“What seems to you,” said Mr. Lammle, “to have been the case, may possibly have been the case. It doesn’t matter.”
Was it the speciality of Mr. and Mrs. Lammle, or does it ever obtain with other loving couples? In these matrimonial dialogues they never addressed each other, but always some invisible presence that appeared to take a station about midway between them. Perhaps the skeleton in the cupboard comes out to be talked to, on such domestic occasions?
“I have never seen any money in the house,” said Mrs. Lammle to the skeleton, “except my own annuity. That I swear.”
“You needn’t take the trouble of swearing,” said Mr. Lammle to the skeleton; “once more, it doesn’t matter. You never turned your annuity to so good an account.”
“Good an account! In what way?” asked Mrs. Lammle.
“In the way of getting credit, and living well,” said Mr. Lammle. Perhaps the skeleton laughed scornfully on being entrusted with this question and this answer; certainly Mrs. Lammle did, and Mr. Lammle did.
“And what is to happen next?” asked Mrs. Lammle of the skeleton.
“Smash is to happen next,” said Mr. Lammle to the same authority.
After this, Mrs. Lammle looked disdainfully at the skeleton—but without carrying the look on to Mr. Lammle—and drooped her eyes. After that, Mr. Lammle did exactly the same thing, and drooped his eyes. A servant then entering with toast, the skeleton retired into the closet, and shut itself up.
“Sophronia,” said Mr. Lammle, when the servant had withdrawn. And then, very much louder: “Sophronia!”
“Well?”
“Attend to me, if you please.” He eyed her sternly until she did attend, and then went on. “I want to take counsel with you. Come, come; no more trifling. You know our league and covenant. We are to work together for our joint interest, and you are as knowing a hand as I am. We shouldn’t be together, if you were not. What’s to be done? We are hemmed into a corner. What shall we do?”
“Have you no scheme on foot that will bring in anything?”
Mr. Lammle plunged into his whiskers for reflection, and came out hopeless: “No; as adventurers we are obliged to play rash games for chances of high winnings, and there has been a run of luck against us.”
She was resuming, “Have you nothing—” when he stopped her.
“We, Sophronia. We, we, we.”
“Have we nothing to sell?”
“Deuce a bit. I have given a Jew a bill of sale on this furniture, and he could take it tomorrow, today, now. He would have taken it before now, I believe, but for Fledgeby.”
“What has Fledgeby to do with him?”
“Knew him. Cautioned me against him before I got into his claws. Couldn’t persuade him then, in behalf of somebody else.”
“Do you mean that Fledgeby has at all softened him towards you?”
“Us, Sophronia. Us, us, us.”
“Towards us?”
“I mean that the Jew has not yet done what he might have done, and that Fledgeby takes the credit of having got him to hold his hand.”
“Do you believe Fledgeby?”
“Sophronia, I never believe anybody. I never have, my dear, since I believed you. But it looks like it.”
Having given her this backhanded reminder of her mutinous observations to the skeleton, Mr. Lammle rose from table—perhaps, the better to conceal a smile, and a white dint or two about his nose—and took a turn on the carpet and came to the hearthrug.
“If we could have packed the brute off with Georgiana;—but however; that’s spilled milk.”
As Lammle, standing gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown with his back to the fire, said this, looking down at his wife, she turned pale and looked down at the ground. With a sense of disloyalty upon her, and perhaps with a sense of personal danger—for she was afraid of him—even afraid of his hand and afraid of his foot, though he had never done her violence—she hastened to put herself right in his eyes.
“If we could borrow money, Alfred—”
“Beg money, borrow money, or steal money. It would be all one to us, Sophronia,” her husband struck in.
“—Then, we could weather this?”
“No doubt. To offer another original and undeniable remark, Sophronia, two and two make four.”
But, seeing that she was turning something in her mind, he gathered up the skirts of his dressing-gown again, and, tucking them under one arm, and collecting his ample whiskers in his other hand, kept his eye upon her, silently.
“It is natural, Alfred,” she said, looking up with some timidity into his face, “to think in such an emergency of the richest people we know, and the simplest.”
“Just so, Sophronia.”
“The Boffins.”
“Just so, Sophronia.”
“Is there nothing to be done with them?”
“What is there to be done with them, Sophronia?”
She cast about in her thoughts again, and he kept his eye upon her as before.
“Of course I have repeatedly thought of the Boffins, Sophronia,” he resumed, after a fruitless silence; “but I have seen my way to nothing. They are well guarded. That infernal Secretary stands between them and—people of merit.”
“If he could be got rid of?” said she, brightening a little, after more casting about.
“Take time, Sophronia,” observed her watchful husband, in a patronizing manner.
“If working him out of the way could be presented in the light of a service to Mr. Boffin?”
“Take time, Sophronia.”
“We have remarked lately, Alfred, that the old man is turning very suspicious and distrustful.”
“Miserly too, my dear; which is far the most unpromising for us. Nevertheless, take time, Sophronia, take time.”
She took time and then said:
“Suppose we should address ourselves to that tendency in him of which we have made ourselves quite sure. Suppose my conscience—”
“And we know what a conscience it is, my soul. Yes?”
“Suppose my conscience should not allow me to keep to myself any longer what that upstart girl told me of the Secretary’s having made a declaration to her. Suppose my conscience should oblige me to repeat it to Mr. Boffin.”
“I rather like that,” said Lammle.
“Suppose I so repeated it to Mr. Boffin, as to insinuate that my sensitive
