collar and cravat, cheeks drawn
in as if he had made a great effort to retire into himself some years
ago, and had got so far and had never got any farther. Reflects mature
young lady; raven locks, and complexion that lights up well when well
powdered--as it is--carrying on considerably in the captivation of
mature young gentleman; with too much nose in his face, too much ginger
in his whiskers, too much torso in his waistcoat, too much sparkle in
his studs, his eyes, his buttons, his talk, and his teeth. Reflects
charming old Lady Tippins on Veneering's right; with an immense obtuse
drab oblong face, like a face in a tablespoon, and a dyed Long Walk up
the top of her head, as a convenient public approach to the bunch of
false hair behind, pleased to patronize Mrs Veneering opposite, who
is pleased to be patronized. Reflects a certain 'Mortimer', another
of Veneering's oldest friends; who never was in the house before,
and appears not to want to come again, who sits disconsolate on Mrs
Veneering's left, and who was inveigled by Lady Tippins (a friend of
his boyhood) to come to these people's and talk, and who won't talk.
Reflects Eugene, friend of Mortimer; buried alive in the back of his
chair, behind a shoulder--with a powder-epaulette on it--of the mature
young lady, and gloomily resorting to the champagne chalice whenever
proffered by the Analytical Chemist. Lastly, the looking-glass reflects
Boots and Brewer, and two other stuffed Buffers interposed between the
rest of the company and possible accidents.