Our Mutual Friend | Page 9

green fan upon the
knuckles of her left hand--which is particularly rich in knuckles, 'I insist upon your telling
all that is to be told about the man from Jamaica.'
'Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except the man who was a
brother,' replies Mortimer.
'Tobago, then.'

'Nor yet from Tobago.'
'Except,' Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young lady, who has
forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette out of his way: 'except our friend
who long lived on rice- pudding and isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his
physician said something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.'
A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out. An unfulfilled
impression, for he goes in again.
'Now, my dear Mrs Veneering,' quoth Lady Tippins, I appeal to you whether this is not
the basest conduct ever known in this world? I carry my lovers about, two or three at a
time, on condition that they are very obedient and devoted; and here is my oldest
lover-in-chief, the head of all my slaves, throwing off his allegiance before company!
And here is another of my lovers, a rough Cymon at present certainly, but of whom I had
most hopeful expectations as to his turning out well in course of time, pretending that he
can't remember his nursery rhymes! On purpose to annoy me, for he knows how I doat
upon them!'
A grisly little fiction concerning her lovers is Lady Tippins's point. She is always
attended by a lover or two, and she keeps a little list of her lovers, and she is always
booking a new lover, or striking out an old lover, or putting a lover in her black list, or
promoting a lover to her blue list, or adding up her lovers, or otherwise posting her book.
Mrs Veneering is charmed by the humour, and so is Veneering. Perhaps it is enhanced by
a certain yellow play in Lady Tippins's throat, like the legs of scratching poultry.
'I banish the false wretch from this moment, and I strike him out of my Cupidon (my
name for my Ledger, my dear,) this very night. But I am resolved to have the account of
the man from Somewhere, and I beg you to elicit it for me, my love,' to Mrs Veneering,
'as I have lost my own influence. Oh, you perjured man!' This to Mortimer, with a rattle
of her fan.
'We are all very much interested in the man from Somewhere,' Veneering observes.
Then the four Buffers, taking heart of grace all four at once, say:
'Deeply interested!'
'Quite excited!'
'Dramatic!'
'Man from Nowhere, perhaps!'
And then Mrs Veneering--for the Lady Tippins's winning wiles are contagious--folds her
hands in the manner of a supplicating child, turns to her left neighbour, and says, 'Tease!
Pay! Man from Tumwhere!' At which the four Buffers, again mysteriously moved all
four at once, explain, 'You can't resist!'

'Upon my life,' says Mortimer languidly, 'I find it immensely embarrassing to have the
eyes of Europe upon me to this extent, and my only consolation is that you will all of you
execrate Lady Tippins in your secret hearts when you find, as you inevitably will, the
man from Somewhere a bore. Sorry to destroy romance by fixing him with a local
habitation, but he comes from the place, the name of which escapes me, but will suggest
itself to everybody else here, where they make the wine.'
Eugene suggests 'Day and Martin's.'
'No, not that place,' returns the unmoved Mortimer, 'that's where they make the Port. My
man comes from the country where they make the Cape Wine. But look here, old fellow;
its not at all statistical and it's rather odd.'
It is always noticeable at the table of the Veneerings, that no man troubles himself much
about the Veneerings themselves, and that any one who has anything to tell, generally
tells it to anybody else in preference.
'The man,' Mortimer goes on, addressing Eugene, 'whose name is Harmon, was only son
of a tremendous old rascal who made his money by Dust.'
'Red velveteens and a bell?' the gloomy Eugene inquires.
'And a ladder and basket if you like. By which means, or by others, he grew rich as a
Dust Contractor, and lived in a hollow in a hilly country entirely composed of Dust. On
his own small estate the growling old vagabond threw up his own mountain range, like an
old volcano, and its geological formation was Dust. Coal-dust, vegetable-dust, bone-dust,
crockery dust, rough dust and sifted dust,--all manner of Dust.'
A passing remembrance of Mrs Veneering, here induces Mortimer to address his next
half-dozen words to her; after which