Mrs Veneering does not expect that Mr Twemlow can in nature
care much for such insipid things as babies, but so old a friend must
please to look at baby. ‘Ah! You will know the friend of your family
better, Tootleums,’ says Mr Veneering, nodding emotionally at that new
article, ‘when you begin to take notice.’ He then begs to make his dear
Twemlow known to his two friends, Mr Boots and Mr Brewer—and clearly
has no distinct idea which is which.
But now a fearful circumstance occurs.
‘Mis-ter and Mis-sus Podsnap!’
‘My dear,’ says Mr Veneering to Mrs Veneering, with an air of much
friendly interest, while the door stands open, ‘the Podsnaps.’
A too, too smiling large man, with a fatal freshness on him, appearing
with his wife, instantly deserts his wife and darts at Twemlow with:
‘How do you do? So glad to know you. Charming house you have here. I hope
we are not late. So glad of the opportunity, I am sure!’
When the first shock fell upon him, Twemlow twice skipped back in his neat
little shoes and his neat little silk stockings of a bygone fashion, as if
impelled to leap over a sofa behind him; but the large man closed with him
and proved too strong.
‘Let me,’ says the large man, trying to attract the attention of his wife
in the distance, ‘have the pleasure of presenting Mrs Podsnap to her host.
She will be,’ in his fatal freshness he seems to find perpetual verdure
and eternal youth in the phrase, ‘she will be so glad of the opportunity,
I am sure!’
In the meantime, Mrs Podsnap, unable to originate a mistake on her own
account, because Mrs Veneering is the only other lady there, does her best
in the way of handsomely supporting her husband’s, by looking towards Mr
Twemlow with a plaintive countenance and remarking to Mrs Veneering in a
feeling manner, firstly, that she fears he has been rather bilious of
late, and, secondly, that the baby is already very like him.
It is questionable whether any man quite relishes being mistaken for any
other man; but, Mr Veneering having this very evening set up the
shirt-front of the young Antinous in new worked cambric just come home, is
not at all complimented by being supposed to be Twemlow, who is dry and
weazen and some thirty years older. Mrs Veneering equally resents the
imputation of being the wife of Twemlow. As to Twemlow, he is so sensible
of being a much better bred man than Veneering, that he considers the
large man an offensive ass.
In this complicated dilemma, Mr Veneering approaches the large man with
extended hand and, smilingly assures that incorrigible personage that he
is delighted to see him: who in his fatal freshness instantly replies:
‘Thank you. I am ashamed to say that I cannot at this moment recall where
we met, but I am so glad of this opportunity, I am sure!’
Then pouncing upon Twemlow, who holds back with all his feeble might, he
is haling him off to present him, as Veneering, to Mrs Podsnap, when the
arrival of more guests unravels the mistake. Whereupon, having re-shaken
hands with Veneering as Veneering, he re-shakes hands with Twemlow as
Twemlow, and winds it all up to his own perfect satisfaction by saying to
the last-named, ‘Ridiculous opportunity—but so glad of it, I am
sure!’
Now, Twemlow having undergone this terrific experience, having likewise
noted the fusion of Boots in Brewer and Brewer in Boots, and having
further observed that of the remaining seven guests four discrete
characters enter with wandering eyes and wholly declined to commit
themselves as to which is Veneering, until Veneering has them in his
grasp;—Twemlow having profited by these studies, finds his brain
wholesomely hardening as he approaches the conclusion that he really is
Veneering’s oldest friend, when his brain softens again and all is lost,
through his eyes encountering Veneering and the large man linked together
as twin brothers in the back drawing-room near the conservatory door, and
through his ears informing him in the tones of Mrs Veneering that the same
large man is to be baby’s godfather.
‘Dinner is on the table!’
Thus the melancholy retainer, as who should say, ‘Come down and be
poisoned, ye unhappy children of men!’
Twemlow, having no lady assigned him, goes down in the rear, with his hand
to his forehead. Boots and Brewer, thinking him indisposed, whisper, ‘Man
faint. Had no lunch.’ But he is only stunned by the unvanquishable
difficulty of his existence.
Revived by soup, Twemlow discourses mildly of the Court Circular with
Boots and Brewer.