Works of Charles Dickens - Charles Dickens [5473]
Mr Twemlow takes his station on a settee before her, and Mrs Lammle shows him a portrait.
'You have reason to be surprised,' she says softly, 'but I wish you wouldn't look so.'
Disturbed Twemlow, making an effort not to look so, looks much more so.
'I think, Mr Twemlow, you never saw that distant connexion of yours before to-day?'
'No, never.'
'Now that you do see him, you see what he is. You are not proud of him?'
'To say the truth, Mrs Lammle, no.'
'If you knew more of him, you would be less inclined to acknowledge him. Here is another portrait. What do you think of it?'
Twemlow has just presence of mind enough to say aloud: 'Very like! Uncommonly like!'
'You have noticed, perhaps, whom he favours with his attentions? You notice where he is now, and how engaged?'
'Yes. But Mr Lammle--'
She darts a look at him which he cannot comprehend, and shows him another portrait.
'Very good; is it not?'
'Charming!' says Twemlow.
'So like as to be almost a caricature?--Mr Twemlow, it is impossible to tell you what the struggle in my mind has been, before I could bring myself to speak to you as I do now. It is only in the conviction that I may trust you never to betray me, that I can proceed. Sincerely promise me that you never will betray my confidence--that you will respect it, even though you may no longer respect me,--and I shall be as satisfied as if you had sworn it.'
'Madam, on the honour of a poor gentleman--'
'Thank you. I can desire no more. Mr Twemlow, I implore you to save that child!'
'That child?'
'Georgiana. She will be sacrificed. She will be inveigled and married to that connexion of yours. It is a partnership affair, a money-speculation. She has no strength of will or character to help herself and she is on the brink of being sold into wretchedness for life.'
'Amazing! But what can I do to prevent it?' demands Twemlow, shocked and bewildered to the last degree.
'Here is another portrait. And not good, is it?'
Aghast at the light manner of her throwing her head back to look at it critically, Twemlow still dimly perceives the expediency of throwing his own head back, and does so. Though he no more sees the portrait than if it were in China.
'Decidedly not good,' says Mrs Lammle. 'Stiff and exaggerated!'
'And ex--' But Twemlow, in his demolished state, cannot command the word, and trails off into '--actly so.'
'Mr Twemlow, your word will have weight with her pompous, self-blinded father. You know how much he makes of your family. Lose no time. Warn him.'
'But warn him against whom?'
'Against me.'
By great good fortune Twemlow receives a stimulant at this critical instant. The stimulant is Lammle's voice.
'Sophronia, my dear, what portraits are you showing Twemlow?'
'Public characters, Alfred.'
'Show him the last of me.'
'Yes, Alfred.'
She puts the book down, takes another book up, turns the leaves, and presents the portrait to Twemlow.
'That is the last of Mr Lammle. Do you think it good?--Warn her father against me. I deserve it, for I have been in the scheme from the first. It is my husband's scheme, your connexion's, and mine. I tell you this, only to show you the necessity of the poor little foolish affectionate creature's being befriended and rescued. You will not repeat this to her father. You will spare me so far, and spare my husband. For, though this celebration of to-day is all a mockery, he is my husband, and we must live.--Do you think it like?'
Twemlow, in a stunned condition, feigns to compare the portrait in his hand with the original looking towards him from his Mephistophelean corner.
'Very well indeed!' are at length the words which Twemlow with great difficulty extracts from himself.
'I am glad you think so. On the whole, I myself consider it the best. The others are so dark.