it from his dogs’-eared pockets; of expecting it in this pocket, and not finding it; of not expecting it in that pocket, and passing it over; of finding no pocket where that other pocket ought to be!
‘Is this all?’ demanded the person of the house, when a confused heap of pence and shillings lay on the table.
‘Got no more,’ was the rueful answer, with an accordant shake of the head.
‘Let me make sure. You know what you’ve got to do. Turn all your pockets inside out, and leave ‘em so!’ cried the person of the house.
He obeyed. And if anything could have made him look more abject or more dismally ridiculous than before, it would have been his so displaying himself.
‘Here’s but seven and eightpence halfpenny!’ exclaimed Miss Wren, after reducing the heap to order. ‘Oh, you prodigal old son! Now you shall be starved.’
‘No, don’t starve me,’ he urged, whimpering.
‘If you were treated as you ought to be,’ said Miss Wren, ‘you’d be fed upon the skewers of cats’ meat;—only the skewers, after the cats had had the meat. As it is, go to bed.’
When he stumbled out of the corner to comply, he again put out both his hands, and pleaded: ‘Circumstances over which no control—’
‘Get along with you to bed!’ cried Miss Wren, snapping him up. ‘Don’t speak to me. I’m not going to forgive you. Go to bed this moment!’
Seeing another emphatic ‘What’ upon its way, he evaded it by complying and was heard to shuffle heavily up stairs, and shut his door, and throw himself on his bed. Within a little while afterwards, Lizzie came down.
‘Shall we have our supper, Jenny dear?’
‘Ah! bless us and save us, we need have something to keep us going,’ returned Miss Jenny, shrugging her shoulders.
Lizzie laid a cloth upon the little bench (more handy for the person of the house than an ordinary table), and put upon it such plain fare as they were accustomed to have, and drew up a stool for herself.
‘Now for supper! What are you thinking of, Jenny darling?’
‘I was thinking,’ she returned, coming out of a deep study, ‘what I would do to Him, if he should turn out a drunkard.’
‘Oh, but he won’t,’ said Lizzie. ‘You’ll take care of that, beforehand.’
‘I shall try to take care of it beforehand, but he might deceive me. Oh, my dear, all those fellows with their tricks and their manners do deceive!’ With the little fist in full action. ‘And if so, I tell you what I think I’d do. When he was asleep, I’d make a spoon red hot, and I’d have some boiling liquor bubbling in a saucepan, and I’d take it out hissing, and I’d open his mouth with the other hand—or perhaps he’d sleep with his mouth ready open—and I’d pour it down his throat, and blister it and choke him.’
‘I am sure you would do no such horrible thing,’ said Lizzie.
‘Shouldn’t I? Well; perhaps I shouldn’t. But I should like to!’
‘I am equally sure you would not.’
‘Not even like to? Well, you generally know best. Only you haven’t always lived among it as I have lived—and your back isn’t bad and your legs are not queer.’
As they went on with their supper, Lizzie tried to bring her round to that prettier and better state. But, the charm was broken. The person of the house was the person of a house full of sordid shames and cares, with an upper room in which that abased figure was infecting even innocent sleep with sensual brutality and degradation. The doll’s dressmaker had become a little quaint shrew; of the world, worldly; of the earth, earthy.
Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road, and asking guidance! Poor, poor little doll’s dressmaker!
Chapter 3.
A Piece of Work
Britannia, sitting meditating one fine day (perhaps in the attitude in which she is presented on the copper coinage), discovers all of a sudden that she wants Veneering in Parliament. It occurs to her that Veneering is ‘a representative man’—which cannot in these times be doubted—and that Her Majesty’s faithful Commons are incomplete without him. So, Britannia mentions to a legal gentleman of her acquaintance that if Veneering will ‘put down’ five thousand pounds, he may write a couple of initial letters after his name at the extremely cheap rate of two thousand five hundred per letter. It is clearly understood between Britannia and the legal gentleman that nobody is to take up the five thousand pounds, but that being put down they will disappear by magical conjuration and enchantment.
The legal gentleman in Britannia’s confidence going straight from that lady to Veneering, thus commissioned, Veneering declares himself highly flattered, but requires breathing time to ascertain ‘whether his friends will rally round him.’ Above all things, he says, it behoves him to be clear, at a crisis of this importance, ‘whether his friends will rally round him.’ The legal gentleman, in the interests of his client cannot allow much time for this purpose, as the lady rather thinks she knows somebody prepared to put down six thousand pounds; but he says he will give Veneering four hours.
Veneering then says to Mrs Veneering, ‘We must work,’ and throws himself into a Hansom cab. Mrs Veneering in the same moment relinquishes baby to Nurse; presses her aquiline hands upon her brow, to arrange the throbbing intellect within; orders out the carriage; and repeats in a distracted and devoted manner, compounded of Ophelia and any self-immolating female of antiquity you may prefer, ‘We must work.’
Veneering having instructed his driver to charge at the Public in the streets, like the Life-Guards at Waterloo, is driven furiously to Duke Street, Saint James’s. There, he finds Twemlow in his lodgings, fresh from the hands of a secret artist who has been doing something to his hair with yolks of eggs. The process requiring that Twemlow shall, for two hours after the application, allow his hair to stick upright and dry gradually, he is in an appropriate state for the receipt of startling intelligence; looking equally like the Monument on Fish Street Hill, and King Priam on a certain incendiary occasion not wholly unknown as a neat point from the classics.
‘My dear Twemlow,’ says Veneering, grasping both his hands, ‘as the dearest and oldest of my friends—’
(‘Then there can be no more doubt about it in future,’ thinks Twemlow, ‘and I am!’)
‘—Are you of opinion that your cousin, Lord Snigsworth, would give his name as a Member of my Committee? I don’t go so far as to ask for his lordship; I only ask for his name. Do you think he would give me his name?’
In sudden low spirits, Twemlow replies, ‘I don’t think he would.’
‘My political opinions,’ says Veneering, not previously aware of having any, ‘are identical with those of Lord Snigsworth, and perhaps as a matter of public feeling and public principle, Lord Snigsworth would give me his name.’
‘It might be so,’ says Twemlow; ‘but—’ And perplexedly scratching his head, forgetful of the yolks of eggs, is the more discomfited by being reminded how stickey he is.
‘Between such old and intimate friends as ourselves,’ pursues Veneering, ‘there should in such a case be no reserve. Promise me that if I ask you to do anything for me which you don’t like to do, or feel the slightest difficulty in doing, you will freely tell me so.’
This, Twemlow is so kind as to promise, with every appearance of most heartily intending to keep his word.
‘Would you have any objection to write down to Snigsworthy