Chapter 12

Chapter 12

THE SWEAT OF AN HONEST MAN'S BROW

Mr Mortimer Lightwood and Mr Eugene Wrayburn took a coffee-
house dinner together in Mr Lightwood's office. They had newly
agreed to set up a joint establishment together. They had taken a
bachelor cottage near Hampton, on the brink of the Thames, with a
lawn, and a boat-house; and all things fitting, and were to float
with the stream through the summer and the Long Vacation.

It was not summer yet, but spring; and it was not gentle spring
ethereally mild, as in Thomson's Seasons, but nipping spring with
an easterly wind, as in Johnson's, Jackson's, Dickson's, Smith's,
and Jones's Seasons. The grating wind sawed rather than blew;
and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit. Every
street was a sawpit, and there were no top-sawyers; every
passenger was an under-sawyer, with the sawdust blinding him
and choking him.

That mysterious paper currency which circulates in London when
the wind blows, gyrated here and there and everywhere. Whence
can it come, whither can it go? It hangs on every bush, flutters in
every tree, is caught flying by the electric wires, haunts every
enclosure, drinks at every pump, cowers at every grating, shudders
upon every plot of grass, seeks rest in vain behind the legions of
iron rails. In Paris, where nothing is wasted, costly and luxurious
city though it be, but where wonderful human ants creep out of
holes and pick up every scrap, there is no such thing. There, it
blows nothing but dust. There, sharp eyes and sharp stomachs
reap even the east wind, and get something out of it.

The wind sawed, and the sawdust whirled. The shrubs wrung
their many hands, bemoaning that they had been over-persuaded
by the sun to bud; the young leaves pined; the sparrows repented of
their early marriages, like men and women; the colours of the
rainbow were discernible, not in floral spring, but in the faces of
the people whom it nibbled and pinched. And ever the wind
sawed, and the sawdust whirled.

When the spring evenings are too long and light to shut out, and
such weather is rife, the city which Mr Podsnap so explanatorily
called London, Londres, London, is at its worst. Such a black
shrill city, combining the qualities of a smoky house and a
scolding wife; such a gritty city; such a hopeless city, with no rent
in the leaden canopy of its sky; such a beleaguered city, invested by
the great Marsh Forces of Essex and Kent. So the two old
schoolfellows felt it to be, as, their dinner done, they turned
towards the fire to smoke. Young Blight was gone, the coffee-
house waiter was gone, the plates and dishes were gone, the wine
was going--but not in the same direction.

'The wind sounds up