‘I have a prospect of getting on in life and elevating myself by my own independent exertions,’ says Wegg, feelingly, ‘and I shouldn’t like – I tell you openly I should not like – under such circumstances, to be what I may call dispersed, a part of me here, and a part of me there, but should wish to collect myself like a genteel person.’
‘It’s a prospect at present, is it, Mr Wegg? Then you haven’t got the money for a deal about you? Then I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you; I’ll hold you over. I am a man of my word, and you needn’t be afraid of my disposing of you. I’ll hold you over. That’s a promise. Oh dear me, dear me!’
Fain to accept his promise, and wishing to propitiate him, Mr Wegg looks on as he sighs and pours himself out more tea, and then says, trying to get a sympathetic tone into his voice:
‘You seem very low, Mr Venus. Is business bad?’
‘Never was so good.’
‘Is your hand out at all?’
‘Never was so well in. Mr Wegg, I’m not only first in the trade, but I’m the trade. You may go and buy a skeleton at the West End if you like, and pay the West End price, but it’ll be my putting together. I’ve as much to do as I can possibly do, with the assistance of my young man, and I take a pride and a pleasure in it.’
Mr Venus thus delivers himself, his right hand extended, his smoking saucer in his left hand, protesting as though he were going to burst into a flood of tears.
‘That ain’t a state of things to make you low, Mr Venus.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. Mr Wegg, not to name myself as a workman without an equal, I’ve gone on improving myself in my knowledge of Anatomy, till both by sight and by name I’m perfect. Mr Wegg, if you was brought here loose in a bag to be articulated, I’d name your smallest bones blindfold equally with your largest, as fast as I could pick ‘em out, and I’d sort ‘em all, and sort your wertebrae, in a manner that would equally surprise and charm you.’
‘Well,’ remarks Silas (though not quite so readily as last time), ‘that ain’t a state of things to be low about. – Not for you to be low about, leastways.’
‘Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t; Mr Wegg, I know it ain’t. But it’s the heart that lowers me, it is the heart! Be so good as take and read that card out loud.’
Silas receives one from his hand, which Venus takes from a wonderful litter in a drawer, and putting on his spectacles, reads:
‘“Mr Venus,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Preserver of Animals and Birds,”’
‘Yes. Go on.’
‘“Articulator of human bones.”’
‘That’s it,’ with a groan. ‘That’s it! Mr Wegg, I’m thirty-two, and a bachelor. Mr Wegg, I love her. Mr Wegg, she is worthy of being loved by a Potentate!’ Here Silas is rather alarmed by Mr Venus’s springing to his feet in the hurry of his spirits, and haggardly confronting him with his hand on his coat collar; but Mr Venus, begging pardon, sits down again, saying, with the calmness of despair, ‘She objects to the business.’
‘Does she know the profits of it?’
‘She knows the profits of it, but she don’t appreciate the art of it, and she objects to it. “I do not wish,” she writes in her own handwriting, “to regard myself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light”.’
Mr Venus pours himself out more tea, with a look and in an attitude of the deepest desolation.
‘And so a man climbs to the top of the tree, Mr Wegg, only to see that there’s no look-out when he’s up there! I sit here of a night surrounded by the lovely trophies of my art, and what have they done for me? Ruined me. Brought me to the pass of being informed that “she does not wish to regard herself, nor yet to be regarded, in that boney light”!’ Having repeated the fatal expressions, Mr Venus drinks more tea by gulps, and offers an explanation of his doing so.
‘It lowers me. When I’m equally lowered all over, lethargy sets in. By sticking to it till one or two in the morning, I get oblivion. Don’t let me detain you, Mr Wegg. I’m not company for any one.’
‘It is not on that account,’ says Silas, rising, ‘but because I’ve got an appointment. It’s time I was at Harmon’s.’
‘Eh?’ said Mr Venus. ‘Harmon’s, up Battle Bridge way?’
Mr Wegg admits that he is bound for that port.
‘You ought to be in a good thing, if you’ve worked yourself in there. There’s lots of money going, there.’
‘To think,’ says Silas, ‘that you should catch it up so quick, and know about it. Wonderful!’
‘Not at all, Mr Wegg. The old gentleman wanted to know the nature and worth of everything that was found in the dust; and many’s the bone, and feather, and what not, that he’s brought to me.’
‘Really, now!’
‘Yes. (Oh dear me, dear me!) And he’s buried quite in this neighbourhood, you know. Over yonder.’
Mr Wegg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by responsively nodding his head. He also follows with his eyes, the toss of Venus’s head: as if to seek a direction to over yonder.
‘I took an interest in that discovery in the river,’ says Venus. ‘(She hadn’t written her cutting refusal at that time.) I’ve got up there – never mind, though.’
He had raised the candle at arm’s length towards one of the dark shelves, and Mr Wegg had turned to look, when he broke off.
‘The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust mounds. I suppose there was nothing in ‘em. Probably you know, Mr Wegg?’
‘Nothing in ‘em,’ says Wegg, who has never heard a word of this before.
‘Don’t let me detain you. Good night!’
The unfortunate Mr Venus gives him a shake of the hand with a shake of his own head, and drooping down in his chair, proceeds to pour himself out more tea. Mr Wegg, looking back over his shoulder as he pulls the door open by the strap, notices that the movement so shakes the crazy shop, and so shakes a momentary flare out of the candle, as that the babies – Hindoo, African, and British – the ‘human warious’, the French gentleman, the green glass-eyed cats, the dogs, the ducks, and all the rest of the collection, show for an instant as if paralytically animated; while even poor little Cock Robin at Mr Venus’s elbow turns over on his innocent side. Next moment, Mr Wegg is stumping under the gaslights and through the mud.
Chapter 8
MR BOFFIN IN CONSULTATION
Whosoever had gone out of Fleet Street into the Temple at the date of this history, and had wandered disconsolate about the Temple until he stumbled on a dismal churchyard, and had looked up at the dismal windows commanding that churchyard until at the most dismal window of them all he saw a dismal boy, would in him have beheld, at one grand comprehensive swoop of the eye, the managing clerk, junior clerk, common-law clerk, conveyancing clerk, chancery clerk, every refinement and department of clerk, of Mr Mortimer Lightwood, erewhile called in the newspapers eminent solicitor.
Mr Boffin having been several times in communication with this clerkly essence, both on its own ground and at the Bower, had no difficulty in identifying it when he saw it up in its dusty eyrie. To the second floor on which the window was situated, he ascended, much pre-occupied in mind by the uncertainties besetting the Roman Empire, and much regretting the death of the amiable Pertinax: who only last night had left the Imperial affairs in a state of great confusion, by falling a victim to the fury of the praetorian guards.
‘Morning, morning, morning!’ said Mr Boffin, with