“He don’t look like it,” said Dick shaking his head, “but these old people—there’s no trusting ’em Fred. There’s an aunt of mine down in Dorsetshire that was going to die when I was eight years old, and hasn’t kept her word yet. They’re so aggravating, so unprincipled, so spiteful—unless there’s apoplexy in the family, Fred, you can’t calculate upon ’em, and even then they deceive you just as often as not.”
“Look at the worst side of the question then” said Trent as steadily as before, and keeping his eyes upon his friend. “Suppose he lives.”
“To be sure” said Dick. “There’s the rub.”
“I say” resumed his friend, “suppose he lives, and I persuaded, or if the word sounds more feasible, forced, Nell to a secret marriage with you. What do you think would come of that?”
“A family and an annual income of nothing, to keep ’em on,” said Richard Swiveller after some reflection.
“I tell you” returned the other with an increased earnestness, which, whether it were real or assumed, had the same effect on his companion, “that he lives for her, that his whole energies and thoughts are bound up in her, that he would no more disinherit her for an act of disobedience than he would take me into his favor again for any act of obedience or virtue that I could possibly be guilty of. He could not do it. You or any other man with eyes in his head may see that, if he chooses.”
“It seems improbable certainly” said Dick, musing.
“It seems improbable because it is improbable” his friend returned. “If you would furnish him with an additional inducement to forgive you, let there be an irreconcileable breach, a most deadly quarrel, between you and me—let there be a pretence of such a thing, I mean, of course—and he’ll do so fast enough. As to Nell, constant dropping will wear away a stone; you know you may trust to me as far as she is concerned. So, whether he lives or dies, what does it come to? That you become the sole inheritor of the wealth of this rich old hunks, that you and I spend it together, and that you get into the bargain a beautiful young wife.”
“I suppose there’s no doubt about his being rich”—said Dick.
“Doubt! Did you hear what he let fall the other day when we were there? Doubt! What will you doubt next, Dick?”
It would be tedious to pursue the conversation through all its artful windings, or to develop the gradual approaches by which the heart of Richard Swiveller was gained. It is sufficient to know that vanity, interest, poverty, and every spendthrift consideration urged him to look upon the proposal with favor, and that where all other inducements were wanting, the habitual carelessness of his disposition stepped in and still weighed down the scale on the same side. To these impulses must be added the complete ascendancy which his friend had long been accustomed to exercise over him—an ascendancy exerted in the beginning sorely at the expense of the unfortunate Dick’s purse and prospects, but still maintained without the slightest relaxation, notwithstanding that Dick suffered for all his friend’s vices, and was in nine cases out of ten looked upon as his designing tempter when he was indeed nothing but his thoughtless lightheaded tool.
The motives on the other side were something deeper than any which Richard Swiveller entertained or understood, but these being left to their own development, require no present elucidation. The negotiation was concluded very pleasantly, and Mr. Swiveller was in the act of stating in flowery terms that he had no insurmountable objection to marrying anybody plentifully endowed with money or moveables, who could be induced to take him, when he was interrupted in his observations by a knock at the door, and the consequent necessity of crying “Come in.”
The door was opened, but nothing came in except a soapy arm and a strong gush of tobacco. The gush of tobacco came from the shop downstairs, and the soapy arm proceeded from the body of a servant girl, who being then and there engaged in cleaning the stairs had just drawn it out of a warm pail to take in a letter, which letter she now held in her hand, proclaiming aloud with that quick perception of sirnames peculiar to her class that it was for Mister Snivelling.
Dick looked rather pale and foolish when he glanced at the direction, and still more so when he came to look at the inside, observing that this was one of the inconveniences of being a lady’s man, and that it was very easy to talk as they had been talking, but he had quite forgotten her.
“Her. Who?” demanded Trent.
“Sophy Wackles,” said Dick.
“Who’s she?”
“She’s all my fancy painted her, Sir, that’s what she is,” said Mr. Swiveller, taking a long pull at “the rosy” and looking gravely at his friend. “She is lovely, she’s divine. You know her.”
“I remember,” said his companion carelessly. “What of her?”
“Why, Sir,” returned Dick, “between Miss Sophia Wackles and the humble individual who has now the honor to address you, warm and tender sentiments have been engendered, sentiments of the most honorable and inspiring kind. The Goddess Diana, Sir, that calls aloud for the chase, is not more particular in her behaviour than Sophia Wackles; I can tell you that.”
“Am I to believe there’s anything real in what you say?” demanded his friend; “you don’t mean to say that any lovemaking has been going on?”
“Lovemaking, yes. Promising, no,” said Dick. “There can be no action for breach, that’s one comfort. I’ve never committed myself in writing, Fred.”
“And what’s in the letter pray?”
“A reminder, Fred, for tonight—a small party of twenty, making two hundred light fantastic toes in all, supposing every lady and gentleman to have the proper complement. I must go, if it’s only to begin breaking off the affair—I’ll
