their heads together.
‘Have you heard this opera of to-night, Fledgeby?’ he asked, stopping very short, to prevent himself from running on into ‘confound you.’
‘Why no, not exactly,’ said Fledgeby. ‘In fact I don’t know a note of it.’
‘Neither do you know it, Georgy?’ said Mrs Lammle. ‘N-no,’ replied Georgiana, faintly, under the sympathetic coincidence.
‘Why, then,’ said Mrs Lammle, charmed by the discovery which flowed from the premises, ‘you neither of you know it! How charming!’
Even the craven Fledgeby felt that the time was now come when he must strike a blow. He struck it by saying, partly to Mrs Lammle and partly to the circumambient air, ‘I consider myself very fortunate in being reserved by—’
As he stopped dead, Mr Lammle, making that gingerous bush of his whiskers to look out of, offered him the word ‘Destiny.’
‘No, I wasn’t going to say that,’ said Fledgeby. ‘I was going to say Fate. I consider it very fortunate that Fate has written in the book of—in the book which is its own property—that I should go to that opera for the first time under the memorable circumstances of going with Miss Podsnap.’
To which Georgiana replied, hooking her two little fingers in one another, and addressing the tablecloth, ‘Thank you, but I generally go with no one but you, Sophronia, and I like that very much.’
Content perforce with this success for the time, Mr Lammle let Miss Podsnap out of the room, as if he were opening her cage door, and Mrs Lammle followed. Coffee being presently served up stairs, he kept a watch on Fledgeby until Miss Podsnap’s cup was empty, and then directed him with his finger (as if that young gentleman were a slow Retriever) to go and fetch it. This feat he performed, not only without failure, but even with the original embellishment of informing Miss Podsnap that green tea was considered bad for the nerves. Though there Miss Podsnap unintentionally threw him out by faltering, ‘Oh, is it indeed? How does it act?’ Which he was not prepared to elucidate.
The carriage announced, Mrs Lammle said; ‘Don’t mind me, Mr Fledgeby, my skirts and cloak occupy both my hands, take Miss Podsnap.’ And he took her, and Mrs Lammle went next, and Mr Lammle went last, savagely following his little flock, like a drover.
But he was all sparkle and glitter in the box at the Opera, and there he and his dear wife made a conversation between Fledgeby and Georgiana in the following ingenious and skilful manner. They sat in this order: Mrs Lammle, Fascination Fledgeby, Georgiana, Mr Lammle. Mrs Lammle made leading remarks to Fledgeby, only requiring monosyllabic replies. Mr Lammle did the like with Georgiana. At times Mrs Lammle would lean forward to address Mr Lammle to this purpose.
‘Alfred, my dear, Mr Fledgeby very justly says, apropos of the last scene, that true constancy would not require any such stimulant as the stage deems necessary.’ To which Mr Lammle would reply, ‘Ay, Sophronia, my love, but as Georgiana has observed to me, the lady had no sufficient reason to know the state of the gentleman’s affections.’ To which Mrs Lammle would rejoin, ‘Very true, Alfred; but Mr Fledgeby points out,’ this. To which Alfred would demur: ‘Undoubtedly, Sophronia, but Georgiana acutely remarks,’ that. Through this device the two young people conversed at great length and committed themselves to a variety of delicate sentiments, without having once opened their lips, save to say yes or no, and even that not to one another.
Fledgeby took his leave of Miss Podsnap at the carriage door, and the Lammles dropped her at her own home, and on the way Mrs Lammle archly rallied her, in her fond and protecting manner, by saying at intervals, ‘Oh little Georgiana, little Georgiana!’ Which was not much; but the tone added, ‘You have enslaved your Fledgeby.’
And thus the Lammles got home at last, and the lady sat down moody and weary, looking at her dark lord engaged in a deed of violence with a bottle of soda-water as though he were wringing the neck of some unlucky creature and pouring its blood down his throat. As he wiped his dripping whiskers in an ogreish way, he met her eyes, and pausing, said, with no very gentle voice:
‘Well?’
‘Was such an absolute Booby necessary to the purpose?’
‘I know what I am doing. He is no such dolt as you suppose.’
‘A genius, perhaps?’
‘You sneer, perhaps; and you take a lofty air upon yourself perhaps! But I tell you this:—when that young fellow’s interest is concerned, he holds as tight as a horse-leech. When money is in question with that young fellow, he is a match for the Devil.’
‘Is he a match for you?’
‘He is. Almost as good a one as you thought me for you. He has no quality of youth in him, but such as you have seen to-day. Touch him upon money, and you touch no booby then. He really is a dolt, I suppose, in other things; but it answers his one purpose very well.’
‘Has she money in her own right in any case?’
‘Ay! she has money in her own right in any case. You have done so well to-day, Sophronia, that I answer the question, though you know I object to any such questions. You have done so well to-day, Sophronia, that you must be tired. Get to bed.’
Chapter 5.
Mercury Prompting
Fledgeby deserved Mr Alfred Lammle’s eulogium. He was the meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.
The father of this young gentleman had been a money-lender, who had transacted professional business with the mother of this young gentleman, when he, the latter, was waiting in the vast dark ante-chambers of the present world to be born. The lady, a widow, being unable to pay the money-lender, married him; and in due course, Fledgeby was summoned out of the vast dark ante-chambers to come and be presented to the Registrar-General. Rather a curious speculation how Fledgeby would otherwise have disposed of his leisure until Doomsday.
Fledgeby’s mother offended her family by marrying Fledgeby’s father. It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you. Fledgeby’s mother’s family had been very much offended with her for being poor, and broke with her for becoming comparatively rich. Fledgeby’s mother’s family was the Snigsworth family. She had even the high honour to be cousin to Lord Snigsworth—so many times removed that the noble Earl would have had no compunction in removing her one time more and dropping her clean outside the cousinly pale; but cousin for all that.
Among her pre-matrimonial transactions with Fledgeby’s father, Fledgeby’s mother had raised money of him at a great disadvantage on a certain reversionary interest. The reversion falling in soon after they were married, Fledgeby’s father laid hold of the cash for his separate use and benefit. This led to subjective differences of opinion, not to say objective interchanges of boot-jacks, backgammon boards, and other such domestic missiles, between Fledgeby’s father and Fledgeby’s mother, and those led to Fledgeby’s mother spending as much money as she could, and to Fledgeby’s father doing all he couldn’t to restrain her. Fledgeby’s childhood had been, in consequence, a stormy one; but
