Wegg opens the gate, descries a sort of brown paper truncheon under Mr Venus’s arm, and remarks, in a dry tone: ‘Oh! I thought perhaps you might have come in a cab.’
‘No, Mr Wegg,’ replies Venus. ‘I am not above a parcel.’
‘Above a parcel! No!’ says Wegg, with some dissatisfaction. But does not openly growl, ‘a certain sort of parcel might be above you.’
‘Here is your purchase, Mr Wegg,’ says Venus, politely handing it over, ‘and I am glad to restore it to the source from whence it—flowed.’
‘Thankee,’ says Wegg. ‘Now this affair is concluded, I may mention to you in a friendly way that I’ve my doubts whether, if I had consulted a lawyer, you could have kept this article back from me. I only throw it out as a legal point.’
‘Do you think so, Mr Wegg? I bought you in open contract.’
‘You can’t buy human flesh and blood in this country, sir; not alive, you can’t,’ says Wegg, shaking his head. ‘Then query, bone?’
‘As a legal point?’ asks Venus.
‘As a legal point.’
‘I am not competent to speak upon that, Mr Wegg,’ says Venus, reddening and growing something louder; ‘but upon a point of fact I think myself competent to speak; and as a point of fact I would have seen you—will you allow me to say, further?’
‘I wouldn’t say more than further, if I was you,’ Mr Wegg suggests, pacifically.
—‘Before I’d have given that packet into your hand without being paid my price for it. I don’t pretend to know how the point of law may stand, but I’m thoroughly confident upon the point of fact.’
As Mr Venus is irritable (no doubt owing to his disappointment in love), and as it is not the cue of Mr Wegg to have him out of temper, the latter gentleman soothingly remarks, ‘I only put it as a little case; I only put it ha’porthetically.’
‘Then I’d rather, Mr Wegg, you put it another time, penn’orth-etically,’ is Mr Venus’s retort, ‘for I tell you candidly I don’t like your little cases.’
Arrived by this time in Mr Wegg’s sitting-room, made bright on the chilly evening by gaslight and fire, Mr Venus softens and compliments him on his abode; profiting by the occasion to remind Wegg that he (Venus) told him he had got into a good thing.
‘Tolerable,’ Wegg rejoins. ‘But bear in mind, Mr Venus, that there’s no gold without its alloy. Mix for yourself and take a seat in the chimbley-corner. Will you perform upon a pipe, sir?’
‘I am but an indifferent performer, sir,’ returns the other; ‘but I’ll accompany you with a whiff or two at intervals.’
So, Mr Venus mixes, and Wegg mixes; and Mr Venus lights and puffs, and Wegg lights and puffs.
‘And there’s alloy even in this metal of yours, Mr Wegg, you was remarking?’
‘Mystery,’ returns Wegg. ‘I don’t like it, Mr Venus. I don’t like to have the life knocked out of former inhabitants of this house, in the gloomy dark, and not know who did it.’
‘Might you have any suspicions, Mr Wegg?’
‘No,’ returns that gentleman. ‘I know who profits by it. But I’ve no suspicions.’
Having said which, Mr Wegg smokes and looks at the fire with a most determined expression of Charity; as if he had caught that cardinal virtue by the skirts as she felt it her painful duty to depart from him, and held her by main force.
‘Similarly,’ resumes Wegg, ‘I have observations as I can offer upon certain points and parties; but I make no objections, Mr Venus. Here is an immense fortune drops from the clouds upon a person that shall be nameless. Here is a weekly allowance, with a certain weight of coals, drops from the clouds upon me. Which of us is the better man? Not the person that shall be nameless. That’s an observation of mine, but I don’t make it an objection. I take my allowance and my certain weight of coals. He takes his fortune. That’s the way it works.’
‘It would be a good thing for me, if I could see things in the calm light you do, Mr Wegg.’
‘Again look here,’ pursues Silas, with an oratorical flourish of his pipe and his wooden leg: the latter having an undignified tendency to tilt him back in his chair; ‘here’s another observation, Mr Venus, unaccompanied with an objection. Him that shall be nameless is liable to be talked over. He gets talked over. Him that shall be nameless, having me at his right hand, naturally looking to be promoted higher, and you may perhaps say meriting to be promoted higher—’
(Mr Venus murmurs that he does say so.)
‘—Him that shall be nameless, under such circumstances passes me by, and puts a talking-over stranger above my head. Which of us two is the better man? Which of us two can repeat most poetry? Which of us two has, in the service of him that shall be nameless, tackled the Romans, both civil and military, till he has got as husky as if he’d been weaned and ever since brought up on sawdust? Not the talking-over stranger. Yet the house is as free to him as if it was his, and he has his room, and is put upon a footing, and draws about a thousand a year. I am banished to the Bower, to be found in it like a piece of furniture whenever wanted. Merit, therefore, don’t win. That’s the way it works. I observe it, because I can’t help observing it, being accustomed to take a powerful sight of notice; but I don’t object. Ever here before, Mr Venus?’
‘Not inside the gate, Mr Wegg.’
‘You’ve been as far as the gate then, Mr Venus?’
‘Yes, Mr Wegg, and peeped in from curiosity.’
‘Did you see anything?’
‘Nothing but the dust-yard.’
Mr Wegg rolls his eyes all round the room, in that ever unsatisfied quest of his, and then rolls his eyes all round Mr Venus; as if suspicious of his having something about him to be found out.
‘And yet, sir,’ he pursues, ‘being acquainted with old Mr Harmon, one would have thought it might have been polite in you, too, to give him a call. And you’re naturally of a polite disposition, you are.’ This last clause as a softening compliment to Mr Venus.
‘It is true, sir,’ replies Venus, winking his weak eyes, and running his fingers through his dusty shock of hair, ‘that I was so, before a certain observation soured me. You understand to what I allude, Mr Wegg? To a certain written statement respecting not wishing to be regarded in a certain light. Since that, all is fled, save gall.’
‘Not all,’ says Mr Wegg, in a tone of sentimental condolence.
‘Yes, sir,’ returns Venus, ‘all! The world may deem it harsh, but I’d quite as soon pitch into my best friend as not. Indeed, I’d sooner!’
Involuntarily making a pass with his wooden leg to guard himself as Mr Venus springs up in the emphasis of this unsociable declaration, Mr Wegg tilts over on his back, chair and all, and is rescued by that harmless misanthrope, in a disjointed state and ruefully rubbing his head.
‘Why, you lost your balance, Mr Wegg,’
