‘I must have gone too far in making myself disagreeable,’ said Fledgeby, ‘but I never intended it.’
‘Say no more, say no more!’ Mr Lammle repeated in a magnificent tone. ‘Give me your’—Fledgeby started—‘hand.’
They shook hands, and on Mr Lammle’s part, in particular, there ensued great geniality. For, he was quite as much of a dastard as the other, and had been in equal danger of falling into the second place for good, when he took heart just in time, to act upon the information conveyed to him by Fledgeby’s eye.
The breakfast ended in a perfect understanding. Incessant machinations were to be kept at work by Mr and Mrs Lammle; love was to be made for Fledgeby, and conquest was to be insured to him; he on his part very humbly admitting his defects as to the softer social arts, and entreating to be backed to the utmost by his two able coadjutors.
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 fulness 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 counting-house 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 counting-house, perched himself on a business stool, and cocked his hat. There were light boxes on shelves in the counting-house, 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 house-top.’
‘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.