With distracting coolness and slowness—for
he knows the curiosity of the Charmer to be always
devouring—Eugene makes a pretence of getting
out an eyeglass, polishing it, and reading the paper
with difficulty, long after he has seen what is written
on it. What is written on it in wet ink, is:
‘Young Blight.’
‘Waiting?’ says Eugene over his shoulder,
in confidence, with the Analytical.
‘Waiting,’ returns the Analytical in responsive
confidence.
Eugene looks ‘Excuse me,’ towards Mrs
Veneering, goes out, and finds Young Blight, Mortimer’s
clerk, at the hall-door.
’You told me to bring him, sir, to wherever
you was, if he come while you was out and I was in,’
says that discreet young gentleman, standing on tiptoe
to whisper; ‘and I’ve brought him.’
‘Sharp boy. Where is he?’ asks Eugene.
’He’s in a cab, sir, at the door.
I thought it best not to show him, you see, if it
could be helped; for he’s a-shaking all over,
like—Blight’s simile is perhaps inspired
by the surrounding dishes of sweets—’like
Glue Monge.’
‘Sharp boy again,’ returns Eugene.
‘I’ll go to him.’
Goes out straightway, and, leisurely leaning his arms
on the open window of a cab in waiting, looks in at
Mr Dolls: who has brought his own atmosphere
with him, and would seem from its odour to have brought
it, for convenience of carriage, in a rum-cask.
‘Now Dolls, wake up!’
‘Mist Wrayburn? Drection! Fifteen
shillings!’
After carefully reading the dingy scrap of paper handed
to him, and as carefully tucking it into his waistcoat
pocket, Eugene tells out the money; beginning incautiously
by telling the first shilling into Mr Dolls’s
hand, which instantly jerks it out of window; and ending
by telling the fifteen shillings on the seat.
’Give him a ride back to Charing Cross, sharp
boy, and there get rid of him.’
Returning to the dining-room, and pausing for an instant
behind the screen at the door, Eugene overhears, above
the hum and clatter, the fair Tippins saying:
‘I am dying to ask him what he was called out
for!’
‘Are you?’ mutters Eugene, ’then
perhaps if you can’t ask him, you’ll die.
So I’ll be a benefactor to society, and go.
A stroll and a cigar, and I can think this over.
Think this over.’ Thus, with a thoughtful
face, he finds his hat and cloak, unseen of the Analytical,
and goes his way.
Chapter 1
Plashwater Weir Mill Lock looked tranquil and pretty
on an evening in the summer time. A soft air
stirred the leaves of the fresh green trees, and passed
like a smooth shadow over the river, and like a smoother
shadow over the yielding grass. The voice of the
falling water, like the voices of the sea and the
wind, were as an outer memory to a contemplative listener;
but not particularly so to Mr Riderhood, who sat on
one of the blunt wooden levers of his lock-gates, dozing.
Wine must be got into a butt by some agency before
it can be drawn out; and the wine of sentiment never
having been got into Mr Riderhood by any agency, nothing
in nature tapped him.
