With that, and ‘Good night,’ the Secretary
lowers the window, and disappears. They listen,
and hear his footsteps go back to the gate, and hear
the gate close after him.
‘And for that individual, Mr Venus,’ remarks
Wegg, when he is fully gone, ‘I have been passed
over! Let me ask you what you think of him?’
Apparently, Mr Venus does not know what to think of
him, for he makes sundry efforts to reply, without
delivering himself of any other articulate utterance
than that he has ‘a singular look’.
‘A double look, you mean, sir,’ rejoins
Wegg, playing bitterly upon the word. ’That’s
his look. Any amount of singular look for
me, but not a double look! That’s an under-handed
mind, sir.’
‘Do you say there’s something against
him?’ Venus asks.
‘Something against him?’ repeats Wegg.
’Something? What would the relief be to
my feelings—as a fellow-man—if
I wasn’t the slave of truth, and didn’t
feel myself compelled to answer, Everything!’
See into what wonderful maudlin refuges, featherless
ostriches plunge their heads! It is such unspeakable
moral compensation to Wegg, to be overcome by the
consideration that Mr Rokesmith has an underhanded
mind!
‘On this starlight night, Mr Venus,’ he
remarks, when he is showing that friendly mover out
across the yard, and both are something the worse
for mixing again and again: ’on this starlight
night to think that talking-over strangers, and underhanded
minds, can go walking home under the sky, as if they
was all square!’
‘The spectacle of those orbs,’ says Mr
Venus, gazing upward with his hat tumbling off; ’brings
heavy on me her crushing words that she did not wish
to regard herself nor yet to be regarded in that—’
’I know! I know! You needn’t
repeat ’em,’ says Wegg, pressing his hand.
’But think how those stars steady me in the cause
of the right against some that shall be nameless.
It isn’t that I bear malice. But see how
they glisten with old remembrances! Old remembrances
of what, sir?’
Mr Venus begins drearily replying, ’Of her words,
in her own handwriting, that she does not wish to
regard herself, nor yet—’ when Silas
cuts him short with dignity.
’No, sir! Remembrances of Our House, of
Master George, of Aunt Jane, of Uncle Parker, all
laid waste! All offered up sacrifices to the minion
of fortune and the worm of the hour!’
IN WHICH AN INNOCENT ELOPEMENT OCCURS
The minion of fortune and the worm of the hour, or
in less cutting language, Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire,
the Golden Dustman, had become as much at home in
his eminently aristocratic family mansion as he was
likely ever to be. He could not but feel that,
like an eminently aristocratic family cheese, it was
much too large for his wants, and bred an infinite
amount of parasites; but he was content to regard this
drawback on his property as a sort of perpetual Legacy
Duty. He felt the more resigned to it, forasmuch
as Mrs Boffin enjoyed herself completely, and Miss
Bella was delighted.
